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Here’s how it works: you “buy” one or more blocks of pixels, upload an image to be displayed in those blocks, add a “mouse-over” and a website or on-line photo album to link to, and you’re done. Now the whole world can see who you love! Plus, you can change your “pixel content” (image, text, and link) at any time, and as often as you like. Please take a few moments to read our TERMS AND CONDITIONS for more details about pixels, buying pixels, pixel content, etc. It’s a relatively short and painless read, but contains some very useful information that will help you make sense of the remainder of this document.
How Do I Purchase Pixels on LookWhoILove.com? When you’re ready to buy some pixels, click on “Buy Pixels” in the blue menu bar. This will take you to the login page. If you do not yet have a username and password, sign up for your free account by clicking on the link titled “Not registered? Click here to create an account for free”. This will take you to the Free Account Creation Form, which is self-explanatory. An email will be sent to you to verify your email address. You must open this email and click on the link before you will be able to log in for the first time.
Once you are back at the login page, log in using your username and password. You may see a “Logging in...” page briefly, and then you will be taken to the page where you can begin the pixel-buying process. (Note that after an extended period of inactivity, you may be required to log in again. This will help protect your account from unauthorized use, should you inadvertently leave yourself logged on to a computer accessible by others.)
Ordering pixels is a multi-part process, and you are not committed to buying any pixels until you actually click the “Pay” button at the end of the process. Here are the basic steps:
- First, select which Love Grid or Ad Grid you would like to purchase pixels on.
- When the selected grid appears on your screen, carefully follow the instructions for selecting the pixels you wish to buy. (Note that there are several “Selection Modes” to choose from.)
- After selecting your pixels, click the “Buy Selected Pixels” button.
- On the next screen you will see a table displaying details about your order, such as which category and grid you’re purchasing pixels from, pixel quantity, and price. Verify that the information is correct, then click the “Confirm Order” button to go to the next page.
- You will then be asked to select your payment method. Currently the only method of payment accepted is credit card, and payment will be made through the PayPal website; you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this, but if you have one you may use it. Click the PayPal “Click Here To Pay” logo to go to PayPal’s site.
- Enter the information requested by PayPal and click the “Continue Checkout” button to proceed; you are still not yet committed to buying these pixels until you click the “Pay” button on the next page.
- On the next page you will verify your payment and billing information; click the “Pay” button at the bottom of the page to send the payment to LookWhoILove.com. (The transaction will appear on your credit card statement as "Me & My Dad Internet Designs, LLC".)
- On the next page, click the “Continue” button.
What Can I Do With My Pixels? You will now be at the LookWhoILove.com Order History page for your account. The Status column (on the far right) for this order will say “completed”. To begin the process to submit your pixel content, click the “Manage” link under “completed”. On the next page, follow the instructions for selecting which of your pixel block(s) you wish to “manage” (i.e., submit pixel content for). This will take you to the page where you can specify what image to display in your pixel block(s) and the website or on-line photo album you want your pixel block(s) to link to (if any); this is also where you will create your mouse-over. These three things -- your image, link, and mouse-over -- constitute your “pixel content”. Each item is optional and will be discussed below.
Creating/Submitting an Image Any image you see on your computer screen is actually composed of many pixels – basically, tiny colored dots. For example, each of the letters you’re reading here is composed of many black dots; a “period” is a single black dot. Each of the pixel blocks you buy on LookWhoILove.com contains 100 pixels in a 10 by 10 square. While “100” may sound like a lot, remember that pixels are very small, and the fewer blocks you own, the more limited you will be with the type of image that can be displayed. (But your mouse-over can go a long way in making up for that, as we’ll discuss shortly.) However, you can still get creative with even a single 100-pixel block. The following are all 100-pixel images:
        
Of course, the more blocks you have to work with, the more you can do:
2 blocks (200 pixels):     
3 blocks (300 pixels):   
4 blocks (400 pixels):   
9 blocks (900 pixels): 
If you do not submit a new image, the current image (shown on the “Manage” page) will be used. You may submit any .jpg, .gif, or .png image you already have on your computer, or you may create a new image, or you may copy an image from a website to your computer and submit that. (There are many websites that offer free photos and images that you can copy to your computer, such as http://www.imageafter.com, http://www.morguefile.com/archive, and http://pixelperfectdigital.com/free_image_archive.) To create an image, you can use an image editor such as Paint, which can be found on any Windows computer. There are some basic tutorials available on the internet on how to run and use Paint, such as http://www.lkwdpl.org/classes/MSPaint/paint.html or http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/ahunt/MSPttutr.htm. Enlisting the help of an experienced friend is also a great idea. Please note that Paint usually saves drawings as “bitmap files” (.bmp), but this image type is not supported by LookWhoILove.com. When saving your image, select the “Save as type:” pull-down menu in the “Save” dialog window and select either .jpg or .gif. Of course, you can use any other image editor that you have access to.
