Kalispell International Folk Dancers











Cris created www.montanafolkdance.org and I added the KIFD site in 2006 as a college project. Cris Critiqued it.

June 16, 2013, after seven years, a whole new web site. All PHP now and better use of CSS.

November 14, 2013, I have gone back to 2005 and redone them all, added pictures and links along the way. Redid the Links section, Redid the Photo Gallery, started this geeky page.

I give a lot of credit to many people on the internet that have posted tutorials and assistance to those who need to know how to do something. What follows is the source code for this web site. This web page also, like the reworking of the dance reports, is not complete as I have plans to put in a lot more content. For example I want to have a page devoted to all the workshops many of our group have attended over the years that will include all the dances we learned in them. Check back from time to time to have a look.

For now -November 14, 2013, I have reached a point where I just want to give all this a rest for a while.

What does PHP and CSS mean? Where to start?

Nice intro to PHP

Save a lot of work with CSS

How to Create a PHP Website Template from Scratch by Kevin Stanley

How to display code?

The tried and true method for HTML:
    Replace the & character with &
    Replace the < character with &lt;
    Replace the > character with &gt;
    Replace the space 	    with &#126; 
    Replace the $ character with &#36;
    Replace the ? character with &#63;
    Replace the ^ character with &#94;

UTF-8 Latin Extended A
Upper case C^  &Ccaron;
Lower case c^  &ccaron;
Upper case S^  &Scaron;
Lower case s^  &scaron;
Upper case Z^  &Zcaron;
Lower case z^  &zcaron;






<div id="back"><a href="#" onclick="history.go(-1)">Back</a></div>

and this is what the CSS entry looks like for Back:


#back {
display:inline;
background-color:#5b8484;
border:1px solid;
border-color:#f3f3f3 #bbb #bbb #f3f3f3;
float:left;
padding:8px;
}

Embeded audo player

<audio src="path and name of wav file" controls>
	<embed 
	src="path and name of wav file"
	width="300"
	height="90"
	loop="false"
	autostart="false" />
</audio>

Counting to 10 in Romanian

Importing text into web page


<?php
$lines = file('.txt');
foreach ($lines as $line_num => $line) {
     echo "" . htmlspecialchars($line) . "<br />\n";}

?>

Now a note about video. I have taken my video camera to many folk dance events and I have boxes of VHS video tape to prove it. I would point it in the right direction, turn it on and start recording. Two hours later I would pop in another tape. After the event I would edit the tapes down by playing the master tape and recored on another machine just what I wanted. I cut out waiting around or dances that were not done well or by someone standing in front of the camera. Then I would make copies of the edited tape to my friends. Watching video of a dance along with dance notes/ sylibus, I could brush up on a dance I was forgetting or in some cases learn a dance. After a while I got a DVD recorder and burned the Edited video tapes to DVD. YouTube will let you upload video and link it to your web page, and I have done this for a select few folk dances - SEE Schioapa. I want to do a lot more. I have a Windows 7 operating system, and what comes with it is Movie Maker. It isn't a bad editor at all, it only needs the right format to make it work.

Here is the key. Most all of the VHS tapes have been burned to DVD. I needed to convert the .MOV extention that my DVD burner used into a .WMV, to do that I use Any Video Converter (http://www.any-video-converter.com/) It's "free" but for the love of Mike, the developer deserves to be recognized with a tangible acknowledgement! Buy it if you use is a lot, it costs less than fourty bucks. It quickly does the conversion from MOV to WMV. I edit with Movie Maker, named and saved the clip as a .MP4, and uploaded it to YouTube.

I am not promoting or getting paid to advertise this video converter. In the past I have tried a few others and ended up with malware of one sort or another. This one downloaded, installed and worked perfectly; no fuss no muss.

I am not sure how to go about presenting all the dances. I don't see the need to duplicate a dance that is done well and is the same version of dance our folk dance group does. I would just need to link them. There are a few dances I know are not out there, Like Vodarki Oro

tables, what is the difference between ol and ul and what happens to li when used in either one?

  1. cat
  2. dog
cat
dog
      cat
      dog
cat Feline Bur Bur
dog Canine Nakita

Now, on to The Future of this Site!

From Cris:

First, if you are interested, I think you should copy your site over to http://www.montanafolkdance.org/flathead/ .  
My plan all along has been for the sub-sections (the "region" directories) of the site to be maintainable separately.  
I'll set you up with an FTP account to upload to that directory. Unfortunately, FTP isn't working correctly right now, 
so I have to talk to the guy who runs my hosting.  I'll let you know. (If he gets it all working like it's supposed 
to, it will also be accessible via the url flathead.montanafolkdance.org . It isn't at the moment.)

I've been wanting, for quite some time, to make montanafolkdance.org much more content-rich than it is. (Ever 
since Rebecca started her thesis back in Fall of '04, I haven't been able to commit anywhere near the time I 
want to the site.)  I know from viewing the server logs that the main way people find our site is by searching for 
dance names. Without intending to duplicate the great efforts of Bob Shapiro, Dick Oakes, and many others, I think 
we could provide a valuable dance resource. 

In particular, I want to have a database of dances -- dance names, song names, dance instructions, albums, 
artists -- that would be searchable, allow registered members to add their own notes, and allow guests to add 
comments. Dances could be categorized on the fly by country, by formation, etc.   If done correctly, the 
database elements could also be linked from the dance report lists you post, or used to construct a "repertoire" 
for any given group ("dances done by Bozeman") -- or even (ambitiously) the dance report could be constructed 
using the db.

I want to make sure the db design is solid, so it's still a ways off, but if I can get this together, I would 
benefit greatly from your input and (if you're up for it) your data-entry devotion.  I know we have bundles of 
printed information on many dances that just aren't out there on the web right now.