What would you do to improve this site? [Archive]

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Funk Doc

10-19-2004, 04:04 PM

Hi please can you have a look at my web site http://www.djandyg.com and let me know what you would do to improve it!
I'm thinking of adding a short flash intro and maybe some background music on the home page.

Also as I've made this site using frames I'm finding it difficult to add meta data thats visable to the spiders.
I've used the noframes tag and entered details of all the pages on the site to the index page, but this still doesn't appear to show when I view source???

Arne

10-19-2004, 06:01 PM

You really do anything to make your site hard to find by Search Engines! :)

Your first index (frameset) is on a server with redirection service. You can't do anything on that file. When the SE's goes to the URL, they do find a link to http://students.exp-solutions.co.uk/warren/ but all I guess they "see" is this:

Looking up students.exp-solutions.co.uk
Unable to locate remote host students.exp-solutions.co.uk.
Alert!: Unable to connect to remote host.
lynx: Can't access startfile http://students.exp-solutions.co.uk/warren/index.htm

The above is from http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html serving what a text only browser can view on a webpage. But Search Engines are very much like text only browsers, they don't read Javascript.

The frameset page on http://students.exp-solutions.co.uk/warren/ is now full of totaly useless codes, and not really anything useful information. You don't need anything "fancy" in the noframes tag since it's only used as a link page for browsers that can't handle frames, and sutch browsers are hard to find in this days. Mainly text only browsers and Search Engines use the info in the noframes tag, and you have made it impossible for them to use it!

Remove all Javascript and use only simple text links to the same pages you have in the main menu. You can also add couple of lines of other info above the links, e.g. the two top lines from your "bio" page that SE's can pick up. On top of that you can add meta data for content and keywords.

Going further to the "home_page_main.htm" page you nothing to "feed" the search engines with, since there is only this one large image. The menu page is a copy of the current noframes tag in the frameset, and have therefore nothing to offer SE's. Yes, SE's may find your other pages sometimes, if you are very lucky. But not even on them, you don't have much to offer SE's, with the exception of the "bio" page.

The gallery page have only 3 images as links to other pages, that only have a few links. That's one unnessecery "level" to much! Skip the "link pages" and put all links on the page with the images. You can still use the images as "decoration", but add also some text info about the content the visitor can find if they click on the links to the "thumbnail" pages.

Search Engines read also the alt text for images, but alt text like "Click for large version" don't give them any useful information. E.g. file names like "andy_n_ryan_at_bora_bora.jpg" shuld be "andy" and as alt text "andy n ryan at bora bora" can be used.

In short, you need more text content and cross linking between your own pages. Don't put any background music on the pages! I prefer to listen to the music I have on my radio or CD player, and they can be in my computer. Your background music would be annoying only. You can use a short flash, but be careful how you do it and use it. Will I find a "skip intro" link if I don't want to see (or wait) for the flash?

Funk Doc

10-20-2004, 10:22 AM

Thanks for the input. I will try out some of your suggestions.

geekgirl

10-20-2004, 03:43 PM

I really liked the simple layout of your pages.

All I would say is when making any changes keep the simple look and feel that you have, it is uncluttered.

As far as background music goes, I wouldn't do it, but why not give folks the opportunity to go and listen to some stuff if they want to.

Cheers.

webado

10-20-2004, 06:51 PM

Ok, your main page is very slow in loading even on my high speed internet connection. Adding music background will make it much slower, unless it's a very small midi file.

I see nothing wrong with background music if it streams fast, so it has to be either a very small midi or very lo-fi compressed audio (preferably wma @20kbps or 32kbps, rather than any mp3, since wma is better audio quality for the same file size), streamed through an .asx meta file. You should always provide a button to turn it off, lest you may lose your picky visitors :lol: . That means no BGSOUND in the <body> tag, but rather <embed> inside the body of the page, with enough visible size to allow for the controls.

Do you know for a fact that your webhosting allows media files? Often they don't or only allow very small files, like under 250K. This pretty much rules out even compressed audio, but midi will be fine since I have rarely seen a 3-minute midi file bigger than 50K, even for a most complex one.

