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All Forums >> Web Design >> Site Critiques >> New site help?

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Mean Gene Posts: 11 Joined: 4/16/2004 Status: offline	New site help? - 4/16/2004 21:17:08 Might have posted this in the wrong slot at first. Hey there. I'm trying out my first website building project and was wondering if someone here could check it out and give me an evaluation? I need to know how to get the search engines to recognize it so if I've not done something right (imagine that) please let me know and perhaps how to fix things? I really have no clue as to what I'm doing so any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated. It's not done by any means but I'll keep plugging away until I get it to where I want it. Thanks Gene http://www.sisqbluegrass.com/


leatherlips Posts: 248 From: USA Status: offline	RE: New site help? - 4/16/2004 22:58:25 Hello. I like what your site is about. Music is a big part of my life, hence the treble clef sign as my "avitar". There are a couple of suggestions I will make to start with. The first being that many of your pictures are too large. You need to optimize them to be at a smaller file size. For example, your picture on the Bluegrass Bands page is over 683kb! That's huge! You could easily get that down to around 15 to 20kb. Secondly, I would like to see the navigation more at the top or left side. Currently it is at the bottom of the page. I have to scroll down to find it. Many visitors to websites won't scroll to the bottom. New visitors may not even know you have the navigation down there, especially if they have a 15 inch monitor set at 800x600. I have a 17 monitor set at 1024x768 and I still have to scroll toward the bottom to see it. You should also know that your site does not look the same in other browsers. In Mozilla and NN, your backgrounds are gone, the pages are simply white. Opera is doing some funky things like putting your navigation buttons over your content. Keep an open mind and don't get offended easily. This forum is really a great place to learn. I've posted a few sites to be evaluated on here and have always gotten solid advice. Keep up the good work and keep learning. (in reply to Mean Gene)


Mean Gene Posts: 11 Joined: 4/16/2004 Status: offline	RE: New site help? - 4/16/2004 23:52:51 I'm asking so I can learn for sure. I'm using FrontPage 2003...how can I optimmize the pictures and reduce the size? I was kind of wondering about the navigation...I'll check that out too. (in reply to leatherlips)


jaybee Posts: 14175 Joined: 10/7/2003 From: Berkshire, UK Status: offline	RE: New site help? - 4/17/2004 2:01:09 That's one of the problems with this bit of the forums. We can all sound really negative but it's not meant that way. We really are trying to help. In Mozilla firefox no background I'm afraid so it looks a bit bland and yes, sort out those pics. As far as the engines go, you've got a good start, metas in place and content on the page. Just make sure your keywords appear in your content. I would also have no more than 4 occurrences of the same word in the keywords. You use bluegrass up there a lot, it might get you penalised. take the extra space out of the bluegrass music keyword. I would also suggest putting your javascript in external files so that the engines get straight to the content. Most of them only look a the first 500. Put alt text on your pictures and your logo. Gives you extra occurrences of your keyword without spamming. _____________________________ If it ain't broke..... fix it until it is. GAWDS Now where did I put that Doctype? (in reply to Mean Gene)


d a v e Posts: 4137 Joined: 7/24/2002 From: England (but live in Finland now) Status: offline	RE: New site help? - 4/17/2004 4:16:13 header word art looks old and naff :) nice background _____________________________ David Prescott Gekko web design (in reply to jaybee)


jaybee Posts: 14175 Joined: 10/7/2003 From: Berkshire, UK Status: offline	RE: New site help? - 4/17/2004 6:22:16 How about this? If you want it mail me and I'll send you a transparent gif version. Thumbnail Image Attachment (1) < Message edited by jaybee -- 4/17/2004 11:22:28 > _____________________________ If it ain't broke..... fix it until it is. GAWDS Now where did I put that Doctype? (in reply to d a v e)


Mean Gene Posts: 11 Joined: 4/16/2004 Status: offline	RE: New site help? - 4/17/2004 10:02:01 Thanks for all the comments. I'm not taking offense to anything so PLEASE keep talking. jaybee, I sent you an e-mail regarding the transparrent .gif...thank you. I'll go rework the keyword tags for each page too. Here's a picture question...There are pictures I would like to use but they are large in kb's. I have a resizing utility on this computer that will resize a picture, however, when I resize the picture and try to insert it the program says it doesn't support it. The file extention hasn't changed...still.jpg....but I can't use it. Any ideas? Javascript...how do I place it in external folders? Hey Dave, as soon as jaybee e-mails me that transparent gif I'll change the wordart on the home page....what he made looks much better. I don't have access to any of the browsers that you guys say make the site look different. How do you make sure the site looks OK on many different browsers or is that even possible? Once again, thanks for the help and I'm not offended by any comments just encouraged to try and make it better. Gene (in reply to jaybee)


leatherlips Posts: 248 From: USA Status: offline	RE: New site help? - 4/17/2004 10:02:20 I just checked a few of your pictures and it appears that you resized them in FrontPage. What I mean is, you had a large picture and then shrunk it down to fit the way you wanted. You should also now resample the picture. Click on your picture and then hit the Resample button on the graphic toolbar. It looks like a picture with an arrow pointing in at each corner. I also noticed that some of your photos are in gif format rather than jpg. Usually photographs are best viewed as jpg and graphics are best saved as gif. The best way to optimize photos is with a graphics program. If you don't have one, you can download a free one called IrfanView. It can do pretty many things such as resizing and optimizing your pictures. Since it is free, it wouldn't hurt to try it out. Regarding looking at your site in other browsers, you can simply download them and install them on your computer. The three you should download are Netscape Navigator, Mozilla, and Opera. They are all free. Opera has the option to buy it or use the free version with ads. I just use the free one. < Message edited by leatherlips -- 4/17/2004 10:09:23 > (in reply to d a v e)


