New home page; needs review

[rocketrak]

Hello,

I recently updated my home page, at http://www.krevtek.net. The main changes are the promotions (hit Refresh to cycle through them, there are four of them), and the layout of the home page.

The News section and the Features section are boxed, giving the site a stramlined appearance.

Any comments, feedback, suggestions, etc. would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[paulzon]

Dear Rakesh,

The site looks very good. I won't do any of that "wow! you're only twelve" stuff as I remember how patronizing that can sound!

As far as feedback and suggestions go just a few things ... I feel that you could use your title tags in a better way, utilizing phrases such as "American Photography, images of the USA by Rakesh Patel. kravtek.net" then, as your move to deeper pages within the site, be more precise, using phrases such as "Photo's of Pinnacle Peak Park, Arizona. Images by Rakesh Patel", trying to use up your 70(ish) character limit with well chosen keyphrases that will bring people in. I am sure that this will be more effective than "Krevtek.net presents Rakesh Patel's Photo Album". As you probably know already, using an intelligent titling strategy can be THE most important thing with regard to the metatags of your site.

Another more subjective thing, your site is very well designed, but it kind of has the "look and feel" of a corporate site, which sells tyres, or motherboards, or something like that. However, your site is mostly fun (the games, politcal animations etc), and "arty" (your photography). Perhaps the overall look of the site could embrace this more and be a little less "formal" if you know what I mean!

As you are using gif images, instead of text for your main site navigation, it may be a good idea to either ...

Make a sitemap which is only one link away from the index page, and full of TEXT links, so that search engine robots can crawl your site more easily or

put some text links at the bottom of each page. You could do both of course, although some may see this as "overkill".

A small image or two, which isn't too many Kb's may brighten the appearence of some of the pages, making them look more interesting to the casual browser.

Finally, a tiny little thing. Some of the borders for your navigation on the internal pages of the site are a pixel or two out of alignment.

Overall though, I think that the site is thouroughly excellent, and I would love to know how you get on with it!

regards from Paul www.zonicweb.net

ps your link to "thermotec.com" on the "About Rakesh Patel" page didn't work, you need to take out the "%20" .

[rocketrak]

Dear Paul,

Thanks for the tips :D . I've never received such a thourough review before, and it's great to receive tips from a visitor.

Here's my response to your tips:

I definitely believe that it sounds a bit patronizing to claim that I am only twelve. I'll mention that, but won't emphasize on it, in my About Rakesh section.

I've gotten a bit lazy with my "description" meta tag, I'm just copying the title and pasting it into the tag. But I do agree that both are major concerns if one is to boost search engine ranks. I found out that I am #4 and #5 If you search for Rakesh Patel on Google, and even higher if you search for "Rakesh Patel" in quotes. But since photography is the main section of my site, I had better adjust the title like you said. I'll change it to "Photography of Scenic Arizona by Rakesh Patel, presented by Krevtek.net." That is about 68 characters, so that is a good title. We can change it around to maximize search engine rankings.

I agree that the site is too formal for what its purpose is, but I am just learning about web design and want to experiment with site design. I have redesigned the site five times, and the final design will be the ultimate one. I am still researching effective web design and will wait at least six months before releasing it. I am coming closer each time the site is redesigned, and in the interest of visitors like you, I will add a sample page from my previous designs in the About Krevtek section.

I plan to start a web design firm with a friend next year, and have already started to make sites for others. My school wanted me to create a small site for them, with the purpose of being an all purpose site for students in grade 7 and 8 (I am an eighth grader myself), with games, links to search engines, reference sites, and online directories. You can see it at http://www.krevtek.net/sunrise/, and you will see the homepage. Go to:

http://www.krevtek.net/sunrise/games.html
http://www.krevtek.net/sunrise/directories.html
http://www.krevtek.net/sunrise/reference.html
http://www.krevtek.net/sunrise/search.html

To see the other pages.

I will be done by the 10th at the latest. The navigation bar is table-driven text layout, not images, which saves download times, and may only look correct when viewed on IE for Mac. There should be a border completely around the text, but on other browsers, it looks like there is only a left/right border. That is the only browser that I am worried about, and my target audience is the school, so I can use Javascript, up to 1000 pixels wide, and other stuff, but I wish not to so not to overcomplicate a simple task. It is great practice for the future of my web designing days.

Anyway, back to the site:

I do use GIFs, not text, on my main site, so the site map link is a good idea. It is at the bottom, but I agree that it should be nearer to the top. I abandoned putting text links to every section at the bottom, but it quickly cluttered it up. I have ALT text on the navigation GIFs, so that shouldn't be a problem.

On IE 6 (my browser), the right border is either correct, or "caving in" or "caving out" a few pixels, depending on the page. I am going to make horizontal navigation in a few weeks or so, so I won't worry about that at the present moment. The last time I tried to correct that, it made it worse on some pages, and corrected it on other pages. Horizontal navigation is what I want on the site, so I will change the site to that in the near future.

