[HOW-TO] Make your Welcome Headers an image!

**Brandon Sheley** · 08-12-2007, 08:41 AM

Shoot me a PM, I'll help you install the mod. It's just a product, and is easy to add.
As far as the sizing questions, what I do is just take a screen shot of the welcome header. I'll usually minimize the screen on my screen "1024 x 800" a few inches on the side and then take my screen shot. I'll then open that file in photoshop and do a quick slice.

**Bridges** · 08-25-2007, 02:05 PM

How important are the first words with good search listings?

I haven't installed this yet but, I was reading through some of threads on my site and a lot of them do not have anything to do with the topic at hand.

**Brandon Sheley** · 08-25-2007, 05:44 PM

Search engines place higher rank on the first 200 words on a page..

**Ekka** · 08-25-2007, 09:26 PM

This is a must do mod, I have bumped into a few pages where the old message was what google cache'd.

Nice one Brandon

**sensimilla** · 09-18-2007, 06:56 AM

Quick question,

How do I remove the default border ? See attached image.

TIA, great mod!

**Brandon Sheley** · 09-18-2007, 07:01 AM

add border="0"

**sensimilla** · 09-18-2007, 09:50 PM

Hmmm... it's there .. Any other ideas ?

**lazserus** · 10-18-2007, 07:03 AM

This looks to be a great little technique. However, I notice people referring to a vB product, but see no link to or xml attachment for said product. I've gone through all ten pages of this thread and haven't been able to locate it. Before I attempt this I want to make sure all my ducks are in line. I don't want to go through the motions only to find out I skipped a major part of the equation.

Thanks!

**Brandon Sheley** · 10-18-2007, 07:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lazserus

This looks to be a great little technique. However, I notice people referring to a vB product, but see no link to or xml attachment for said product. I've gone through all ten pages of this thread and haven't been able to locate it. Before I attempt this I want to make sure all my ducks are in line. I don't want to go through the motions only to find out I skipped a major part of the equation.

Thanks!

I've updated the first post :smiley_

:

**lazserus** · 10-18-2007, 07:43 AM

Got it, thanks so much!

**Syrus XL Media** · 10-18-2007, 06:24 PM

I've just re-added the modification... But modified it a little more, so instead of a static image, I threw a flash intro together, its only a few layers and a couple of lines of actionscripting.

You can view it here.

Needs changing though, but gets the message across. lol

Excuses for not making it look better:

It's 3.20am here in the UK
Eyes are nearly shut
I'm off to bed...

Nite all.:smiley_

:

If I spent more time on this I could make the flash file dynamic, allowing importing of images and text. Maybe a future modification add-on!

Just realized I didn't embed the fonts used, I'll do that tomorrow so it shows correctly.

10-19-2007, 11:10 AM

Looks very nice Syrus. I've been wanting to learn basic flash stuff, but haven't had the time to play around with it really

Not a big fan of the talking guy when you first get there though. I dont like how his legs are cut off at a random spot on the page.

EDIT: also just noticed that the flash overlaps your community pulldown for me (I'm on 1280x1024)

**Syrus XL Media** · 10-19-2007, 11:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rocket 442

Looks very nice Syrus. I've been wanting to learn basic flash stuff, but haven't had the time to play around with it really

Not a big fan of the talking guy when you first get there though. I dont like how his legs are cut off at a random spot on the page.

EDIT: also just noticed that the flash overlaps your community pulldown for me (I'm on 1280x1024)

I can post the actual flash .fla source file I designed on here if anyone wants it. There's no copyright images used, all the text can be replaced within the library of the source file. I didn't embed any font types, I just converted them to vector images.

The talking guy is just really a test, not sure how long he'll be staying. I only added him this week, and so far no one likes him. lol

Thanks for pointing out the Community dropdown menu, this is a problem many flash sites suffer from when flash and DHTML coding is used near one another. I've now fixed the javascript so it works properly.

Anyway, thanks for the comment!

**jw00dy** · 10-19-2007, 02:17 PM

wow, very sharp. I really need to learn some flash, as it's very powerful!

**Syrus XL Media** · 10-19-2007, 03:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jw00dy

wow, very sharp. I really need to learn some flash, as it's very powerful!

Thanks! It's not as sharp as it could be - the text was converted to a vector image. Text in flash can be set to be pixel perfect, and set at absolute values, when displayed. Flash is a powerful authoring tool, and can produce some outstanding effects with very little effort. Most people get lost with the timeline though, or even the dreaded actionscripting - I'm still learning new techniques!

I could post this as an alternative version to the one on here, but to use dynamic flash importing of image files. Basically, it would do the same as the one on here but will be a flash file, using javascript to embed the main file. Obviously, the coding is different due to flash parameter settings when used with DHTML menus from dropdown menus. I'll see what I can come up with, or maybe a few variations to choose from.

It would probably be around 4k in size with a register button coded - even the button image could be an image!

**lazserus** · 10-19-2007, 03:40 PM

The setup is extremely clean and sharp. I think you've done a bang up job, my friend.

**Yogesh Sarkar** · 10-23-2007, 04:46 PM

Does any one uses "Enable One-View Welcome Headers" setting of welcome headers hack?

@Syrus XL Media how much is the welcome header flash you are using now? It looks really good

**CMartucci** · 12-15-2007, 08:16 PM

Would anyone be willing to make a welcome image for my forum? For free please?

**Syrus XL Media** · 12-16-2007, 01:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yogesh Sarkar

Does any one uses "Enable One-View Welcome Headers" setting of welcome headers hack?

@Syrus XL Media how much is the welcome header flash you are using now? It looks really good

I wouldn't charge anything for it, it's only a very simple flash file I designed. I'll upload it on here once I find the source file I compiled it from (I'm not very well organized when it comes to filing files!

).

If you don't know or have the facilities to use flash then you can always PM me and I'll do it for you. It's actually designed in such a way so that Google cannot read the contents of the flash file (Google can read flash files these days).

ATB

**CMartucci** · 12-16-2007, 05:02 PM

Do you think anyone can do something better with what I whipped up?

PolitiCity - Political Debate Forums

I think it looks...fuzzy..and doesn't match as well as I would like. And it's not very visually appealing.

**Syrus XL Media** · 12-16-2007, 05:08 PM

It doesn't look too bad. Maybe if the colors matched your forum color scheme it would look a little better. I think the font used needs changing though, perhaps an anti-alias applied, or smoothing.

Just an idea!

**CMartucci** · 12-16-2007, 05:14 PM

I don't know. I'd rather have a professional do it. I'm no graphic designer and I want something really appealing for guests to see. I don't know if anyone here would be capable of doing that. And I'd rather not pay, but I guess I'd be willing to.

**Syrus XL Media** · 12-16-2007, 05:18 PM

I'll design one for you a little later...

It's quite late over here in the UK, otherwise I would do it for you now.

ATB...

**CMartucci** · 12-16-2007, 05:19 PM

I really appreciate that. And there's no rush.

I also have a question about this. Isn't it bad that search engines can't read your welcome header? My welcome header describes my forum, so it helps my meta description relevancy.

**Brandon Sheley** · 12-16-2007, 07:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Syrus XL Media

You can view it here.

I never even seen this post, or the ones after..lol :lalala:

That's a sharp looking header, I never thought about using a flash image for this. I'll be contacting you when/if we get a new skin by miner for 2009

**CMartucci** · 12-16-2007, 07:23 PM

Can you answer my question though?

**Brandon Sheley** · 12-16-2007, 09:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CMartucci

Can you answer my question though?

Sorry, I missed that one.
With the welcome header setup as text, you have that same text on all your forum pages. The best option to have is to have complete unique text on all pages.

I think google at least filters these pages out in search results, but if I remember right, yahoo doesn't even do that.. I'll see if I can get an example.

*hmm,, I don't see any examples and it's late. I'm heading to bed*

**Syrus XL Media** · 12-17-2007, 04:23 AM

I don't see the point of using 'welcome headers' with text. You can do a better job by tweaking your meta tags, by default these are very basic with vbulletin anyway.

Google can read text within flash files, if it hasn't been vectorized. I vectorized the text on mine on purposes so spiders from Google cannot read it, and it also saved me embedding the font which would have increased the overall file size.

Just imagine having a vbulletin forum with over 1/2 million pages, and the same text appearing at the top of each page, this would be ignored by Google, while you could tweak your vbulletin code in a number of ways to obtain better results.

**CMartucci** · 12-17-2007, 11:24 AM

Okay. Well I guess my forum descriptions work as a unique description for each page, right?

**Brandon Sheley** · 12-17-2007, 11:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CMartucci

Okay. Well I guess my forum descriptions work as a unique description for each page, right?

Yup, and the bots will pick that up..
For me, changing the header to an image is more about keyword density. I don't want the same 500 characters on all the pages.