jaybee Posts: 14175 Joined: 10/7/2003 From: Berkshire, UK Status: offline	RE: New site help? - 4/17/2004 11:07:42 HE! HE!!!! Here we go again. I'm female!!!! Honest! Javascript: take all the code and put paste it into notepad (not including the <script> </script> bits, just delete those) save the resulting text file as xxxxxxxxx.js and put it in your root directory change the line in your program to call the script: <script type="text/javascript" src="xxxxxxxxx.js"></script> put this between the head tags I'll mail you the gif later, want to fiddle with it a bit first as it brings up a white shadow on your background. _____________________________ If it ain't broke..... fix it until it is. GAWDS Now where did I put that Doctype? (in reply to leatherlips)


jaybee Posts: 14175 Joined: 10/7/2003 From: Berkshire, UK Status: offline	RE: New site help? - 4/17/2004 11:44:59 Gif on its way. I swiped your background from the site so hopefully it should merge seamlessly. [edit] no it isn't, it bounced. Was that mail address correct? Sent again to your other address and a different version as well. If these arrive fuzzy let me know, I've had problems emailing gifs before. < Message edited by jaybee -- 4/17/2004 17:06:26 > _____________________________ If it ain't broke..... fix it until it is. GAWDS Now where did I put that Doctype? (in reply to jaybee)


Mean Gene Posts: 11 Joined: 4/16/2004 Status: offline	RE: New site help? - 4/17/2004 12:20:43 It got to the snowcrest address. I sent you a reply as I'm getting an error message when trying to insert the picture. I got the same message when I took a picture, resized it and tried to insert it. I included the error message in the e-mail. Thanks. Gene (in reply to jaybee)


jaybee Posts: 14175 Joined: 10/7/2003 From: Berkshire, UK Status: offline	RE: New site help? - 4/17/2004 19:42:16 It's your file names. You're putting #s in and FP doesn't like it. _____________________________ If it ain't broke..... fix it until it is. GAWDS Now where did I put that Doctype? (in reply to Mean Gene)


Mean Gene Posts: 11 Joined: 4/16/2004 Status: offline	RE: New site help? - 4/17/2004 21:05:45 Thanks jaybee! I changed the file name and removed the #'s and it worked. I'll remember that...no numbers. (in reply to jaybee)


jaybee Posts: 14175 Joined: 10/7/2003 From: Berkshire, UK Status: offline	RE: New site help? - 4/18/2004 7:37:05 You're welcome _____________________________ If it ain't broke..... fix it until it is. GAWDS Now where did I put that Doctype? (in reply to Mean Gene)

ApexWeb

Posts: 139
Joined: 6/27/2003
From: Flower Mound, Texas
Status: offline

RE: New site help? - 4/19/2004 7:09:43

Gene,

The basic need is to select key phrases that will work for your site and the kinds of visitors you want, and to optimize on those key phrases. In other words, the key phrases need to show up more. You need more text content.

You have some text content on your page, but it's all pushed to the bottom by all the JavaScript. Put the JavaScript in an external file, and put the key phrases you want to 'target' (shoot for) in search engines near the top of the page mostly, and again near the bottom.

There are a lot of excess

<p>nbsp;</p>

codes in there. You could use a

style="margin-top:300px"

or something like that in one of the codes, to avoid all those extra paragraphs. This fix is lower priority, but make it easy on the search engine spiders (bots) to find the optimized text.

< Message edited by ApexWeb -- 4/19/2004 7:16:35 >

_____________________________

Stephen Walker
Apex Web Solutions

(in reply to jaybee)


Giomanach Posts: 6112 Joined: 11/19/2003 From: England Status: offline	RE: New site help? - 4/19/2004 7:13:33 quote: HE! HE!!!! Here we go again. I'm female!!!! Honest! I can vouch for that Either I can't see it, or it's not there - Times New Roman, don't use it. Try Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, Sans-serif for fonts, much clearer on web pages. Dan _____________________________ (in reply to ApexWeb)


jaybee Posts: 14175 Joined: 10/7/2003 From: Berkshire, UK Status: offline	RE: New site help? - 4/19/2004 7:37:11 quote: ORIGINAL: Giomanach quote: HE! HE!!!! Here we go again. I'm female!!!! Honest! I can vouch for that Errrrr would you mind rewording that. People might get the wrong idea! I know I would _____________________________ If it ain't broke..... fix it until it is. GAWDS Now where did I put that Doctype? (in reply to Giomanach)


Giomanach Posts: 6112 Joined: 11/19/2003 From: England Status: offline	RE: New site help? - 4/19/2004 7:40:23 OK, how would you like me to rephrase it, it's not like I can just run down the road Lemme try She's a woman, her voice is a dead give away _____________________________ (in reply to jaybee)


jaybee Posts: 14175 Joined: 10/7/2003 From: Berkshire, UK Status: offline	RE: New site help? - 4/19/2004 7:49:40 That's better _____________________________ If it ain't broke..... fix it until it is. GAWDS Now where did I put that Doctype? (in reply to Giomanach)


Giomanach Posts: 6112 Joined: 11/19/2003 From: England Status: offline	RE: New site help? - 4/19/2004 7:50:32 Next time I'll say: Milady is female good sirs _____________________________ (in reply to jaybee)

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