About the small image that will add brightness to the pages, do you mean a simple image like this:

http://www.krevtek.net/fileupload/files/blend.jpg

(It is too tall, I'll only make it about 20px high if I use it)

If not, could you please specify that in more detail? I am catching on to your idea, but need more specifics to implement the idea.

I'll change that Themotec.com link also. Thanks.

I will gain access to my computer on Thursday, so I will make all the changes you suggested Thursday.

Thanks for the suggestions!! :D

I really appreciate it.

[paulzon]

Thanks for the tips :D.
No problem Rakesh!
I've gotten a bit lazy with my "description" meta tag, I'm just copying the title and pasting it into the tag. But I do agree that both are major concerns if one is to boost search engine ranks.
But carefully titled pages are definitely THE most important, Google just ignores descriptions, relying on page copy instead, and it places a HUGE importance on relevent titles for good position in the listings, so get these sorted out before you worry about the descriptions!
But since photography is the main section of my site, I had better adjust the title like you said. I'll change it to "Photography of Scenic Arizona by Rakesh Patel, presented by Krevtek.net." That is about 68 characters, so that is a good title. We can change it around to maximize search engine rankings.
Sounds good! ... I was trying to emphasize the importance of "hierarchy" here, with the main "index" page, navigating to a main photography page with a title that includes keywords such as "Photography" "America" and/or "USA", then with the titles of the subsections being more specific, with keywords such as "Photography" "Arizona" "Pinnacle Peak Park" etc ... people seldom read page titles, but the S.Engines (esp Google) love this kind of thing, and will reward you accordingly.
I abandoned putting text links to every section at the bottom, but it quickly cluttered it up. I have ALT text on the navigation GIFs, so that shouldn't be a problem.
Using "real" text is much more effective than relying on "ALT" text. It can be useful to read the Google guidelines on this sort of thing as well, if you haven't already! having said this though search engines are making progress on reading non text based data for instance "Google" have been working intensively on their robot's ability to read "Flash" based websites etc.

The School site looks good so far! and despite my previous comments about the "sober" "businesslike" look of your sites, it is very refreshing to see this when so many peoples early efforts have stuff like purple backgrounds, orange text, lots of flashing gif animations etc (I'm sure that you know the sort of thing I am writing about!). I am sure that you will make a VERY good web designer as well.
do you mean a simple image like this:
I meant more of a small "icon" type image (that would only use about 40bytes - 2Kb) to break up the monotony of the more text based pages rather than a "background" type image, or perhaps one or two very small thumbs of your photo's on the "Photo Albums" page... heres an example, it doesn't look very good on this page as it was intended for a darker background, but you get the idea! ... It is only 1Kb, and I use it for music technology dictionary that I have written for one of my own sites (hence the keyboard and question mark!)
http://www.zonicweb.net/images/musitech.gif
Better go now, as I have some real work to do, but please don't hesitate to get back in touch if you want some more feedback ... and keep up the (very) good work!

regards from Paulwww.zonicweb.net

ps good to see you including "Teoma" on your list of search engines!

[rocketrak]

Paul,

I made a new title for my Photos page. All of my photos are taken in Arizona as of now. However, I will soon be taking photos of my vacations in other states and around the world. For now, the title doesn't include "America", just "Arizona".

I re-titled my photography section with the hierarchy concept, also.

I made some text links at the bottom of my photos page. I only made the change on the photos page as I don't want to make the change site-wide yet without some feedback. I'd appreciate it if you tell me how they look, and what changes nede to be made.

My sitemap is already full of text links, and I added a link to it on my homepage now.

I changed the bottom of my homepage around, but the changes are very minor.

I fixed the Themotec.com link on my About Rakesh Patel page, and also changed some of the "potentially patronizing" stuff on that page.

Over the weekend, I'll make sample pages of my previous designs. My first was a total disaster! It was designed in layers, and was 1100 pixels wide. The background image was over a megabyte in size. Completely horrible. After the third redesign, it was evident that I was focusing more on design than site content.

I'll also get a head start on thumbnail-like images for some pages. Thanks.

[paulzon]

Paul,

I made a new title for my Photos page. All of my photos are taken in Arizona as of now. However, I will soon be taking photos of my vacations in other states and around the world. For now, the title doesn't include "America", just "Arizona".
Hi Rakesh!
Yes, I know what you mean, but I was also trying to make a point about good site structure and good keyword rich titles which start general, then gradually become more specific eg a page "photography" then "USA" "India" whatever, then "Arizona" "Phoenix" "Mumbai" and also give the image files a relevent title as well eg "phoenixarizona.jpg" rather than dsc14525874.jpg then trust me, more people will come into your site via web searches, image searches, video searches and that sort of thing. Other than that, the improvements are all great (especially the sitemap)!

keep it up!

Paul

As for your first website, don't be so hard on yourself, it wasn't that bad!

[rocketrak]

Believe me, it was bad. Javascript, Java Applets, annoying bg music, and DHTML scrolling text was everywhere. It was like a toxic spill. You'll see it on Saturday.

