Well, I’m another ‘web site newbie’ who just got a weather web page for the first time this month. I’ve searched through the forum and still haven’t found what I need to improve my website. For anyone that might be interested to see what little I’ve done so far, link to www.prattvilleweather.com. This display came from basically ‘ticking’ several options on the WD Control Panel/Web Site Configuration’s first two selections. I wanted to add some local radar pix, a local JPG, and, in general, make a better presentation, but I don’t understand the Custom Web Page tab, nor the wxlocal aspect. I really feel stupid! I’ve had my PWS on wunderground.com for several years but wanted my own personal web site. Any help out there with a basic explanation of what I need to do?
hi
Like you I am also a newbie at this weather website stuff. I had some great help from the forums here and also used the carterlake templates, Just the basic one not the PHP/Ajax ones, thats my next project. I have done most of the stuff by trial and error but it does what I want at the moment. I only started about a few weeks ago but the results can be seen at www.weybourneweather.co.uk
Good luck with your site
Phil
Setting up the WD PHP/Ajax templates is really not very hard.
I am in the process of testing a new webserver configuration and slapped on the template just to have something to put on it.
I’m not uploading everything it needs but in less than 20 minutes, starting from scratch (empty remote web directory), I had a site up.
this is temporary but gave me a chance to play with the setup.
Well, now I know I’m “web-site challenged.” I’ve spend several hours trying to use the carterlake templates, but no luck at all. I never know which changes to make in the php files nor which files to upload to my website and to what directory. My website does handle PHP files - that I did confirm. Just don’t know where to go next. I guess the default site I have will have to do. 
Daughn…The templates are almost self explanatory. Read all the comments included on each php page…they will tell you exactly what to do. Also read the entire thread
http://discourse.weather-watch.com/t/31168 and the *.txt files included in the download. When you get stuck post in that thread and someone will help you out. If you don’t try you’ll never know what you can accomplish. 
If you are just starting out with building websites don’t try to put things in different folders on your new site. Just throw it all into the root. If you don’t understand some of the terminology Google is your friend.
Another question. I have followed the instructions, but when I try to view a .php file on my web site, I get “Do you want to open or save this file?” If I say “open,” the question keeps repeating. I thought for sure that the iPower server supported the .php files, but am I mistaken??? :?
Whats the URL and I will try it here…
Copy this code into a php page (call it test.php or something like that) upload it to your webpage, then see what results you get.
<html>
<head>
<title>PHP test</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Does PHP work?</h1>
<?php echo "<h2>Yes, it does. PHP Version " . phpversion() ."</h2>";
echo "<p>To run the WXGRAPHIC script, you need GD enabled in PHP.\n";
echo "
Current GD status:</p>\n";
echo describeGDdyn();
// Retrieve information about the currently installed GD library
// script by phpnet at furp dot com (08-Dec-2004 06:59)
// from the PHP usernotes about gd_info
function describeGDdyn() {
echo "\n<ul><li>GD support: ";
if(function_exists("gd_info")){
echo "<font color=\"#00ff00\">yes</font>";
$info = gd_info();
$keys = array_keys($info);
for($i=0; $i<count($keys); $i++) {
if(is_bool($info[$keys[$i]])) echo "</li>\n<li>" . $keys[$i] .": " . yesNo($info[$keys[$i]]);
else echo "</li>\n<li>" . $keys[$i] .": " . $info[$keys[$i]];
}
} else { echo "<font color=\"#ff0000\">NO</font>"; }
echo "</li></ul>";
}
function yesNo($bool){
if($bool) return "<font color=\"#00ff00\"> yes</font>";
else return "<font color=\"#ff0000\"> no</font>";
}
?>
<p>If you don't see "Yes, it does." in large font above, then PHP is not enabled.</p>
</body>
</html>
Regards,
Jack
My url is: www.prattvilleweather.com. The test.php and the wxindex.php is under the default root of public_html/ (if that matters). I’m not sure how to test it, because I still come up with the same error message on test.php. NOTE: I haven’t changed the wxindex.php to index.php yet.
