Off to a fine start

Colin Tennant and Ross McCarthy got the new Cambridge Institute of Dog Behaviour & Training off to a fine start in Tring, Hertfordshire on 14 April. Students were provided with a full weekend of advice and guidance from experts and professional in this field and were able to preview the excellent extracts from unique film footage of Colin Tennant advising clients and dealing with a range of canine behaviour that was causing distress for them.

This site will feature links and information about the new degree programme and where to obtain support material as well as details of other courses being provided by the Canine & Feline Behaviour Asociation and CIDBT.

The old posts concern just the editing of the main site and will disappear shortly!

Important editing guidance notes

There are two important editing problems:

Unwanted 'classes'

Lots of unintended 'class' codes are appearing in the code for many pages. This affects the way text appears in some browsers and can cause problems. It seems to come from editing via Dreamweaver8 which tries to be helpful by watching how text is formatted, storing that format as, say, 'class1' and then, when another bit if text is edited, offering 'class1' to the user. Now this probably looks OK and may even seem helpful but it isn't as different types of internet browser will give different priority to which formatting instruction is obeyed. The use of these 'classes' would be fine if we had one set for the whole site, which is a good idea one day but not very quick to do now! As it is each page has odd 'classes' of its own which is not good.

So, when entering any text, or editing any existing text, it is very important to watch what the text proerties window says. Choose 'none' for the box that may say 'paragraph' or something. In any box that says 'class1' 'class2' or whatever, change that to none. The required font, size and colour need to be entered and not left to either default of class-allocated. If this continues to be a problem it may be better to return to Dreamweaver MX for site management, which is simpler.

The only 'classes' that should be used are 'one', 'two' 'three' etc which I have designed for links. If a new type is required I'll create it.

Overwriting recent changes with older files

There have been many instances of files that I have updated or corrected being changed back to their original state (maybe with new entries or text). This is happening because the file being uploaded must be being based on a local, unedited copy and not the on-line, remote or server copy. Where more than one person edits a page it is absolutely vital that the remote file is the one edited. To ensure this, download (or get) the file from the remote view and overwrite your local copy. Then edit that copy and save it. That will save it to your local folder and it then needs to be uploaded.

As a check, I am now including updated on (date and time) at the foot of every page as I edit them. I shall also add this line to all the other pages eventually. This should make it easy to compare the date on the copy you are editing to that displayed on the site. If the file you are about to edit has the wrong date then it is the wrong one!

CIDBT update

cidbt-tutors
Removed all the 'classes' that had been included in the code and which made some paragraphs appear very small in some browsers. All text now consistent.

Added apostrophes as appropriate to link bars and restored Jo Clarricoates' yet again!!

cidbt-news1
Added missing link to news for the Plain English link
Adjusted telephone number font, removed 'class' code and changed link to site.

level23
Changed bare back to bear again - must be for the third time!
Corrected some alignment problems
Removed all unwanted 'class' code

CIDBT fixes

Index
page includes a sitemeter bottom left of screen.

cidbt-hotels
new page added

cidbt-news
link to courses changed

cidbt-tutors
heading left aligned
intro text put in a table to match indent with lower items
various typos corrected
link to courses corrected
consistent display of qualification letters

cidbt-courseinfo
heading left aligned
big empty space removed at foot of page
link to courses corrected

nowork
courses link corrected

cidbt-inst
accommodation correctly spelt
accreditation correctly spelt (this is the second time I've done this!)
hotel link to new page (referred to above)

level2-3
bare changed to bear !!! (I would love to have left this as it was much more fun before!!)
courses link corrected

cidbt-thankyou
courses link corrected

On various pages the footer had Institute for which I've changed to of but there are probably many more, as I haven't touched the course detail pages, which also may have the incorrect courses link too.

That's all I can manage for now.