I gave the 6.29.2004 photo album pictures names that describe the pictures, for example, a picture with a 24" telescope in it was named 24_inch_telescope.jpg.

I use a program called Picasa for my images.

Instead of something like image231.jpg, I named, for example, the Sedona photo album pictures sedona_1.jpg, then sedona_2.jpg. The name of the pictures described the album that the image was in, instead of the image itself. Do you think this is sufficient enough, or should I rename the images to something more relevant?

I didn't change my site map at all, by the way. But I'm glad you liked the text links at the bottom of the page. I will make the change site-wide this weekend.

Thanks for everything. I really appreciate it.

[paulzon]

Dear Rakesh,

I think that I have seen it! ... isn't there a link to it from your site? ... as first efforts go, I've seen worse!

As for the titles thing, I would even put even more info in the titles eg "arizonasedona.jpg" or "usaarizonasedona.jpg" and give the HTML files similar titles, but thats up to you! ... If you don't believe me, go into Google and search for "bad album covers" "ninjatune free download", "music technology dictionary" "big dada free download", or do a Google image search on "Manowar", and you will find a "zonicweb (www.zonicweb.net)" page / image either on top, or near the top of the listings there are many other keyphrases I could choose, but I think you get the idea. The site is has a very low page ranking ("4") as it is just an old hobby site which I haven't bothered with very much recently due to other commitments. Most of this was due to structuring the site correctly, titling the pages and files relevently, and submitting one of the pages to dmoz, also I made a few initial link exchanges (just in case!). It would have been pointless to try and become number one for something like "mp3" or "mp3 download", so I took this approach. I had almost 17,371 unique visitors making 200,347 page loads in a four hour period recently, and on average it has around 1800 "unique visitors" a day. I am not "bragging" about this or anything, as it is actually rather modest, and could be much more in the hands of a better designer who put more effort into it. Another designer I know, Mike Slocombe has a site called "Urban75 (www.urban75.com)" gets millions of "hits" and is an excellent example to follow in terms of good design practice (much better than mine!). Also he has written a very good book on web design too, which is well worth a look. It can be found on the "tech reviews / features / project (www.urban75.org/tech/)" section of the site, which also has lots of other good stuff on web design as well!

Finally for now, have you ever tried "4images (www.4homepages.de)" for your photo's? ... it's a nice PHP / MySQL image management system that's quite good for the sort of thing that you are doing. The site is in German but you can have it translated if you don't know any, and it is well worth a try, especially as it is free!

Let me know how you get on!

regards from Paul.

[rocketrak]

The link you are talking about is the one in the About Rakesh Patel section. That was the one that I made in September 2002 and never updated.

I am talking about my first version of Krevtek.net, which started May 27th. The site was online four days later, on the 31st.

If you go back to my About Krevtek section, I have a small Java applet that shows how long the site has been up.

Thanks for the title tips. I'll redo the photo albums in the next few weeks.

About your hits, WOW!!!!! Is that Statcounter stats? With Statcounter, I average about 50 a day. I recently got 190 hits, which is my all time record. According to the Webalizer, which is on my server, I have over 40,000 hits a month, but only because each image also counts as a hit.

I saw your site, great job! Is your logo done in a font called "Rational Integer"? My logo is, and your logo text looks similar.

I see that you are in London. My dad is from Ilford Essex.

I saw the urban 75 site, and it is very good. I am going to read some of his web design tips this weekend.

I don't think I will be using 4images. I don't really need many of the features in it.

I'll be adding sample pages of my previous designs to my About Krevtek section this weekend.

[DSL Guy]

KREVTEC - interesting site. Well done. Already some page rank.

I browsed your link exchange but somehow don't see info on how my link gets displayed. Did I miss it? Also, is there option to link thru text only or would I need to display your graphics?

[rocketrak]

Thanks. My pagerank is 2/10, which I am very happy about.

I don't offer just anybody to exchange links with me; only affiliates, business partners, or people who respond to me asking me they if they want to exchange links.

If you want to exchange links, here is my policy:

optional: You can supply me with a graphic representing your site, which must me either a .GIF or .JPG, and cannot exceed 120x64 pixels.

optional: You can send a 200 character max. description if you want.

required: You must also give me the address to your site.

You can PM me all of the details. Once you make your graphic, put it somewhere online, and give me the address to it. I will save it on my computer, and put it online to my site.

For the link back, I will fill out the form on your site. You do not need to display my graphics, but I will still display your graphics if you supply them.

Thank you.

[rocketrak]

I filled out the link request form on your site, and the ColdFusion module reported an error saying that the "To:" attribute of the CFMAIL application is incorrect. It looks like you have two e-mail addresses on the "To:" Line.

I slightly modified the code of your link to suit my Links page.

Once you supply me with the graphic, or choose not to, your link exchange will be sucessful.

