Take a peek! (Full Version)

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ajacobs -> Take a peek! (3/19/2001 22:59:00)

Be brutal, tell me what you think. Currently the chatroom and the message board are through outside services and soon I will be figuring out how to do them myself. I have a live cam and a few other things.

www.sawyercreek.com




barusiec -> RE: Take a peek! (3/20/2001 20:33:00)

Man! That site must have taken you years to complete! It's huge!

I looked at it in IE and NN and everything looks and worked fine.

I like the layout. I, um, hate the background. I've never been a fan of buys, repeating backrounds unless it's simple texture of some kind. I suggest fixing the background image in place and having the text scroll over it. However, some people are annoyed by that as well.

Be careful of frames in older browswers- make sure you have an alternate site or messge available.

Finally, be leary of the FP Hover Buttons. I hear, and have experienced (not on your site) that they are less than reliable. There are other ways to create hover buttons that are more reliable. Visit http://www.builder.com/Programming/Kahn/012898/toolmom.html for a good tool for doing this.

All that being said, the layout is superb!

HTH

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Bruce

Drink containers are on the right.Right and drink have five letters.




turboguy -> RE: Take a peek! (3/20/2001 20:35:00)

Hi,
Well I think you have a very well done and interesting site. The barn cam was neat. Someone over in the graphics section has been asking about doing that. If you have some spare time, I am sure he would enjoy any info you could give him.
As far as negatives. You will get a lot of people here tell you that it is not good to use frames. It is not really that big a deal as long as you are not concerned about getting a good position with the search engines.
The only other suggestions I will make is that you do not have a description in your meta tags. This is important with some of the search engines, and with some of the search enines is what shows up to give people a reason to visit your site. You should also do alternate descriptions on your graphics.
All in all you have a great site. good work.

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Love is grand, Divorce is one hundred grand!




ajacobs -> RE: Take a peek! (3/20/2001 20:06:00)

Thanks for the input, I am fairly unfamiliar with using the meta tags and extra for search function. We have done the advertising for the site in print media etc. I will try and fix it though. Thanks for that site, I have had hover button problems in the past. I have been using the search function for some time here as a lurker looking for ways to improve the site. I will go one over to graffics and see if I can help the guy with his cam. Aaron



turboguy -> RE: Take a peek! (3/20/2001 20:36:00)

Hello Again,
Bruce is right about the hover buttons, It was late and you had such a neat site that I missed them. Hover buttons do not work in Netscape, they are graphics hogs, and can ocassionally cause a computer to crash. The recomondation Bruce made seems to be the one every one here raves about.
Meta tags are easy. The is a lot of conversation about the search engines using them less and less, but you might as well get all the traffic you can. There are three. "Title" should be short, different for each page, and tell what the page is about. "Description" Should also be different for each page, It should be a little longer, it should use some of your major keywords (that is also good in title) and should describe your site. With a lot of search engines this is what the searcher will see besides the url. The third one is "keywords". This should be words or phrases that people would type into a search engine to find your site, prefferably they should be separated by commas, without spaces and unneccessary capitals. Have around 10 keywords, you can have more or less though. While you are on this page, go up to "veiw" in your browser, click, and then click source. Take a look at how Thomas has done his meta tags. They are as good as you will find. Hope this helps. If you need to know how to put them in, ask and I can go over that. Good Luck



Goober -> RE: Take a peek! (3/21/2001 20:30:00)

Hi!

The horses are beautiful! You've got a great site going. I especially like the barn cam.

The others have hit on the things that most need changing.

First, those hover buttons: The reason they cause so much problem is that they are Java applets. They require a lot of RAM to load and some of us just can't handle it, especially if we have a couple of browsers open, maybe another program, etc. Yes, my browser crashed. And I was using NN this time, but it has also happened to me in IE.

Frames have problems, too. Let me just refer you to this article so you can see the pitfalls and also check whether or not you have used them correctly: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9612.html

I think your header would look better if it was a little smaller and maybe a drop shadow applied to give it a little depth.

Ditto the earlier comment on the backgrounds. They are distracting and make the text hard to read.

You have lots of good content!

Best wishes,
Sandy

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www.alleghenyweb.com




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