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Mon, Oct 5th - 3:21PM

Transferred Site Repair Tutorial #4 - Bullets
A bullet is traditionally used in a list of non-prioritized items. Typically, the purpose of using bullets is to break up information, thereby creating a list and making that info easier to read.

Visually, most bullets are nothing more than a dot or small circle that precedes some line of text. On web pages, this effect is created with some code. More elegant forms of design, however, make use of decorative bullets that are actually nothing more than tiny images.

When it comes to GeoCities sites, many webmasters stretched the use of bullets to make them a form of navigation.

In this tutorial we will address both uses of decorative bullets and how to repair them.

Bullets Used for Lists

This section deals with bullets that do not supply any form of navigation. They are merely static images that help break up a list.

Identifying Your Decorative Bullets
1. Open your CMS, then the page you wish to edit.

2. Activate your browser's Find function and look for "geocities" in your page's code.

For help with these first two steps, click here.

If you don't find any such link, then you don't have anything to fix. If you do find such a link, then you're ready to proceed.

If the link is contained in the "img src=" tag, then it might just be the bullet you're looking for. To verify if it is, follow these instructions:

3. Copy the URL from the "img src=" tag.

4. Open a new browser window.

5. Paste in the image URL, then click enter.

If the image that displays is the same as your bullet, you know you're in the right place in your page's code.

You will now need to find or create a replacement image to serve as your bullet. For guidance in this step, please see and adapt the help offered here.

Swapping Decorative for Simple Bullets
If you don't care about retaining your decorative bullets but want to maintain some form of bullets, you can use your site's code.

Let's assume you already have the page open in your CMS edit window and have identified your decorative bullet image. All you have to do now is to delete all of the "img src=" tag and replace it with this:

Yep, that's all there is to it. This will replace your decorative bullet with a simple dot.

If your bullets are used for navigation purposes, this approach will not work for you. You'll need to use the following approach instead.

Bullets Also Used for Navigation

First off, it's not considered "best practices" to use a bullet for navigation purposes. Visitors are far more likely to click on text than a small, unmarked image. Also, it can be a little tricky to get your mouse perfectly aligned for the click.

Before you decide to replace your decorative bullets with a different set, you should consider a different approach. Your best options are to either hyperlink the text or replace the bullets with a more obvious and bigger set of buttons.

Switching from Bullet to Text Navigation
Making the switch from a bullet-based form of navigation to one that uses text is pretty simple.

Assuming you already have your page open for edit in CMS and have located your bullet's "img src=" tag...

Cut (CTRL+X) all of "a href=" tag that precedes your bullet's "img src=" tag.
Delete the closing "/a" tag that follows your bullet's "img src=" tag.
Paste (CTRL+V) the "a href=" tag you cut just before the text you want to make a navigation link.
Add the closing "/a" immediately at the end of the text you linked.
Save your page and view the changes.

You should now have a static bullet and a linked line of text.

To replace your decorative bullets with a more obvious button, see the last tutorial.

This concludes our tutorial on repairing the GeoCities-based images on your transferred sites.

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