[paulzon]

Hello again Rakesh!
The link you are talking about is the one in the About Rakesh Patel section. That was the one that I made in September 2002 and never updated.
Well whatever site I was looking at you are making very good progress!
If you go back to my About Krevtek section, I have a small Java applet that shows how long the site has been up.
Yes I saw it, but be careful of putting too many "gimmicky" applets / JScripts on your pages!
Thanks for the title tips. I'll redo the photo albums in the next few weeks.
Glad to be of help!
About your hits, WOW!!!!! Is that Statcounter stats? With Statcounter, I average about 50 a day. I recently got 190 hits, which is my all time record. According to the Webalizer, which is on my server, I have over 40,000 hits a month, but only because each image also counts as a hit.
Yes they are, when I said "page loads" this is what corresponds to "Pages" in Webalizer, which on my site is usually around a tenth of the "Hit" count. I find that Statcounter is good for giving me a conservative reading, which discards my own hits to the site including other projects which are residing on the server, and my server side stats are most useful for giving me counts on file downloads (eg mp3s, wallpaper images etc)

Don't worry about your own hits, you have the intelligence to learn quickly, so I am sure that so long as you are patient, you will win through in the end!
I saw your site, great job! Is your logo done in a font called "Rational Integer"? My logo is, and your logo text looks similar.
Thanks! ... unfortunately the graphic look of the site has been sadly neglected, and I wince when I look at it now! I keep meaning to update it, but other stuff always gets in the way. Last time a made a start, I got as far as those clear, animated gifs, then I had more content to upload, then someone else wanted a site sorting out etc etc!

The lettering wasn't a "font" as such, just a hard 1 pixel brush in "Fireworks" or "GIMP" (which I was trying out at the time)
I see that you are in London. My dad is from Ilford Essex.
Really! I'll bet that he doesn't miss the weather!
If you go back to my About Krevtek section, I have a small Java applet that shows how long the site has been up.
Yes I saw it, but be careful of putting too many "gimmicky" applets / JScripts on your pages!
Thanks for the title tips. I'll redo the photo albums in the next few weeks.
Glad to be of help!
I saw your site, great job! Is your logo done in a font called "Rational Integer"? My logo is, and your logo text looks similar.
Thanks! ... unfortunately the graphic look of the site has been sadly neglected, and I wince when I look at it now! I keep meaning to update it, but other stuff always gets in the way. Last time a made a start, I got as far as those clear, animated gifs, then I had more content to upload, then someone else wanted a site sorting out etc etc!

The lettering wasn't a "font" as such, just a hard 1 pixel brush in "Fireworks" or "GIMP" (which I was trying out at the time).
I saw the urban 75 site, and it is very good. I am going to read some of his web design tips this weekend.
Yeah, Mike Slocombe is a very good designer and who has worked with many major clients, he is also a lecturer and consultant on web design issues, so he is very good at putting his ideas across. I used to know him when I worked at "Cool Tan" in Brixton (South London).
I don't think I will be using 4images. I don't really need many of the features in it.
Just a suggestion. It may be good for future reference anyway, should you require more functionality in the future.
I'll be adding sample pages of my previous designs to my About Krevtek section this weekend.
I'll look forward to it!

I have to get ready to go out now, but I will leave you with another tip. I noticed that you are not in dmoz (the open directory) yet. Have you submited to them? ... I can't over stress the importance of being included there if you are worried about issues such as "page rank", how many people visit your site etc etc

regards from Paul www.zonicweb.net

[Momo]

Rak,

I like your site and design and how it is so simple. Nice promotional banners! However, I did a silktide review for it, and it seems that the site popularity is ranked below 10,000,000 websites in the world. (My site is about 2,500,000 with an overall rating of 7.8 and design rating of 9.5 according to silktide.) You should try to work on validating all meta tags and scatter more keywords throughout the pages for search engine popularity. http://www.submitexpress.com/analyzer/ has a good meta tag validator.

Here's the complete report:

This report tested 5 pages of http://www.krevtek.net (using SiteScore v1.6.2).

Marketing How well marketed, and popular the website is. 5.1
Design How well designed and built the website is. 8.1
Accessibility How accessible the website is, particularly to those with disabilities. 5.6
Experience How satisfying the website is likely to be. 7.1
Visitor rating Average user rating for this site's design (website needs more votes) No votes
(Vote for this site)
Overall Summary score for this website. 6.0


Good / bad points
This website appears to be rarely visited (more detail)
This website makes no apparent use of interactivity throughout (more detail)
This website appears to be in violation of the British Disability Discrimination Act (more detail)
A Google search for "Krevtek" finds this website as #1 (more detail)
This website is very quick to respond (more detail)
Design makes proper use of modern technology (no table-based layout) (more detail)

[rocketrak]

Paul,

The Java applet in the About Krevtek section is the only applet on my site, with the exception of two Java games.

I use Statcounter and Webalizer the same way you do. Statcounter is good for client-side stats, and for organizing information into neatly presented graphs, and detailed visitor information, and the Webalizer is good for server-side stats.

unfortunately the graphic look of the site has been sadly neglected, and I wince when I look at it now!

My first logo was a disaster. I had it in my mind for three years before I got my website, and it looked much worse than expected when put on paper.

So you basically hand-drew your logo, but on the computer. That is a very good job for a manually created logo.