Don't even think to use a .wav, they are much too big, even if set as mono, 8000Hz, 8-bit. Plus the audio quality would be pathetic.

I think your image on the home page could be optimized to load faster. Your image is currently 64K and when I saved it, opened it in Photoed and saved it again it became 32K, so maybe you can do something like this to make it smaller.

Otherwise I like your site. It's simple and to the point. You should however use some meta tags to define content and keywords for the sake of search engines if visibility on the web matters to you.

I am concerned a bit by your use of frames (not just from the domain registrar), but perhaps this was so you can have a fixed position header on the pages. I'm pretty sure I've seen other ways of achieving this, but I'd have to dig around a bit to find a good example. I think javascript was being used.

Funk Doc

11-01-2004, 10:58 AM

http://www.djandyg.com

I'm having a nightmare here.
I'm trying to remake the site without frames, but am struggling.
I think I'm relying to heavly on Dreamweaver.
Here's my progress so far - http://students.exp-solutions.co.uk/andyg2/

Problems I'm having is links aren't working once I upload them?
When I try preview seems to work fine. Then once uploaded it's a no go???
Also I made the gallery using some free software I downloaded, but can't seem to customize it how I would like very easily.
The only one I nearly managed is http://students.exp-solutions.co.uk/andyg2/pictures/gallery_pics/elsewhere/dec_03_goa/index.htm

I don't seem to be able to get my head around using templates. I wasted 4 hours playing about with Dreamweaver last night, but feel I haven't learnt a thing. Not happy.

Any help or advice would be much appricated.

I just want to be able to make a basic template of a black html page with the title and navigation set up at the top so I can easily make the rest of the pages.

Also any advice on the gallery would be good. It's far from finished but taking shape.
If I knew what I was doing I think I should be able to finish off the site in a few short hours.
Very frustrating.

Help!!
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motorwatchercounter

11-01-2004, 11:08 AM

Hi Funk Doc,

Don't use frames, use tables. This will allow the site to fill the page in different browser sizes. The reason you are losing the links is probibly that you are creating the links in DW and not correctly choosing the Root or document path. This can get complicated. set your directorys on your PC the same as the directory structure on the server. Use the exact names for subdirectories. When you upload using the built in FTP or a different one the links can be found.

webado

11-04-2004, 04:16 PM

Andy your site looks nice.
You need to add meta tags, but other than that I like it much better than the sites of people advising you.

Chris dump the annoying song and maybe people will pay more attention.
Hit the stop button, it's there for that :lol:
Besides I don't need people to pay attention if they don't care for my site, do I? I sell nothing.

Funk Doc

11-05-2004, 11:49 AM

It's all gone wrong.
I don't know what's happened, but some how I've managed to totally mess up my site. I've been trying to remake it without frames and seemed to be getting along just fine.
The previews in Dreamweaver worked as I expected, but once uploaded none of the links work and some of the pictures aren't loading?
The rollovers have all gone wrong also??????

I've tried changing the paths and checked all the obvious things (obvious to me). I'm at my wits end.
Don't know what to do.
I even tried starting from scratch using different folders, but still have the same problems?

Do any of you guys know what I might have done wrong?
Why can't I view the correct source once it's online?

What's going on?

webado

11-05-2004, 01:48 PM

Oh, dear!

All your links point to things on your own pc. This explains why Dreamweaver will show it OK from your own PC.

Nothing you can do now except edit it in Dremweaver code view and replace the paths to all your file names which currently show

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/W/My%20Documents/My%20Webs/andy_g/

for instance with nothing.

I suspect you inserted images using the Insert Image from Dreamweaver, but used "relative to site" instead of "relative to document" and you may not have been in the right folder either. The path ended up pointing to a location on your hard drive.

motorwatchercounter

11-05-2004, 08:23 PM

Hi Funk Doc,

Christina is right about the pointing to the image source.

