| LED Digest 1835: The Clean Code Coda |
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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 adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ................................................ July 8, 2004 Issue #1835 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Site Redesign Blues ==-- ~ Leon Simmons "You should be able to make these changes yourself quite easily..." ~ Richard Dudley "SEs don't like poorly coded sites, which can be created in [any editor]..." ~ Helen Estlin "There is no substitute for clean, rigourously-validated coding..." --== Using Affiliate Services ==-- ~ Steve Pronger "I once joined an affiliate program for a US based hosting company..." --== The End of Email as You Know It? ==-- ~ Kathy Wilson Anderson "I'm at my limit for toolbars, as I suspect are many of the other 44% who are using 17" monitors." ~ Theresa Mesa "USians can forward their spam to This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it " ~ Daniel Lance Herrick "A lot of the stuff clogging our mailboxes are viruses and worms trying to propogate themselves." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Page Layout ==-- ~ Tom Anson --== Email & Browser Alternatives to MS ==-- ~ Richard Graham ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Leon Simmons Subject: Redesign blues > I recently hired a company to re-design my site... the > new designers plugged in a bunch of words at the bottom > of the page and made them the same color as the > background... Now I am in a bind... - Chuck Hiatt, LED 1831 (1) A makeover web design with different text, title, description etc, will always affect your website's position on the search engines. It will take weeks or months to see the new search results. (2) Keying in your URL into the search box of Google does, in fact, produce a result for your site but there is much more detail on Alexa which provides additional information. (3) The hidden keyword stuffed phrases at the foot of the page risk having your site penalised by search engines. You should repeat the description and title in the opening page of your site and you should construct paragraphs that are coherent and informative and visible to the reader -- the search engines will 'capture' the text and may assist a punter to discover your site by using a common search term relevant to the products you are selling. (4) The keywords are not so important as the title and the description but should still be included. (5) Exchange links with similar companies and in due course you will get a better Google page ranking. (6) You should be able to make these changes yourself quite easily. (7) Sit back and keep your fingers crossed! Leon Simmons info, lookit-up.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Richard Dudley Subject: Redesign blues > The search engines do not like Front Page > designed sites either... - Helen Estlin, LED 1833 Baloney. SEs don't like poorly coded sites, which can be created in FP, Dreamweaver, and even Notepad. I have several sites created in FrontPage that dominate the rankings for the target keywords, and a few more on the rise. Richard Dudley www.bloomeryweddings.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Helen Estlin Subject: Redesign blues I should have clarified my comment about the Search Engines "not liking" FrontPage sites. One of the problems with Front Page is that is throws a lot of unnecessary proprietary code (aka bloated code), meaning that the spiders such as Googlebot must wade through it to get to the viable text. This can be an even more important issue than using external JavaScript files (which we highly recommend). The spiders have their limits as to how much code they will tolerate per page. There is no substitute for clean, rigourously-validated coding as the basic foundation for a professional SEO programme. Once this is achieved, the professional Optimizer can (and should) move on to all the other essentials that will help make the site a success. Our motto (one of them, anyway) is: Make that website spider-friendly and human-friendly! It may sound simple enough, but there is plenty involved in the process - if it is to be done right! Best regards from Canada, Helen Estlin www.yellowdawg.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Steve Pronger Subject: Affiliates > My next question is how do I handle my overseas affiliates? > Do I send them a 1099? Their systems of taxation is very > different from ours. They don't have social security numbers. - Mary Lee LED 1834 A very good question Mary. Speaking as a non-US affiliate... I once joined an affiliate program for a US based hosting company. The hoops they expected me to jump through in order to be paid were incredible. They included obtaining forms from the IRS, after trying to determine exactly which form I needed (there were dozens listed on their website) and mailing those forms along with photo IDs signed by witnesses etc etc. I gave up. They still owe me 300 bucks. Google's AdSense, and most other affiliate programs I participate in have no such qualms. As long as you are not a US citizen you simply fill out an online declaration and they will send you the payment regardless of the amount. No forms, no social security numbers etc. If it's good enough for Google it should be good enough for everyone else. Steve Pronger http://www.stevepronger.