If you submit an image that is too big or too small for the amount of pixels you have, LookWhoILove.com will automatically resize your image to make it fit. Keep in mind that your image may appear distorted if its basic shape is not the same as the pixel area you are putting it into, as its dimensions will be stretched or shrunk as necessary to make it fit. Once you've submitted your image, you will be able to see how it looks as soon as you return to the "Manage Pixels" page. If it didn't turn out as you wished, you can immediately submit a new image, or edit the first image to make it fit better and resubmit that one.
Once you've decided on an image to use, click the “Browse” button next to the box labeled “Specify Image to Upload”. Locate your image file and select it.
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Your “mouse-over” is where you can really get someone’s attention, without having to buy a large amount of pixel blocks. When someone hovers their mouse over your pixel block(s), a box will pop up on the screen displaying your mouse-over. For example, if you submit “I love LookWhoILove.com! Don’t you?!” as your mouse-over, it will look like this:
This shows the default settings for mouse-overs. However, this text can really be spruced up to catch the eye. This is done using HTML “tags”. Even if you’ve never used HTML before, you can do this! HTML tags are enclosed in “angle brackets” (< and >) and allow you to change font size and color, as well as style attributes such as bold, italics, etc. Here’s a simple example (with changes from the previous example in “bold” type):
<font size=4 color=red>I love LookWhoILove.com!</font><br><br>Don’t you?!
This will result in the following mouse-over:
In this example, the font size is set to 4 and the font color is set to red. (Note: Font size can also be specified using the “point-size” attribute, but it is not supported by all browsers; for example, Opera and Internet Explorer do not support it, while Firefox does.) The </font> tag is known as a “closing” tag, and resets the font attributes to the default settings. The “<br>” tags simply insert line breaks (similar to hitting "Enter" on your keyboard when you're typing a letter).
You can also change sizes, colors, styles, etc., many times in your mouse-over. Here’s an example:
<table bgcolor=yellow><td><font size=4>I <font color=blue><b><i>love</i></b> <font color=red>LookWhoILove.com<font color=black>!<br /><br /><font size=7>Don’t you?!</font></font></font></font></font></td></table>
This seemingly jumbled mess of characters will produce the following:
In this example, we’ve changed the font color from black to blue to red, and back to black again; we’ve made the word “love” bold italics (“<b>” turns bold on, “</b>” turns bold off; “<i>” and “</i>” are for italics); we’ve made the second paragraph larger than the first (“<font size=7>”; this is the largest font size unless you use the “point-size” attribute); and of course, we’ve made the background color yellow (“<table bgcolor=yellow>”). Notice there is a closing tag for each time we opened a new “font” tag.