I read about GIMP, but I use Irfanview and Picasa to do simple things. I use Fireworks if something needs to be majorly changed.


I see that you are in London. My dad is from Ilford Essex.
Really! I'll bet that he doesn't miss the weather!


LOL :lol: !

Adding my site to a directory, especially DMOZ, would be a good idea. I submitted to prosphotos.com, which is a photography directory. Just go to http://www.prosphotos.com, click on "Nature Photography - Land", and my site is in that category. Only 13 sites are in that category, so it shouldn't be hard to find.

Thanks.

[rocketrak]

Mo,

Thanks.

I am going to remove the banners as soon as some new content comes out, then just advertise that content. The banners are huge, over 25 kilobytes in size.

I went to silktide for the first time, and it is awesome. I will sort out all of the site's flaws and work on fixing this.

I've heard of that meta tag validator, so I will go and try that out.

Thanks for the report.

[paulzon]

Paul,
The Java applet in the About Krevtek section is the only applet on my site, with the exception of two Java games.

I use Statcounter and Webalizer the same way you do. Statcounter is good for client-side stats, and for organizing information into neatly presented graphs, and detailed visitor information, and the Webalizer is good for server-side stats.
Oh no! I wasn't being critical! and I wasn't talking about really useful stuff like Statcounter, or fun stuff, like games! ... I was just talking about having TOO many of those little applets that tell you how long the site has been online, what the time is in Jakarta etc, scripts that make text blow away when you put your cursor over it etc ... you know the sort of stuff I mean!

Mo made a really good point about "keyword rich" text, I should have stressed this more earlier, but don't go overboard with it, so that your text becomes a collection of keyphrases that read strangely, as this will just put the readers off. Try and do your links as "keyphrases" eg "Flash and Java games", "Arizona Photography" etc, the keyword "games" or "photography" is still there, but you are more likely to do well with more selective phrases, rather than competing with millions of other sites which are much more popular for a simple word like "games" or "photography", and remember what I said earlier about "focusing in" on a subject eg having the keyword link "photography" with a bit of keyword laden "blurb" about it, which leads to the photography page, which holds keyphrase links such as "Arizona photography", following the same policy for titles etc.

Nowadays, optimising a site for search engines isn't about "cheating" or "secrets" or anything like that, it's about being honest, straightforward and clear about the contents of your site, and intelligent in the way that you structure your information, making it full of good quality content that is easy to find and read for both human beings AND robots!
My first logo was a disaster. I had it in my mind for three years before I got my website, and it looked much worse than expected when put on paper.
... Which is perfectly normal! if you were happy with it then you wouldn't have progressed very far would you?!
So you basically hand-drew your logo, but on the computer. That is a very good job for a manually created logo.
I like things that way, maybe it's because I originally studied fine art when I left school!
I read about GIMP, but I use Irfanview and Picasa to do simple things. I use Fireworks if something needs to be majorly changed.
Well if you have "Fireworks" then you won't need "GIMP"! ... I was just trying it out of curiosity.

I see that you are in London. My dad is from Ilford Essex.
Really! I'll bet that he doesn't miss the weather!
LOL :lol: !
Meterologists say that it could be the coldest winter for 200 years!
Adding my site to a directory, especially DMOZ, would be a good idea. I submitted to prosphotos.com, which is a photography directory. Just go to http://www.prosphotos.com, click on "Nature Photography - Land", and my site is in that category. Only 13 sites are in that category, so it shouldn't be hard to find.
dmoz is THE directory to get into, as if you are included there, eventually it will percolate down to all the other directories as well! that means hundreds, even thousands of them from "Google" downwards! ... However, you may wait a week, a month, or even a year! as it is a volunteer organization which is (under)staffed by volunteers. However if / when you are included, your page rank will almost certainly rise from "2" to "4", or even "5" in the fullness of time! ... and you won't have to write off to lots of sites for link exchanges, as they will write to you instead! ... Having said all this, there are many people who say that "page rank" isn't actually as important as it used to be.

I will write some more later, but I have to pop out now for a bit.

Keep in touch! Paul.

[paulzon]

Oh! before I do go, I forgot to mention (again!) that you are using long JScripts in the <HEAD> and <BODY> sections of your pages. Search engine spiders don't like this, and may get bored! ... it would be better to put these scripts in a separate file, and include a simple link to it in the <HEAD> section of your document in the same way as you would with a Cascading Style Sheet eg
<HEAD> ... blah blah blah ...
<LINK href="css.css" type=text/css rel=stylesheet>
<SCRIPT src="js1.js"
language="javascript"
type="text/javascript"></SCRIPT>
putting the CSS / JScript links at the bottom of your <HEAD> section.
That way the search engine won't get "bogged down" and will rush straight to the stuff that YOU want it to read, and index!

enough! Paul.

[rocketrak]

I know what you mean about those Applets. On my first site, I had the countup applet, a 3D rotating digital clock, among other flashy animations. It was very annoying. I see that it is a common mistake among many personal sites.

I will add more keyword rich text today. I will also make the older versions of the site available today.

