| LED Digest 1986: Struggling Web Designers |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest post, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. June 23, 2005 Issue #1986 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== The False Economy of DIY ==-- ~ Michael Linehan "I still fundamentally don't get those mindsets!" ~ Bill Davison "...there is a market for small struggling entrepreneurs and web designers..." --== Site Design Theft ==-- ~ Michael Martinez "...it's best to complain to their Web Hosting ISP." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Frontpage Links ==-- ~ Stephen Mareches ~ Bob Gladstein ~ John Barendrecht ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Michael Linehan Subject: False economy > ... many small business don't always have the $1000 > to pay the web designer and are only trying to be honest > and not stiff you on a bill they can't pay. - R. Neilson, LED 1985 Hi R, I wasn't clear. You're absolutely right --- there are MANY people who cannot afford $1,000. But I was talking about someone with 5 successful retail stores ending up paying me as much as he would have anyone PLUS about twenty times as much in software, employee wages and his own time. I'm talking about one business owner who spends $1,000 every month on colour brochures plus more for distribution, and then wanted a world-reaching site for a one-time few hundred dollars. And then there's the people who pay for beautiful, professional printed material, but who somehow think a home-made site is appropriate for that same business! After many years doing this, I still fundamentally don't get those mindsets! I do often find that the comparison with the quality and cost of their printed material can help a business owner move out of that false economy. Michael Linehan www.marketing-alchemy.com -------- new post - same topic ------- From: Bill Davison Subject: False economy The economy where I live is the poorest in Florida and 17th poorest county in the nation. Yet there are businesses here that want and do have websites. While most subscribers to this newsletter have stated they would be insulted if asked to design anything less than the multi-thousands - there is a market for small struggling entrepreneurs and web designers who will serve their needs. Therefore, it was encouraging to hear from someone who has learned more work is more profitable than more bragging. Thanks! Bill Davison bizwebpage.com -------- new post - new topic ------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: Design theft > ... I have an interesting case of a site I have designed > being completely ripped off. - Andy Kale, LED 1982 When the thief refuses to respond to emails and messages, it's best to complain to their Web Hosting ISP. Usually, if you can prove the theft (such as the original links still being found in the pages), the ISPs remove the sites. In these situations, it is best NOT to share everything you know about their mistakes with the thieves. That way, if they refuse to cooperate, you have less trouble proving their theft to their ISPs. I have been through this experience more than once myself. Michael Martinez http://www.michael-martinez.com/ ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Stephen Mareches Subject: Frontpage links > Does using the Frontpage themes, which creates the hyperlinks, > result in hyperlinks that search engines can't spider or can't see? - Andy Fuhr, LED 1985 Andy, The Sunflower theme you chose took me back. That was the theme I chose for the first site I built! You're on the right track about the FrontPage themes, the hyperlinks are written in JavaScript which isn't indexed by the search engines (Thank God, or we'd get a lot of programming language results in our searches!) We've eliminated any JavaScript navigation from the sites we build for that reason, although they can certainly be cool for the user. Sites that derive traffic other than search engines may not need to worry about this, but if you're looking for good search engine rankings use regular hyperlinks, and if you include informative text in the link, so much the better. You do however have regular hyperlinks to your pages at the bottom of your home page, and in time these should get your spider buddies interested. You could help them out by putting links in the main portion of your sites pages, which will serve your navigation to them without having to wade through the script in your pages. You could include some informative info in your links such as "Enjoyable things you can do while on Sanibel and Captiva Island". You might well wish to include where your resort is located, from your content we know it's on the Gulf of Mexico, but if your visitor is not familiar with the islands, she won't know where you are located. Stephen Mareches, Web Consultant Sophia Solutions www.sophiasolutions.net ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Bob Gladstein Subject: Frontpage links Spiders probably don't read the code for the links in your hover buttons (the navigation menu on the left) because the links are nested in JavaScript. The links work even with JS disabled, but the spiders are probably just skipping the code that contains those links. However, you have text links at the foot of all of your pages, and those won't be a problem for spiders at all. It's probably just a matter of time before they crawl the rest of the site. Bob Gladstein Raise My Rank Services ------- new post - same topic ------- From: John Barendrecht Subject: Frontpage links Google doesn't discriminate against FrontPage themes. My statistics program tracks spiders. This site has around 300 pages. Here are the spider visits for the first 20 days of June: Google search engine - 2362 visits and 5169 pages "viewed" Yahoo search engine - 3349 visits and 4447 pages "viewed" I first thought there must be something wrong, they can't visit each page more than once a day. However, Google has multiple data centers and each seems to send out it's own bot. Add the fact that we do quite well in Google Europe and Asia and you have a lot of Google bots. Check your hits to robots.txt. If you use themes correctly, you get no extra code or tags and probably have better, more compliant code than 80% of the people who hand code. Plus if you use it to check internal and external links, browser compatibility, accessibility, etc. and you have one powerful program. Most "theme" stuff is implemented via css. FrontPage can also remove all comments, theme tags, webbot tags, ProgID, unused tags and elements, etc. so your code is lean and mean. I know people like to knock FrontPage but I have visited their sites and see there nicely css formatted sites have the menu appear as text links below the body text and have missing graphics, etc. Just because a lot of beginners use both FrontPage and Dreamweaver incorrectly and have horrible html, does not mean the programs are bad. It's like a hammer, do you blame it for hitting the wrong nail? Before you comment on my html, I know it is not perfect but I blame myself not FP. Whether you use FP with themes, css, xml or templates, the spiders do not discriminate. Best regards, John Barendrecht http://www.iefit.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains © Copyright 1995-2005 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they find laughable." - Anon. |
