STEP 1: FIND PICTURES
First, you need a place to store your pictures.Let's make a folder on our Desktop. Right-click on a blank space on your desktop:
Click on New, then click on Folder:
The folder appears:
Next rename the Folder (something like Serenity's Folder)
The next step is to find some pictures you might want to use on a tourney page. Hopefully, our computes are well-protected with Anti-virus software, Firewalls, and Pop-up blockers because this type of search is prone to virus', spy ware and other stuff we don't want. These sites are good ones to start with, and I've had no problems with any of them:
Another way to search for pictures is to go to Google, and click on Images:
Then type in what you are searching for (cats, bingo cards, etc.), and then click on Search Images.
STEP 2: SAVE PICTURES
Once we find pictures we want, we need to save them. Right-mouse click on the desired picture, then Click on Save Picture As: (Note: If you cannot right-mouse click on a picture it is protected, move on to another site.)
Save the picture to your computer:
STEP 3: GET PHOTOBUCKET
The pictures we use on our tourney pages have to be stored somewhere on-line to use them (image hosting). An excellent free site to do this is Photobucket. It is like a photo album of all your pictures. First, you need to set up and account (keep your Username short, the minimum is 5 characters, as this will come in handy later when trying to paste pictures to a tourney page - there is a limited amount of space for file names.) Now, we can upload our pictures to Photobucket:
Click on Browse to locate the picture on your computer, click on Open:
Then Click on Submit:
Next, we can change the file name for our uploaded pictures (there is limited space for file names on the Customize Tournament Page, so I number all my pictures). Select a picture, and Click on Edit:
In Name Box, type in new picture title, and click on Update:
STEP 4: CREATE PAGE
Now we are ready to create our tourney page. From the Administration page, click on Customize Tournament Layout:
From this page, we create all of our tourney pages:
TOP IMAGE LINK
There are 3 things we can do in this box.Use the EZ Picker to pick a picture for the top of our page. Click on the arrow to bring up a list of choices, and select a picture:
The desired picture will then appear at the top of the page:
On a tourney page this image will appear like this:
2. Copy and paste a picture from Photobucket. To do this, first go to Photobucket and select a picture. Highlight the stuff in the box labeled Url. Right-click and select copy:
Then, on Customize Tournament Layout Page, right-click in the Top Image Link box, and select Paste:
And again, the image will appear at the top of the page:
And will appear here on the tourney page:
3.CREATE A CUSTOM TITLE
When you create the tourney, do not give it a title:
A good site to create a custom title is 3dtextmaker. Note: I have used other tools available on this site, and have had problems. So, I strongly recommend that you use only the text maker on this site.
To create a title, first pick a font:
Select a text color:
Select your dimensions, or text size. I have found that Size is not Constrained works the best:
Select other variables is where you would choose if the text is stationary or moving:
Enter your text, and click on Make 3D Text:
The title will appear at the top of the page:
From here, you can edit more. Then right-click on your title to save it to your computer. From there save it to Photobucket. Then copy and paste it to the Top Image Link box:
The title may or may not appear on the top of the page, depending on how the background is set. A custom title will look like this on a tourney page:
CUSTOM HTML
This is where your can create just about anything you want. It will appear in the center of the tourney page:
I am only going to show you how to do one thing here, and that is how to copy and paste a picture from Photobucket to this section. The first thing you need is the beginning and end tags as shown here:
You will then add filename(s) between the 2 tags. Select a picture from Photobucket and copy the stuff in the box labeled Tag:
Paste this between the 2 tags: It will look like this:
And will appear on a tourney page like this:
You can do multiple images here, and they don't have to be the same. Just make sure all filenames are between the tags:
will display on a tourney page like this:
TOURNEY STYLE
For tourney style, Classic looks like this:
And Classic Pro looks like this:
FONT TYPE
In Font Type box, you simply type in a font name, such as Arial, Batang, Veranda, etc.