All seems fine to me using IE6: http://www.prattvilleweather.com/wxindex.php
All the pages are opening, there’s a bit of tweeking to be done but nothing major.
What pages are you trying to open and what addresses are you using?
Thanks!! Guess things were going better than I thought. I’ll now try to get a forecast to display, somehow.
Yep, looks ok here on the Mac running FF2.
I’ve trying to tweak my weather website, but am stumped on the “NWS forecast.” This is not the forecast for my location (it’s for Saratoga, California, not Prattville, Alabama). The NOAA zone for where I’m at is ALZ041, which I have put in the settings file. Is there something else I need to change, or another location where I need to change the NOAA zone? Also, while I’m asking, what might be the problem with the “We’re sorry, but the WXSIM forecast is not currently available”?
My weather website can be seen at: www.prattvilleweather.com/wxindex.php
Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks to those who have already answered some of my questions - I’m slowly learning!!
Open up your advforecast2.php and fix these lines…(then re-upload it)
$NOAAZone = 'CTZ010'; // change this line to your NOAA warning zone.
// set $fileName to the URL for the point-printable forecast for your area
$fileName = "http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?CityName=Branford&state=CT&site=OKX&textField1=41.28&textField2=-72.81&e=1&TextType=2";//
$iconDir = './forecast/images/';
WXSIM is a seperate weather forecasting program, since you do not have it the page shows it is not available. You are making great progress keep up the good work and don’t be afraid to ask more questions!
Regards,
Jack
Jack,
Tried your suggestion, but still have the California forecast. I’ll sleep on it and try again tomorrow.
Friday morning - I have the correct forecast. Thanks for the help. I’m sure I’ll have some more as I tweak the site.
Another question. I wanted to put something on the weather site that showed my first name. When I tried to edit settings.php and change the “USA Weather Website with WD/PHP and AJAX” to include my first name, the page would not display. Is there another place I could put my first name (just so my friends would recognize where the current conditions were coming from)?
A second question: when I rename wxindex.php to index.php, my web site won’t display by simply using www.prattvilleweather.com like with the old basic web page, even though I renamed the old index.htm so it wouldn’t conflict. How do I get the index.php to display when I just use www.prattvilleweather.com? It works ok if I use www.prattvilleweather.com/index.php.
Unless you have a subfolder on your site just for weather all browsers will take the “index.htm or html” page as the first page to show unless they are absent entirely in which case the “index.php” will be the default. You will need to rename the WD default uploaded page to something like WDisplay.htm or whatever you used within WD when setting that page up. Then you will need to rename wxindex.php to index.php and the AJAXed/PHPed first page will be the default. Pages within a site must be accessed with http://nameofthesite.com followed by a forward slash and the name and extension of the page. I’m not trying to generate hits here but just for instance my old original page is http://www.luvretirement.com (this one is named index.html) If the weather part is what you want to see it would be http://www.luvretirement.com/wx/wxindex.php (this one is in a subfolder named wx) or http://www.luvretirement.com/indexdash.php (this one is in the root)
Change the text between ( ) to be the name you want without the parentheses
I found the priority list of default site pages. Index.htm was the top and Index.php was mid-down the list. Although Home.htm was one of the top, I renamed it just to see what would happen. Also, I renamed the Index.htm file. However, on the next data update (have it set to 5 minutes), the Index.htm was back. So I went to the “Web Files Setup #1” tab on “Web Files/Web Page Setup” WD page and changed the Web Table/HTML area to tick the “use .php extension.” This didn’t seem to cure the problem completely. When I use www.prattvilleweather.com to access my new page, I got my old basic page. If I use www.prattvilleweather.com/wxindex.php I do get my new page. What do I need to do to allow the basic “.com” only link to access my new page (obviously, it would have to be index.php?).
Do I need to actually change the “Web Station File Name” in WD to something other than “index”? If so, doesn’t the .php file get uploaded as the same name but with a .php extension? I haven’t tried that yet as you suggested, but didn’t see how the site would execute some other named file not on their list. I guess I’m missing something.