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Home	For "Behind the Curtain" authors
	This page has information for people participating in the "Behind the Curtain: A Day in the Life of Webloggers" web event. I have been producing "day in my life" web sites for almost two years and I have some tips. I also use a tool my company sells that is well suited to this style web site, and have arranged for those that signed up for Behind the Curtain to get free copies if they want ("a $69 plus shipping value!"). I'll cover here both free copies of Trellix Web and what I've learned. Trellix Web copies There are a variety of tools tuned to creating weblogs, like Blogger and Manila. Unfortunately, they are not as well tuned to non-HTML-people creating some other types of web sites. I use a product called Trellix Web. It runs under Windows and lets you create multi-page web sites without knowing HTML. It also lets you rotate, size, and crop images and add them to the web pages very easily. (I use it even though I know HTML.) While Trellix Web is not as tuned to weblogs (you can use it -- I do for mine) it does make certain types of web photojournals real easy. It handles "Next/Previous" automatically, has lots of Help, and even has free on-line chat (and email) support. Trellix Web puts the results of making your web site (or sub-site) up on the server through FTP (it's hidden from you by a one-step wizard). Normally, Trellix Web knows about web hosting companies we've made deals with and uploads the site in a way such that Trellix Corporation gets a bit of money, so we can offer the program to you for free. Hosting companies like Prodigy, CompuServe, Interliant, and DellHost are examples. Some "free" hosting companies, like Tripod and FortuneCity.com, also have special free versions of Trellix Web, but those web sites will get banner ads displayed (to pay for the free hosting). We sell a version of Trellix Web for $69 that can upload to most FTP servers, which works on other, non-partner hosting companies (e.g., MediaOne/Road Runner, @Home, EarthLink, AOL, etc.). There is on-line support that will tell you how to configure Trellix Web for many of them. I got permission to send free copies of this "$69" version to any one of the webloggers who signed up for Behind the Curtain. Just send me an email at danb@trellix.com along with a mailing address (it will go out by mail) and the name/URL of your weblog (only one for each person who signed up). If you don't have a place to upload to you can also use it to sign up with Tripod, or any of our other partners -- it has wizards for that. Please send the request before Friday, September 22, 2000. Since they are going out by US Mail, if you don't get the request in early, use some other means to post your first pictures and try Trellix Web when you get it and link to that version of your site if you like it. If you want the Tripod version, you can download that from the Trellix Get It Now page (I don't have a free download of the $69 version). The download is over 11 MB, so having a CD is a help for many people. What I've learned about web photo journals I've written down much of what I've learned about making web photo journals in a web site titled (guess...) www.WebPhotoJournals.com. It has pages in the Ideas and Techniques section about making smaller images, telling a story, GIF vs. JPEG, and more. If you haven't put more than a few pictures up on the web, take a few minutes to look through the site. You'll probably get some ideas. If you do try Trellix Web, there is a page on the WebPhotoJournals site titled "Using Trellix Web" which tells you which features I use (e.g., Sequence lines to do the automatic Next/Previous). I don't mention a new feature in the latest versions of Trellix Web: a wizard for making one-picture per page, next/next/next photo albums. You can use that, but as I explain on the web site, I prefer multiple pictures per page with lots of narration. Also, if you use Trellix Web, unless you make a new site on Tripod or something, you'll probably want to publish to a subdirectory and then link to your web photojournal as a sub-site.  To do that, when you do "File / Publish Web Site" the first time, in the dialog click the "Options" button, go to the "Host Setup" tab and use the "Publish to a Subdirectory" setting. To make thumbnails with Trellix Web, you can create pages with just the picture (such as with the wizard) and then copy the picture to your narrative and resize the copy to much smaller. Then link the thumbnail to the big picture page. (That's pretty easy to do with the product.) Why I'm doing this Some emails from Garret Vreeland, who's organizing Behind the Curtain, made it clear to me that there may be people who don't know how to make a photo-rich web site and that there is a possibility of him being swamped with requests for help. Having access to a tool that I (and many thousand others) think makes it easy, and being Founder and Chief Technology Officer so I can get some complimentary copies, I felt I should at least offer some help. Then if people have problems, they can go to our on-line support department. For most webloggers, Trellix Web may not be the tool they'd use for day-to-day blogging if they're happy with what they have, but for other web site purposes they might find it helpful, so at least I have some business reason to explain why I'm doing this to the rest of my company. Enjoy! -Dan Bricklin, danbricklin.com/log
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