If you are putting the images in the same directory as the pages use
myimage.ext

If using a more complex directory structure and an image directory you can call the image using the full path
http://www.mydomain.ext/image/myimage.ext

Both of these can be manually changed with DW in code view. While changing these ad the alt tage for instant messages when the mouse hovers over the image. This is part of the properties function and the text can be typed in straight from there. If in doubt use this

myimage.ext

Or use the full path option if need be.

One reason you may not be able to view the code from the site is that you may be over an image. move your mouse to the edge of the screen and right click again. You should have the option back.

You site seems down at the moment so I can not tell what other problems you may have.

Funk Doc

11-06-2004, 02:28 PM

Thanks for the help.

A couple more questions I hope you can answer for me!

1. What's the easiest way to edit roll over images in dreamweaver?

2. Why doesn't the address bar change when I go to different pages on my site? I thought that only happened in frames?

motorwatchercounter

11-06-2004, 03:00 PM

Hi Funk doc,

It depends what you mean by editing? If you just want to put some on, depending on what version of DW you are using, most have this option in the tool bar;

Image>Interactive Images>Rollover Image

Or something like this. This is easy to use however writes a lot of cobe in the document. If this isn't available try this;

http://javascript.internet.com/generators/preload-images.html

I have not used it but providing you have the images on your site you should be OK.

If you are looking to change the artwork itself then use a programme designed for this before you upload the images. (Paint in Windows if you have to.)

As for the address bar, does the document part of the address change eg

http://forum.statcounter.com/phpBB2/posting.php

If so I would presume that you are using a flat directory (All files in the same directory so clicking will only change that part. Or do you mean the menu bar?

Hope this helps.

Arne

11-06-2004, 03:13 PM

2. Why doesn't the address bar change when I go to different pages on my site? I thought that only happened in frames?

You have a site with frames:

<frameset rows='100%, *' frameborder=no framespacing=0 border=0>
<frame src="http://students.exp-solutions.co.uk/warren/" name=mainwindow frameborder=no framespacing=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0></frame>
So when you see the pages you done, they are on top over the index page for your domain, and therefore you se only the domain URL in the address bar.

BTW: your background image ( bedlam.jpg ) is much to big (and large) in my opinion, 127 kB for that only. Start pages (that visitors see first) should load as fast as possible and don't have to much content or heavy images on them.

Funk Doc

11-06-2004, 03:18 PM

webado

11-06-2004, 03:36 PM

I really dont understand this frames business then. At first I used frames option when creating a new page so the top was statis. This explained the address bar thing to me.

Then I redesigned the page using a basic html page, but your telling me it's coming up as frames?

I wish I had more time to spend on this, but i only have an hour today. just going out.
I will come back and try all your suggestions. Thanks for the help y'all.

Cheers
Unfortunately the way your domain name is mapped to your web hosting, the web pages are shown in frames. So you must use the "frames" counter on your pages, even though they don't use frames themselves.

It may be that your web hosting does not have DNS (domain name servers) for their web hosting clients, so you have to use a parked page at the domain name registrar's and use url forwarding to your actual web hosting account. Or you have set it up wrong in the first place.

If your web hosting provides DNS service (better ask them and tell them the domain name you have that gets mapped to your account), then you can change the DNS information in your domain account at the domain registrar's to reflect the DNS prvided by your webhosting. Once that information has propagated on the net (it can take up to 2 days), your web site will no longer show in a frameset.

My guess though is that your web hosting does not offer DNS. This is way too common with personal web space offered to clients of various ISP's.

And in fact looking at the atual address of your web site at http://students.exp-solutions.co.uk/warren/ it appear to be fully the case. Your is a folder on a subdomain (students) of another domain (exp-solutions.co.uk).

Arne

11-06-2004, 07:16 PM

Funk Doc

11-07-2004, 10:44 PM

webado

11-07-2004, 10:47 PM

Arne: "The difference between your site and a "normal" frame built site is that your index.html page is on a different server than your other pages. The index.html page belongs to the service who only redirect visitors to your page on the subdirectory at students.exp-solutions.co.uk/ server.

students.exp-solutions.co.uk is the college where I took my web design course. They have given me some free web space to host this site as it's my 1st one.