CIDBT fixes needed

Title includes 'for' instead of 'of' on several pages linked from Institute page (ie Career . . , Benefits . . , What people to say.

may be others.
Many fixed 19/2 still need to check many course pages

Front page also has old banner which I've advised by e-mail today.
Fixed 15/2

CIDBT error report (February 2007)

Green items now OK
throughout site
all page titles should be amended to display Institute name not WWW etc
index
- link to video should be clearer

institute
- (links) Training
- (links) accreditation
tutors
- heading font shouldn't be bold and needs to be left-aligned
- 1st para should be set in same table as tutor details below
- Roger: Cats in line 2 should be cats
- Roger: query title of first book quoted, capitalisation incorrect and correct to Dogs' and Cat's
- Roger: all booktitles should have similar emphasis, suggest italic
- Roger: near the end : world's
- Derek: Expert in criminal law and the Dangerous Dogs Act
- Derek: 32 years'
- Derek: 25 years
- Derek: Derek successfully (delete has)
- Derek: Should Manchester and Chester dogs homes have capitals?
- Derek: BSc
- Derek: dog-related
- Colin: Canine & Feline
- Colin: Hypnotherapy
- Colin: change & to and in normal text other than titles
- Colin: pet film director, producer and broadcaster for video . .
- Colin: correct book title and add emphasis for all titles consistently, suggest italic, no quotes
- Colin: what is DP.?
- Charlie: been (not ben)
- Suzanne: BA(Hons)
- Suzanne: animals, particularly
- Suzanne: students' work placement
- Jo: Clarricoates (delete apostrophe)
- Jo: their clients' dogs
- Jo: hands-on
- Ross: British pet magazines and newspapers
- Ross: Dogs Monthly
- Paul: delete Herts. and wrong font
- AndrewT and Jenny: states info to be supplied before 7/2 - suggest 'coming soon'
Fonts used for detail from Charlie down are too small - need to remove several styles from page code
inst2 (why there's a need)
- missing picture
- Canine & Feline (title next to CFBA logo)
courseinfo
what's NCWBLP?? neds some explanation I think
nowork
- hands-on modules
- workshop
- Kennel
- "within 7 days" (prefer soon)
- Canine needs capital near CFBA logo
sponsors
- (heading) investing
- big space above picture
- very small font and mini links
- table of logos needs better positioning and borders removed

Initial CFBA error report (January 2007)

page	missing pics or links	typos
all / general	the oval logo top right appears to change from page to page! blue fading background only appears on one page I found (courses) due to broken link I feel heading text should be vertically aligned Middle to match logo
contacttemp		centre alignment looks odd to me
members	“Click here” after pet insurance doesn’t work	bottom para - left align and add a full stop.
colin	tidy alignment of links at bottom	both paras should be left aligned replace & with and in line 6
roger	undesirable white space at top - text may be vertically aligned middle or have extra spaces there tidy bottom link alignment	Naturalist . (remove space) line 3: Cats has a capital but dogs hasn’t. Suggest neither has capital. penultimate line: world’s
charlie	space at top as for other two picture better if rt aligned	4th line: delete magazine 2nd para, 2nd line: clients’
join		text is justified - left align instead swap “below category” members’ current, (delete comma) self-addressed “contact us” either put in inverted commas or make a link itself
media	a change back to my orginal font here - need to be consistent throughout site - one or the other	1st para needs a return after “below:” to correct line spacing and delete following space (may need to look at code) “contact us” above. (replace : with .)
courses	only page I found with blue fade background!! Nice.	some paras justified, some not reference to course titles a bit odd as they’re not there - all this needs re-drafting now. Update to 1st para on right needed
course4		update needed
education	looks like some columns need re-arranging	2nd para: to date (delete hyphen) 3rd para, 1st col: teaching aid: (colon not semi-colon) Open University 2nd col: bullet points should start with: coverage (that’s OK) exploring organising (note s not z too) discussing comparing reviewing (or alternative gerunds (sorry) not verbs)
courses3		update needed (or just change the date!) 2nd col: DVDs NO APOSTROPHE!! Open Uni
memberslist	Joyce’s pic!	ENorth Wales! Gill’s tel no - is that right?
associateslist	Nicola image? and ALT text says Colin!
corporate	important page to get right if you’re to attract sponsors need to stop text bumping into table - insert a new table for icons and names and consider removing blue background and using less intrusive alternative (I may need to help get this page looking smart)