BACKGROUND IMAGE
AND COLOR SCHEME
This is where you will create a background for your page:
Again there are 3 ways to do this:
1. Color Scheme: use drop-box to select a solid color background. Select Floral, for example:
This is what you will get as a background:
2. EZ Picker: From here you can choose from many preset backgrounds:
Once a selection is made, the filename will be displayed in the Background image box, and the background of the Customize Tourney Layout page will change to the background you have chosen:
3. Custom Background image: you can also use a background you have stored in Photobucket. From photobucket, select an image, and copy the Url:
And paste it here:
And your tourney page will look like this:
COLOR
In this section you will pick out the text colors and colors for other parts of your page:
When doing a custom tourney page sometimes the text is hard to read and needs to be edited. In HTML colors are represented by hex numbers,which are 6 characters long. For example, 000000 (black), FFFFFF (white), and 3300FF (blue). Click on HTML color chart for a chart of colors and their hex numbers:
Which looks like this:
The last # listed is the hex number, and the one you would use on the Customize Tourney Layout page.
I like this chart better, hypersolutions.org
To change a color, just change the hex number in the box.Each box represents a specific are of the tourney page.
Background color:
This is the page's background color. It is set automatically when you set the pages background, unless you use a background you pasted from Photobucket. In this case,I put FFFFFF (white) in that box, and on the tourney page it looks like this:
Next, is Link color. This is shown as the black text below:
Text color is shown below in black:
Header Background Color is shown in white on the next 2 pictures:
Header Text Color is the color of the text in the white areas in the 2 pictures shown above.
Small header color refers the to white text shown here:
And Title color is what color the title is if it's not been copy and pasted from Photobucket. Here, the title is in red:
When you are done creating your page, you may save it as your default page by checking the Set these colors as your default colors when creating a new tournament box:
To submit your changes, click on Submit:
To view your newly created page, click on Link to tournament:
BACK TO TOP
5. PRE-MADE TOURNEY PAGES
There are many sites available the provide pre-made tourney pages made by other TD's. Here are some good ones:
Using these pages is easy, just copy the provided code, such as that shown below:
And then paste it in the appropriate boxes on the Customize Tourney Layout page. Click on Submit, and you are done.
However, I always check the text colors to make sure the page is readable, and edit as necessary.
Another drawback to doing this, is that since your page is linked to another site, if that site goes down, lose your whole page. I have better results using Photobucket, which has been down once in 6 months.
6. MUSIC
Music, like pictures, first needs to be stored somewhere online. Most of us don't have our own websites. So, the easiest thing to do is to link to songs other people have online. There are many sites available to us where nice people allow us to do this. Here are some of them:
Dodger's Midis TDs Helping TDs (on left side) Midisite Silent Angel List of other Linkable Midi SitesMusic files use alot of bandwidth when we link to them. Please do not link to files that are not listed as linkable.
Now that we have some music, how do we put it on a tourney page? It's not as hard as you think.
The code goes first in the Custom HTML box on the Customize Tourney Page. For music that does not have a player, use this code:
For music that does include a player, use this code:
With a player, the page will look something like this. There are several different ones:
All a player does is allow the user to turn off the music or adjust the volume. I do not use them on my pages, but you can if you choose.
One note, the loop="-1" just means that the music will repeat indefinately. I cannot find the code for music that only plays once, but when I do I will add it to this section.
File format: Midi, wav, or mp3?
Midi files are the ones that just play music and have no vocals. There are the smallest files. Wavs and mp3 have vocals on them and are much larger files. Larger files cause the tourney pages to load slower. There is a debate over how big a file we should use. I have gotten a 3.5MB file to load in a few seconds. If you re unsure, test the page. Load it from the tourney calendar, not from Customize tourney layout. Pages will load faster on our own computer because we have the temp files. If you can, load the page from another computer, or ask someone to look at it for you. If it takes more than a few seconds to load, then the file is too big. Dial-up users will have a harder time loading large pages, so keep this in mind when using music.
If you insist on using an mp3 file, there is a tool we can use to cut the file down. THIS TOOL IS ONLY FOR THOSE OF US WHO HAVE THEIR OWN WEBSITES OR SOMEPLACE TO STORE OUR MUSIC.Go to MedaFan Technology and download the MEDA MP3 Splitter 2.5. This is a trial version, which can be used 20 times before you need to purchase it. The price, however, is resonable. This tool gives a timeline while you play the song. You can split it wherever you want to, to make a smaller file. I have used this and it worked very well.
I also have found a couple of sites for online storage of audio files. They are both free. I have not tried either site. But, here they are:
If you need additional help with music, or any other tourney page related issues, please email serenity21899.
7. TIPS
As much as we all like to design pretty tourney pages, some of them are just hard to read. Please make sure that you font color contrasts with your background color.
Some examples of pages that are hard to read:
Some examples of pages that are alot easier to read:
