Welcome:
At the time of writing this introduction,
Lucky Marble Solutions has seen it’s sixth year of operation
on the internet which pretty much places us in the ‘well
grounded’ category, as most internet companies have only
really started to emerge in the past few years. Although the
company started under the Interactive 3Designs label, we’ve
grown from a design company, into a design and programming
company. You can read more about our staff by visiting our
team bio at (
http://www.i3dthemes.com/about/index.php ).
We may not be biggest company in terms of staff, with four
full time members, and one part time operator. And we all
have various backgrounds, yet we do bring certain skills to
the table that we believe help us shine above and beyond
what the average person might expect from an internet
company:
• Personal Interaction
• Customer Satisfaction
• Exceptional Bang for the Buck
One of the pillars the company has grown from, is an honest
dedication to customer satisfaction. Our customer
testimonials are a testament to that pillar (
www.i3dthemes.com/about/testimonials ). In the early
days, our toll free hotline was a lifeline for our customers
and new members, and we’ve built a solid, satisfied, and
loyal customer base through simple personal help, and
interaction. As our company started to grow, we had to find
equally effective methods of helping our new members,
without the need to call us, or we would have spent more
time helping folks, than building cool new websites. As a
result, we were one of the first (and maybe only) web design
companies to include product specific video instructions.
Still offering the personal touch, yet allowing each member
to listen and learn at a time of their choosing, and at a
pace that works best for their schedule.
Thank you for purchasing a LuckyMarble /
i3dthemes web site product. I hope that you will be able to
save hours of development time by using one of our
solutions. I also hope that you find the building of your
web site to be fun, release the creative juices, and really
give you the feeling of accomplishment once you’re done.
Your web template is just one of the tools you’ll be using
in the process of building your web site. I would like to
take a few moments of your time to discuss the function of a
web template, some of the things you can do with it, and
some of the things you may need help with.
First, and most importantly, we’ve included an instructor
lead video tutorials in working with our templates. With
these tutorials, you will learn how to download, install and open
your web site. You’ll also learn the basics in working with
the included web pages, learn how to make new web pages,
change menu bars, replace images, add and format content, as
well as publish your web site. The tutorials
ARE NOT designed to replace a good reference manual such as
FrontPage for Dummies, or Dreamweaver 8 in 24 hours.
Although most users can follow along without ever opening
FrontPage / Dreamweaver before today and still manage to
complete the tutorials, this may not be the case for
everyone as we all learn at different speeds. I would like
to recommend that EVERYONE have at least one software
reference manual on their desk when building a web site,
even when using a template. The quickest way to find an
answer is to use good reference materials, or a search
engine such as google.com.
In writing this document, I wanted to provide our first time
web masters a life line they can call upon when building
their web site. I also wanted to provide our new members
with some personal instructions for editing specific areas
of the template. If you’ve purchased a web template from
another company in the past, you’ll find quite a difference
with ours, as we do believe that our templates are on the
cutting edge, and provide the best set of tools to help get
you get started.
I can also tell you with great confidence that many of you
will want to add cool new feature to your template, change
the look and feel, colors or theme, as well as modify the
template beyond our original design. This is GREAT! I love
to see what unique things can be accomplished with our
templates.
If you DO want to add cool new features, change the look and
feel or modify the template we've included video's to help
you accomplish these tasks, to a point. I wanted to
include enough instruction so you would be able to build
your website with relative ease, modify the 'images' and
text using just your HMTL editor. It's not really within the
scope of this guide to teach you all the skills that you could learn from a website such as
www.lynda.com. I would
just love to take the afternoon off, fly to your city or
town and spend some time with you in a one on one coaching
session. As I'm not too big on flying, I hope the
video's will suffice. If you are truly interested in
learning the intermediate to advanced web mastering,
graphic, or flash animation skills then
www.lynda.com is really the best
place to go.
There are just so many things you can do
with a web site (with many of these things requiring
advanced SKILL SETS in graphic design, animation,
programming for database or JavaScript applications) I could
not possible include instructions that would make any sense,
and you’d probably never find them in this guide anyways.
So I will dispense my advice for anyone looking to modify
our templates beyond the instructions I’ve included:
• For a quick and professional looking ‘custom’ website,
check out our advanced video instructions. You WILL need
additional software, specifically Macromedia Fireworks 8 and
Macromedia Flash 8. You CAN download fully functional 30 day
trial versions of both these software programs. You should
be able to modify one web template within the 30 days if you
just want to try it out and see how it goes. For
professional web developers, I highly recommend these tools
as a part of your arsenal of software tools. For the cost of
the software, you can customize any number of our
generation7 templates. The cost savings will add up.
- Patience is a virtue and necessity. There is always a
learning curve when trying something new, especially with a
web site.
Google is your friend. Learn how to google a question.
Chances are someone has already asked and answered it.
Online Video instruction for specific software programs go
to
www.lynda.com
Reference manuals can be purchased from web sites such as
www.amazon.com.
Welcome to the Setup Guide, your reference material for
the Generation7 template designs from Lucky Marble /
i3dthemes. Please BOOKMARK this website for quick reference.
The information in the Setup Guide comes from 2
years of accumulating questions and answers from our
existing members. With this information, we've created
cutting edge specifications for our Generation7 templates,
making these the most Search Engine Friendly templates or
websites you will find using top quality professional
artwork, and coding practices that bar none, are the best in
the industry and verified by the
W3C.org
Welcome and Hello! My name is Colin
Fraser, and I’m lead designer for the Lucky Marble Design
Group / i3dthemes.
The purpose of the Setup Guide is to help you build
your new website, quickly and efficiently. The next best
thing to one of us being there, and personally helping you .
We believe the instructional documents included with your
purchase, represents the best information made available by
any web development company.
If this is the first time working with our
templates, you may be wondering what you can do with a
template, how much you can do with it, or how much you can
modify it to suit your personal or business requirements.
You could build your website in as little as 2 hours if your
organized. We've designed our templates in such a style that
you should only need to work with one program, your HTML
editor (for best results, we recommend: FrontPage 2003,
Expression Web Designer, or Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 /
8). For our professional web developers, web
enthusiast's or folks just interesting in learning some new
skills, we've also including optional yet informative
intermediate to advanced video's demonstrating how to use
professional web design software such as (Macromedia
Fireworks, Macromedia Flash, Photoshop) to modify the look
and feel of the template design. We've geared the
intermediate to advanced videos more towards our
professional web developers looking to modify the original
artwork used in building our templates, to suit their
clients specific requests. If you are interested in taking
your own skill set to the next level, or if your interested
in learning how we build our templates, the intermediate to
advanced tutorials should be of interest to you.
If this is your first website, or the
first time using a template then I suggest you start with
the basics and stay within the original design spec, then
look at modifying the design once your accumulated the
intermediate to advanced skills that may be required. If you
do require a specific color, or unique look and feel to
separate your website from the pack you may be interested in
the advanced video tutorials.
The setup
guide contains easy to follow video instructions and text
instructions (for basic and intermediate). The advanced
tutorials include video instructions only.
We've also included video's to help you accomplish the
required tasks, such as selecting a template, downloading
and installing.
** Personal Disclaimer**
I can not promise you that building your
website will be easy, nor can I say that it will be
difficult. I can promise you that working with our website
template will be unique, and if you are willing to
read the instructions, listen to my
advice, watch our videos and work with me, it will
also be rewarding. If you were to hire a reputable
design firm for a custom consultation and website design
equaling the design level of our generation7 templates, you
would be looking at $1500 minimum ()basic no flash web
design), and at least three times that amount
if you also wanted flash animation or database. So for quite
a few dollars less, and a bit of time and patience you can
build your $1500 to $4500 dream site, and pocket the
difference!
Tutorials:
The guts of the Setup Guide. The Setup Guide is broken down
into several sections.
|
Getting Started
Overview
Basic & Intermediate INSTRUCTIONS
Advanced
INSTRUCTIONS
Updates |
Throughout the QSG, you'll see some helpful icons,
designed to point out important bits of information that we
want to draw your attention to:
 |
When you see the 'Technical Stuff'
icon, it's generally safe to skip past if you're not
interested in learning the why's. Technical stuff
is generally covered in depth in the 'Case Study'
video's but you may find this reference sprinkled
throughout the guide. |
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This icon comes from years of
teaching new web masters the ins and outs of web
design. When you see this icon, it's for good
reason. If you choose to ignore, I won't say
'I told you so' but I'll probably think it (out
load). |
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Take it or leave it, but taking it
will usually save you some time somewhere down the
road.
I like to complete my 'tasks' in as few 'steps' as
necessary. When you see a tip, it will usually
refer to a short cut of some sort, or some fancy
multitasking activity. |
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Please pay attention to
instructions marked with 'important' as it usually
means that what ever is to follow will not work, or
blow up if you miss this step. |
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We use the 'caution please' icon
for anything that does not have an 'undo' option. |
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This one simply points out hidden
links embedded into the instructions. |
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The reference video icon is a quick
link to the well, the videos. L |
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