Instead of specifying a color for your background, you can submit an image for your background. Unlike your main pixel image, which must come from your own computer, a mouse-over background image must come from a website, like so:
<table background="http://www.website-with-images.com/fire_background.gif"><font size=4>I <font color=blue><b><i>love</i></b> <font color=red>LookWhoILove.com<font color=black>!<br><br><font size=7>Don’t you?!</font></font></font></font></font></table>
Unlike your main pixel image, images used in mouse-overs will not be automatically resized. If you submit a background image that is bigger than the area covered by your mouse-over, only the upper left portion of your image, that actually fits the area, will be displayed. On the other hand, if the background image is smaller than the area, the image will be “tiled” to cover the available area. For example, if you submitted this:
as your background image, then this is how it would look:
One more thing you can do to really make your mouse-over stand out is add a photograph or an image, which would display on top of any background image. Again, images for mouse-overs must come from a website. Here’s our example with an image added and centered:
<table background="http://www.website-with-images.com/hearts_linked.jpg"><td align=center><font size=4>I <font color=blue><b><i>love</i></b> <font color=red>LookWhoILove.com<font color=black>!<br /><img src=http://www.website-with-images.com/heart3d.gif><br /><font size=7>Don’t you?!</font></font></font></font></font></td></table>
Using the “<img>” tag, you specify the website address of the image. That’s all there is to it. You can even submit an animated .gif image:
Please note that all images will be copied onto our servers for storage, so if the original image is changed or removed from its original location (in this example, the original image is located at the fictitious web address http://www.website-with-images.com/myheart.gif), it will not affect the image as you originally submitted it.
Even though images used for mouse-overs have to come from a website, you can still submit your own images simply by signing up for a free website or on-line photo album (discussed below) or a free image-hosting service (such as http://imageshack.us) and uploading your images to it.
As you enter your mouse-over content, you can see a live preview of what it will look like near the bottom of the page. Mouse-overs have a generous limit of 75,000 square pixels, approximately twice as much as the last example above. Size information is shown above the live preview so you always know where you stand, and you can make adjustments as necessary, such as changing to a smaller font size or deleting some text, or even increasing font size if you want to take advantage of the full amount of allowed space. If your mouse-over exceeds the limit, a status of “Invalid” will be displayed and the “Submit” button will be disabled until you reduce the size. Please note that the Netscape browser does not support the “live preview”. In this case you can still see a preview of your mouse-over by clicking the “Preview Mouse-Over” button. The preview will include the size information, but will not prevent you from submitting a mouse-over that exceeds the allowable limit. Be sure to verify that you are within the limit before submitting your pixel content, or approval of your pixel content will be delayed while we contact you to modify your mouse-over.
Sound files will not be approved for mouse-over content because of potential file-size and loading-time issues. Attempting to include sound files while entering your mouse-over content will also cause severe problems with the entry process because of the live preview.
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Here are some on-line resources to help you with creating your pixel content (LookWhoILove.com is not responsible for any content on external websites):
HTML tags:
http://www.fortunecity.com/help/development/html/tags.shtml
http://www.rollins.edu/it/blackboard/cheatsheet.htm (this one contains the 6-character codes that can be used to specify finer shades of color)
Making your own tile-able background image:
http://www.packrat-pro.com/backhowto.htm
Not all HTML tags found on these websites are supported or applicable to mouse-overs on LookWhoILove.com. Your best bet is to stick to the kinds of tags already discussed (relating to text and font attributes, formatting, alignment, images, etc.). If you don’t understand what a tag will do, you’re better off not trying to use it, as using an unsupported tag or one that doesn’t apply here may delay approval and publishing of your pixel content.
One note about “font faces” (Times New Roman, Arial, etc.): If you specify a font face, other people will only see your text in that font face if they have that particular font face installed on their computer; otherwise they will see your text in their default font face. So specifying an exotic font face may look really snazzy to you, but not everyone will be able to see it.
Setting Up a Free Website or On-line Photo Album When you submit your pixel content, you can include a link to your website or on-line photo album, so that when someone clicks on your pixel block(s), your website will open up in a new browser window. This would be a wonderful way to display a tribute to your loved one, photos of your loved one, or even photos of you and your loved one together. If you don’t have a website or on-line photo album, they are very easy to set up, and many sites offer them for free, including all the tools to help you put your site together. (They’re able to offer them for free because they display small ads on your web pages. They also offer paid plans without the ads, and these often also provide expanded storage space and services.) Here are just a few places that offer free websites and/or photo albums:
http://www.angelfire.com
http://geocities.yahoo.com
(if you already have a Yahoo! ID, you can use it to login and create your site)
http://www.tripod.com
http://www.50megs.com
Just visit one of these sites, sign up for a free account, create a page or photo album, upload some photos, and you’re ready to submit the link for your pixel block(s). Some sites may limit or restrict linking to images you upload to their site, so be sure to check out their Terms & Conditions and other usage policies. |