On Google's website, they have a page about search engine optimizers (SEOs). Google also says that they get spam from SEO firms saying that Google is not in major search engines, and an SEO could help. Here's what Google has to say:

Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

I have a robots.txt file, which allows search engine bots to index anything on my site.

It is true that if I was satisfied with my first logo, I wouldn't have learned so much about logo design. Logo design is more about psychology than it is creativity.

You studied fine art? I guess that is why your site looks very good. My dad went to the University of London, and has a degree in electrical engineering. He is now a software engineer.

About Ilford Essex, how cold is it going to be?

The Google directory is the same as DMOZ, but Google's directory looks nicer. They have the same information, though. I'll submit to DMOZ today also.

Pagerank is important, because it shows how many sites link to you. According to silktide.com, I have 59 people linking to me, and 11 quality links. I want to increase that number to 100 without having their links on my site.

The external script idea is very good. I can save over a kilobyte of page size by doing that. Plus, the script only needs to load once, not once for every page visited.

A good resource for making valid HTML is at http://validator.w3.org. It is straight out of W3C standards, and is a good tool for making valid HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, and more. I have valid HTML on my homepage, and valid CSS. I have only one or two errors on most of my pages, which is just ALT text missing. I really should add ALT text, but in a few weeks, I will launch Phase 4.55 of the site (I am in Phase 4.5 now), with horizontal navigation, pages renamed from .htm to .html (Dreamweaver thinks that .htm pages are plain text, so I'll have to switch), <H1> titles instead of image titles, page sizes that do not exceed 20 kilobytes, and all of the other changes talked about in this forum topic. It will really help with my search engine rankings.

Thanks for all of the tips.

[Momo]

That validator thing is getting really popular for some reason. Really a lot of sites (Including mine (http://www.themotec.com)) have them.

About keyword rich text, it is really needed, because the more keywords there are on a page, the easier it is for the engine to index. For example:

Themotec.com features Pentax lens explanations and Pentax lens descriptions. The Pentax lens explanations are among our best content, and many viewers have forund them helpful.

Instead of:

Themotec.com features Pentax lens explanations and lens descriptions. They are among our best content, and many viewers have forund them helpful.

Too many keywords just trash up the text, though. In the examples I gave above, it should be much easier for my site to be found under "Pentax" if the first description is on a page.

[rocketrak]

I see. Making the sentences a little more descriptive helps a lot in search engine ranks.

Thanks. :D

[paulzon]

I will add more keyword rich text today. I will also make the older versions of the site available today.
Good! make sure that your keyphrases mirror the ones in your title, as the title tag is still the most important!
I have a robots.txt file, which allows search engine bots to index anything on my site.
Yes, it will tell robots which documents to index / not index, but it will not help them to do it in the best way, (both for you, the search engine and the potential "browser") ... It is all the stuff we have been discussing about Information Architecture, titles, keyword phrases etc which will do that![/quote]
You studied fine art? I guess that is why your site looks very good.
Thanks (again)! ... It taught me how to do very good paintings of naked ladies, but it didn't teach me anything about how to design good websites (which is more "Graphic Design" than "Fine Art")! ... I studied computing later on.
About Ilford Essex, how cold is it going to be?
It will be about the same as it is here in North London, I don't know the exact temperature, but I think that I can safely say that it is somewhat colder than where you are!
The Google directory is the same as DMOZ, but Google's directory looks nicer. They have the same information, though. I'll submit to DMOZ today also.
That was my point, DMOZ is the primary directory, and most of the other directories (including Google) are not really directories, they are just "mirrors" of DMOZ which are "leeching" it's content, hence if you want to be included in the Google directory, you submit to DMOZ, not Google.
Pagerank is important, because it shows how many sites link to you. According to silktide.com, I have 59 people linking to me, and 11 quality links. I want to increase that number to 100 without having their links on my site.
I said that many people think that it's importance was declining, thanks to all the artificial link exchanges that are being done in it's name, not that it wasn't still very important! endless e.mails, messages in forums requesting link exchanges aren't necessarily the best way to obtain this, but we have covered this already!
The external script idea is very good. I can save over a kilobyte of page size by doing that. Plus, the script only needs to load once, not once for every page visited.
True, but I was saying it for "robotic" reasons even more than filesize ones. Robots don't like wading through long portions of JScript, hence they may get bored, confused etc and fail to read your site the way it should be read (please don't laugh at me, I'm serious here!)
A good resource for making valid HTML is at http://validator.w3.org. It is straight out of W3C standards, pages renamed from .htm to .html (Dreamweaver thinks that .htm pages are plain text, so I'll have to switch),
I know, have you tried "HTML tidy" which is available there? ... I think you'll like it!
Regarding the Dreamweaver thing, that doesn't happen with me! I have designated mine to give documents the extension "htm" when created rather than "html" but it will read both and not change their extensions of existing files that have the extension "html" when saved, try fiddling around with the document extension bit in preferences and see what happens!