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Kathy Wilson Anderson Subject: End of Email > ... this toolbar idea is a non-starter in many people's book. > The screen real estate I own is much too valuable to allow > someone to steal a whole row just to get a single service. - Dave Starr, LED 1832 In this ongoing post, Kathryn Martyn had the following to say: > You say your screen real estate is too valuable but mine isn't. > I use a 19" monitor, and I've got plenty of space for toolbars. > Sure some people won't / can't use it, but many can. This sparked my curiosity, so I checked the statistics on several of my client's websites and found that 44.43% of their visitors used 800x600 monitors (17") while 40.67% used 1024x768 monitors. I still use an 800x600 for my work and will continue to do so until I find that the percentage has dropped substantially. On my 17" monitor, I have the status bar, standard buttons, and address bar, in addition to the Google toolbar. This whittles my screen real estate down to approximately 2/3 of the total monitor. I have, on occasion, needed to turn off the Google toolbar so that I might view certain web pages. I'm at my limit for toolbars, as I suspect are many of the other 44% who are using 17" monitors. Love, Kathy Wilson Anderson http://www.under-one-roof.net ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Theresa Mesa Subject: Email demise > With a service that doesn't manually verify every report, you > can get false positives. For a lot of people it is easier to report > to Spamcop then to unsubscribe, even if it was a double > opt-in mailing list. - John Barendrecht, LED 1807 USians can forward their spam to This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it , although all they do is act as a receptacle that regurgitates for whatever law enforcement agencies that are investigating something. In other words, pretty useless. Theresa Mesa Mesa Design House www.mesadesignhouse.com webmaster, mesadesignhouse.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Daniel Lance Herrick Subject: ICANN failure > Therefore, I say again, there will be no end to the spam > problem until there is a legal enforcement agency with > teeth who is willing and able to put these low-lifes in jail > and leave them to rot. - Bill Davison, LED 1751 A lot of the stuff clogging our mailboxes is outlook viruses and worms trying to propogate themselves. The fixes for that are more complicated. However, for a piece of Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail to be worth the trouble of sending, there must be a way to get back to the advertiser in order to spend money. Often that way is a web site. The web site has an IP address ("nslookup domainname" at the command prompt is one way to learn the IP address). There are registries from whom the ISPs obtain the IP addresses. If the IP address came from ARIN, go to http://www.arin.net/whois/ and do a search for the IP address. There you can get contact information for the hosting company hosting the web site. Complain to their abuse e-mail address and the web site will likely be shut down. RIPE is another of those registries, their whois server is at http://www.ripe.net/db/whois/whois.html I can't remember the names of the other registries. (And, of course, you don't look at the ip address and know which registry issued it; you try the different registry's whois servers until you find one that gives useful information.) Daniel Lance Herrick ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Tom Anson Subject: Page layout Hi LED-ers, I've been trying to re-design my web pages, and a question comes to mind. I've just learned that I can make graphics "float" on a page, and have the text wrap around it (no longer need to use tables!!!); but is there a way to do the same kind of thing with a block of text? Can you put something in a <.div> tag and have other text wrap around it like with <.img />? Thanks for the help. Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials http://www.therapeutic-grade.com ------- new post - new topic -------- From: Richard Graham Subject: Email programs > Which is the best email client out there? I say Opera M2... > Opera handles all your mails in such a fashion that creating > folders and sorting your mail manually becomes *unnecessary*. - Shabeer Ali, LED 1833 Shabeer Ali made a great argument for the Opera Email program, and thanks for the info. The thing that's always held me back (and it's one thing that is also stopping me from switching to a Mac) is what happens in a few years if I want to revert all my email archives back to industry standard (suppose Opera disappears, something better comes along, or Microsoft gets good)? The volume of users will always assure outlook archives can be read by any future email program, but what of the minority programs? The thought of not being able to import my email archives is a big thing! Keep up the good work Adam & everyone, be genki, Richard Graham http://www.genkimath.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "And when you came to me your cheeks splashed with the night; We walked down frozen streets of juniper and lamplight..." - Art Garfunkel |
