Welcome to the help files for website buttons

Website buttons help
This site was designed for web sites that need new buttons or to resize images of up to 10mb to more friendly sizes for the web.

Features:
Button producer
Please note, you need to have produced an image for use as the background to the buttons. Our button producer is used to simplify the process of making standard shape and styles of button. It does this by keeping the settings of font type, style, button background and text position within the control panel. The result is that once you have set the buttons the way you like them, you can simply log in, type your new heading and save a button and its roll over button within a few seconds.

Features in depth
Produce up to four templates for buttons, using your own button background
Each template can also produce a button roll over image
Templates are saved in your account until you need them
You can choose styles of text:
colour, font style and type from a range given and text size
Position the text over the image exactly, using padding at the top, bottom,left and right for exact positioning.
Saves a button as a .Gif image, complete with the text embedded as part of the image, in the style you chose.

Image resizer

This was produced as a simple utility for my customers, to allow them fast access to a simple interface for resizing their images.

This is a simple utility, that allows easy resizing of images for use on the web. An example might be a picture that you want to include on your web page, or as a product shot, for example. The utility, allows you to browse this off your PC / Mac and then resize by percentage, scale to width or height or to select the exact measurements for the reduction. In this way, your 4Mb photograph can be scaled down to 100k for example. The output is as a .jpg.

In this way, you can also use a photograph of a nice background as the background of your buttons in the button generator.

Features in depth
Resizes images of .jpeg and .Gif type
Deals with images of up to 10Mb
Resizes by :
Percentage - type in the percentage reduction and the image will be reduced proportionally by height and width
Width - define the width in pixels and it will reduce the image, keeping width standard and resizing height proportionally.
Height - define the height in pixels and it will reduce the image, keeping height standard and resizing width proportionally)
Custom - Reduce the width and height to the exact proportion you require- this will disproportionately reduce the image.

Free or paid for:
We want to let you use this website for free. However, we require a link back to us for you to do so. You must link back from your website and this must be a real html link, not from Flash, redirect or JavaScript link. It must be from a page that is linked from your home page. The link must be able to be followed by Google and must not have rel= no follow attribute.

Paid for - this cost will vary from time to time, and we will keep it as low as we can, but if you do not want to link to us, you can avoid this by paying a small annual subscription. If you have several sites and don't wish to link to us, please contact us for a preferential subscription rate for multiple sites- as we will give you multiple accounts, one for each site.

Help files

To get started, you will need:

1) To join up
2) A button background

Join up
Click here to go to the website buttons website. You need to decide upon the user name and password and make a note of this, as no e-mail will be sent. Please make sure that you put in a valid e-mail address. We will not put you on a mailing list but may contact you if there is something that you need to know about your account. It is important to make the e-mail accurate, as if you forget your account details, a reminder e-mail can be sent to your e-mail address if you registered with it.

Once you have signed up, you must agree to our terms and then you will be presented with your account. At this point, you must decide whether you wish to have a free or subscription account.

To have a free account, you first need to link to the site. The url of the link required is available within the account. You can link using any suitable text.

In exchange for a free account, you must link back from your website and this must be a real html link, not from Flash, redirect or JavaScript link. It must be from a page that is linked from your home page. The link must be able to be followed by Google and must not have rel= no follow attribute.

Free accounts are also available for people wishing to review the facility and no link is required, provided this is for review purposes only. We welcome any constructive criticism.

Making buttons
The four standard button types can be used for different layouts within the web site.

We have named these section, subsection, page and sub page - but in practice they are just four different styles of button which you can store the settings for and then quickly use to add more buttons to your site. Each of these has a roll over option, meaning an alternative style which you can have alternative settings for. The text is the same for both.

First, you need to define the template for the button. To do this, click on edit settings for each button type you want. You will have had to have made a button background on Paintpot or other similar image editor. This needs to be a .Gif or .jpg extension and needs to be the correct size for your button. If you want a roll-over effect, you will need to have saved a background for that too.

You can choose whether you want a roll over option. If you do, a second image will need to be added. We suggest a simple variation if doing roll over images. You will also need to use JavaScript or similar to produce the roll over effect on your site. We just supply the buttons.

Now you select the text style - font, size, colour and roll over colour and settings if required.

Save the settings when you are done. You can repeat this process for up to four button templates if required and the account will remember the settings.

Producing the buttons
To make the buttons, now click create buttons and type the text directly over the button. Finally, position the text over the button exactly, using the padding options. You can pad the text from the top, bottom, left or right or a combination. This gives you fine control over where your text will sit within the final button image. NB the text will become part of the image and will not be editable in the image! You can however produce new text simply by typing and resaving from the control panel.

When you log out, your last settings will be saved. This means that next time you need a button, it will be a very quick process to log in, type your new text and save the button.

top of page...