<H1> titles instead of image titles, page sizes that do not exceed 20 kilobytes, and all of the other changes talked about in this forum topic. It will really help with my search engine rankings.
Did you mean with or without images / graphics? If you meant with, this is ridiculously hard for a site which displays photographic images! Smaller is better but small can depend on the kind of site you are running, the kind of connection your potential viewer is likely to have etc. Remember that your viewers are being invited to download games and animations, some of which may be over a MB, so don't be TOO puritanical about whether your pages are 21Kb! also as your site is primarily games and photography, they are going to expect some kind of visual appeal, and reasonably well rendered images, rather than just a glorified text document, with horrible looking jpegs which have been compressed to death! (not that your site looks like this at all!) ... sometimes you just have to use discretion, and make individual "judgement calls" rather than being dogmatic and sticking to hard and fast rules. Having said that, your HTML (and other stuff) does look very "bloated", tidying up the JScript and putting it into a separate file(s) will help with this ALOT, and there are other things worth investigating too, although I only made a brief inspection. Incidentally, the index page of my "zonicweb" site is 21Kb without images, and 41 with images, which is about the same as your "Photo Albums" page! I believe that you could chop this down a great deal, then you could "spend your change" on giving the page some more visual appeal with a few small images (it is a photography page after all!)

Yes, intelligent use of "Heading" tags can help you with search engines alot, as you are helping them to read your site well and they are much neglected nowadays, but again, don't be TOO dogmatic if they start to ruin the look of your page with their formatting, and make it look like some old relic from 1992 (you won't remember the early days of the web!)

That's enough for now!

Paul. www.zonicweb.net

[rocketrak]

Well, it's Tuesday and I still haven't changed my site. On Sunday, My dad and I signed up for DirecTV service and Tivo, and also bought a 55 inch Sony LCD TV. We were at Best Buy for a few hours.

The robots.txt file only helps when you tell a search engine bot what not to index, so I guess that doesn't help a lot. I will add the keyword rich text, and the older versions of the site either on Thursday night or Sunday night.

I guess you could say that Ilford Essex is colder than where I am: Arizona. It is 70 degrees here.

I will submit my site to DMOZ in various categories on Thursday night, so I can start being placed in many other directories.

I guess if robots see too much javascript, they will leave, and make my site description a bunch of Javascript. That would be disastrous. I also found out that if my site's code is viewed in Notepad, the main body text appears almost 2/3 of the way down. That is really bad. It will be 1/3 at the top if I make the Javascript external, so I will do so in the next few weeks after releasing my new site design (Phase 4.55).

I saw HTML Tidy, and it is a great tool. Dreamweaver also has a function that starts a new line of code for every tag, attribute, or even after a fixed number of characters. I'll definitely use both to my advantage.

In my new site design, I'll make all pages .html extensions, so I won't run into that annoying problem. It started when I changed the XML document that defined the default extensions, I wanted to change it from HTM to HTML, but I guess I made it so it wouldn't open HTM files at all. Whoops.

I never thought about regarding page size the way you did. I also did a Statcounter analysis on ISP and system stats, and everyone uses Javascript, and judging by the ISPs, at least 4/5 use something faster than dial up. I will start making the site livlier and more interactive while keeping pages under my new limit: 40k. I read that any more than 10 seconds to load a page is a bad idea, so I will keep download times under 10 seconds on dial up.

I have some new ideas for my pages gaining visual appeal.

The H1 tag, like all tags, can be redefined in CSS, so I will do so, and I can make it very lively. I'll set up a temporary Phase 4.55 page will all of my ideas.

I have to go now, I'm currently in school.

[paulzon]