I left there over a year ago now. Would I need to get in touch with them to change this?

Well, you can ask them if they have domain name servers. If they do and if they are willing to add your domain name there, then you change the DNS infromation with the domain registrar. Otherwise all you can do is stay there as is, or move to a different webhosting, where you don't have those restrictions.

Funk Doc

11-08-2004, 11:04 AM

ok, hopefully site looks a bit better now, but I do have another easy question for y'all.

On my Home page & Contact page when viewed in a higher resolution the text is out of line. As in it overlaps the edges of the background pictures.
How do I solve this?

Thanks

webado

11-08-2004, 12:55 PM

This happens because your table is 100% of the screeen size whereas the image is fixed at a width of 1024 pixels by 819 pixels of height (the height isn't reallly the problem), centered in the cell. The text fills out the cell width but the image doesn't srtetch beyoond 1024.

You could fix that outer table at the same width as your image, i.e. 1024, but add center tags. The trouble is that at lower resolution than 1024 x 768, your screeen will end up scrolling horizontally. So that's no good. At a higher resolution, the image is in the mdidle and so is the text.

What you might also be able to do is increase the image size to 1280 pixels by whatever the height works out to be proportionately (too lazy to figure it out :P ). Then it should work.

Funk Doc

11-10-2004, 09:20 AM

Hello there,

Thanks again for all your help. I've learnt just as much from you guys as I did on my course.

OK, I've made a few changes including registering to DNS to the correct server.
I still need to sort out the gallery & the bio could do with livening up.
Please could you have a look now and let me know your thoughts or suggestions!

Thanks again

Funk Doc

Nomad

11-15-2004, 11:14 PM

em your page is not valid xhtml 1.0 transitional as your dtd states

result of test validation Here (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.djandyg.com%2Fcontact.h tm&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&ss=1&verbose=1)

Nice site and nice mix ;)

Respects from 1 dj to another. Mainly mix Psy, Goa, Tribal but have been known to slam a bit of Techno now and then..
*edit* btw you ever mixed with scottish mark (dj tantra/peacefrog)? seem to reconise your piccy? hmm

Nomad

p.s. and no not the dj Nomad ;)

Funk Doc

11-18-2004, 10:49 AM

Nomad - I chose the valid xhtml 1.0 transitional option when creating a new page in Dreamweaver. Maybe I shouldn't of, but does it make much difference?

I'm not DJ Andy G, but I asked him if he knew scottish mark (dj tantra/peacefrog) and he said it didn't ring any bells!

Right people I really would appreciate some help with the following.

Google/Meta Data - Why can I only find my site in google if I search for djandyg? Once I find it in Google the results look like this -

DJ Andy G's Home Page
free hit counter.
www.djandyg.com/ - 7k - Cached - Similar pages

Why isn't my description coming up & why don't my keywords work???

The second problem (More of a case of me being lazy than a problem) I'm having is redesigning the gallery.
I used a free gallery template thing I download to do it originally, but as I was using frames was easy to display it as I wanted.
I'm finding it difficult to add my navigation at the top of each page & I would like to rearrange it a bit more.
Any suggestions or links as to other templates I could try!

Thanks for looking!

motorwatchercounter

11-18-2004, 04:36 PM

Hi Funk Doc,

Let me know what template you are are trying to achieve and I will (try) and create it for you. PM me.

Arne

11-18-2004, 05:13 PM

Nomad - I chose the valid xhtml 1.0 transitional option when creating a new page in Dreamweaver. Maybe I shouldn't of, but does it make much difference?

Well, if you don't know the difference, you should not use xhtml :)
Ordinary WYSIWYG editors makes it very hard to keep the high standard of coding that xhtml demands. Dreamweaver (higly recommended by many, for some reason?) don't give valid code even if you ask for it (by choosing the option in the editor. That shows how bad they are.

However, there is one sutch editor who can do it and that's XStandard from http://xstandard.com/ But in all cases you need to know enough about HTML so you can edit and correct bad codes that all those editors do.

Google/Meta Data - Why can I only find my site in google if I search for djandyg? Once I find it in Google the results look like this -

DJ Andy G's Home Page
free hit counter.
www.djandyg.com/ - 7k - Cached - Similar pages

Why isn't my description coming up & why don't my keywords work???

This is one of many examples that shows how little the Search Engines care about the keywords and description meta tags! As I have said many times. At least they care less if there is no content on the page that is "backing up" what the meta tags says.

All "description" you see in this case, is "free hit counter" and that comes from your StatCounter code, where the invisible image has the "alt" text. One good example that using "alt" text (alternative text) in the image codes really makes a difference! BTW "alt" is also required for valid HTML. For images like "spacer", us a emty alt (alt="")

Funk Doc

11-19-2004, 10:16 AM

Hi Funk Doc,

Let me know what template you are are trying to achieve and I will (try) and create it for you. PM me.

Ok if you click on http://www.djandyg.com/gallery.htm out of the list only 27th December 2003 Bacardi Blast - Goa, India is set how I want. see http://www.djandyg.com/gallery_pics/elsewhere/dec_03_goa/index.htm compared to the others. Basically it has the navigation part.

I know it's probably easy, but just on that one page I had loads of problems with things being out of line and not working.

I've tried working out the template thing in Dreamweaver, but I can't get my head around it.

Also does anyone have any suggestions for the Bio page?
http://www.djandyg.com/bio.htm
How can I liven it up with a few pics or background???

Thanks

motorwatchercounter

11-19-2004, 11:55 AM

Hi Funk Doc,

Templates in DW are a bit of a pain. The answer is to cheat.

You already have the template code in the Goa page and your header is set to the full path (http://www. blah so these will work on any directory level.

Take the Goa page and save it as something like template.htm. Do not use the DW template function. Using this in design view re-link the photos to another set of photos and save as whatever_event_name.htm. Do this for all of the gallerys (obviously naming them differenlty) and Hey presto all the gallerys will have the correct, and working header. Make sure that the name and path are the same as the list and all should work. When you get another gallery to add just call up the template.htm again and the gallery should be created in a few minutes.

Hope this helps.

Funk Doc

11-19-2004, 12:24 PM

Thanks. Will try this over the weekend.

Funk Doc

11-29-2004, 02:26 PM

Arne

11-29-2004, 06:37 PM

Hi,
Right I've sorted the Gallery at last. I'm fairly happy with it now.
Also I've added a few bits to the Bio, but I'm still not that pleased with it!
Any suggestions on how I can make that look better, or break the text down so it doesn't seems so much to read in one hit?
Any comments on the site in general would be much appreciated!
Thanks

About the Gallery.
I like to point at two things I would make changes on.
On couple of the pages, the images is only a few kilobytes eatch, and that's good since you have many of the on eatch page. But on other pages, like "/dec_03_goa/index.htm" they are much bigger and therefore the total size to download gets a lot (aprox 290 kB) and takes a full minute to dowload for those with slow connections. Since you manage to make some images small in kB, I hope you can do the same with the others (compress them).

You still have "Click for large version" as alt text for the images. You really should change it something more describing text for each picture. As the alt text is suposed to be used as alternate text by the browser (if the image don't download for any reason) this text is not shown in other browsers than IE if the image do get visible. So others than IE users don't see your "tip" about clicking for large versions. And even the IE users must hover the image to see it. If you like to have a real "tool-tip" you must use the "title" within the image tag. But you could also have the "click" text on the top of the page, that way nobody can miss it. :)

About the bio page
I understand that you want the image "itacasmall.jpg" (goes for text etc in this and other pages also) centered horizontaly on the page. But I don't understand why you use the "blockquote" tag for that? This attribute is intended to give information about the source from which the quotation was borrowed. So why not use the more simple attribut "center" as you have used to centering the title image? The text will look the same within tables that is centered on the page also.

It seems like you want to "sort" the text in something that should like like they are in a unordered list (dots before the first line in every paragraph), but you do it in a strange way. Why don't you just use the "ul" and "li"'s in sted?

BTW, if you really like to use the XHTML 1.0 DTD, you should check the coding with the W3C validator. :)