I guess you could say that Ilford Essex is colder than where I am: Arizona. It is 70 degrees here.
It's a little warmer over here now, however we are lucky if it hits 50 degrees F!
I will submit my site to DMOZ in various categories on Thursday night, so I can start being placed in many other directories.
NO! ... don't do that! submit to one carefully chosen category, then once have submitted don't submit again, otherwise your newer submission will superceed the old one, and you will go back in the queue. Submitting the same URL to different categories may be regarded as "spamming". Once you have submitted, be patient. Your site may be included within days, or it may stay there for months, or even over a year! and it could even be refused! though I should think that yours would be fine. If you are waiting for a long time you can ask for an updates on your submission status in the DMOZ forums, where there are editors who will make enquiries for you. These rules ARE broken quite a few times, as basically it is chaos there, but it is always best not to take risks as far as DMOZ is concerned.
I guess if robots see too much javascript, they will leave, and make my site description a bunch of Javascript. That would be disastrous.
They wouldn't mistake your JScript for a site description, also they won't follow links that are encased in JScript. The most important search engine, Google, doesn't use descriptions anyway, it just takes snippets of page copy to give an an idea of what the site is about. Whilst we are on the subject of Google, you made a point earlier about how the "silktide" review of your site said that you had "59 people linking to me, and 11 quality links", which is very good so far, but don't believe the bit about "quality" links, what they mean by this is that Google has generated 11 random links, to give viewers a rough idea of the kinds of sites that have linked to you. YOU can determine what the quality links are much better than that silktide thing. Be cynical about these kinds of things, and don't take what they say as "Gospel truth" like alot of people in these forums. Instead, learn from people who really know what they are talking about. Perhaps it would be a good idea to check out sites such as internet.com / webmonkey.com /webreference.com (which are all related) and subscribe to forums at places like "webmaster world" and "webproworld". There are many others too, after a while, your your intelligence and judgement will tell you which ones are the best for you, and you will get ALOT more sense than you do here, and if you use your age to your advantage, (I am not being "patronizing" here BTW, I am being smart!) they might "take you under their wing", you may even get someone with a HUGE site with a page rank of 7/8/9 to give you a link! who knows!
I changed the XML document that defined the default extensions,
Can you reinstall it from the CDROM? this should sort it out if all the other methods don't work.
I never thought about regarding page size the way you did.
Well bandwidth can still be a problem, and smaller IS better, when there aren't other considertions, but you just have to use your own subjective judgements in these matters, weighing up the factors that I outlined before (and some others too). I am still confused as to whether you meant with or without images when you were talking about the filesize limitations that you set yourself, though on inspecting your site, I am guessing that you meant 20Kb without your image files. Use your judgement, write good, clean HTML which isn't wasteful. Images of course are in a different league size wise, but as you do have so much photography on your site, you must find the best balance between filesizes which are way too big, and ones that look awful due to too much compression. Or to put it another way, people WILL lose patience waiting for a huge image to download, but being partly a "photography" site, they WILL expect the site to look good, and they WILL expect the photos to be rendered to a good standard. As with many endeavours, things get really hard when you have to reconcile the irreconcilable! such is life!
I read that any more than 10 seconds to load a page is a bad idea, so I will keep download times under 10 seconds on dial up.
Mmmm think about HOW the page downloads, for instance, the text nearly always comes first, before the images slowly start creeping downward, hence the viewer has something to read before all the images are downloading. Does the page contain something which is of casual, fleeting interest to lots of people? or is it something that will either be important to some (and hence worth waiting a little longer for) but not important to others? and would it benefit from good presentation? there are lots of other things to take into consideration too, which require individual judgement based on knowledge, rather than dogmatically applying a few "bullit-pointed" phrases that you have picked up about web design. You will find the right balance with experience.
The H1 tag, like all tags, can be redefined in CSS, so I will do so, and I can make it very lively. I'll set up a temporary Phase 4.55 page will all of my ideas.
You don't need CSS to set the fontsize of "Heading" tags, you can do it in good old HTML as well! this is pretty redundant now though as Cascading Style Sheets are such a good idea!
I have to go now, I'm currently in school.
:( Oh no!
I have to go now as well, I have to be at a very important meeting tomorrow, and it is very late over here. Unfortunately the meeting is almost 300 miles away! I have missed out loads of stuff, and I will be away for awhile, but if you want any more feedback, help etc, I will pick things up when I get back. I finally got around to cleaning up my site a bit, so I would like to know what YOU think about it, there are still many things that need to be sorted out as far as the "backend" of the site goes, but as there are hundreds of pages, these things take time! I would like to know what you think of the site from a general visitor point of view, if thats ok with you?!

I have also enclosed a link to a very simple page by my friend Paul (another one!) which it may be good for you to look at, as it is a good example of a simple "no nonsense" page which looks very visually appealing. Simple though it is, I feel that it may give you some really good ideas on the direction that your site could go in terms of Graphic Design.
Better go now, I will pick up the thread again after my trip.

Keep it up!

Paul www.zonicweb.net www.thesobs.co.uk

[rocketrak]

Wow, it is cold where you are.

I didn't actually do anything on the computer last night because I was watching a certain 55" LCD television.

When I do submit to a category in DMOZ, which one should it be?
I have three main site sections: Photography, Games, and Political Animations. Or I could sum it all up by putting it in a Personal Homepages category.

I looked on DMOZ, and have narrowed it down to these categories:

Top: Games: Video Games: Browser Based: Collections
Top: Arts: Animation: Cartoons

However, I will probably put it in a photography category because photos are the most dominant content.

I still can't decide what photography section to put it in.

Top: Arts: Photography is a good idea, but I need to be more specific. Here is a description of what photos I take:

I take photos of mostly scenic Arizona, but have more photos of other things in Arizona (A NASCAR race and a car show). Also, when we go on vacations around the world, I will add photos of those trips also.

It is basically a personal photography site. I just can't find a category that sums all of that up effectively.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Any are greatly appreciated.

I already know who links to me the most, It is my friend Mo's site. He has many links to my site, which boosts the link count greatly.

Subscribing to webmaster forums is a really good idea, I'll find some more over the weekend.

I made a backup of the XML document, so I swapped them back and it worked. However, I'll change it so it can still open HTM documents but the default document extension is HTML.

My limit on page size if 40 kilobytes including images. I see that people are expected to have high speed connections because the site has huge files on it (games, animations, photos) that people with high-speed connections would want to see. I'll think about going to 60 kilobytes including images as my page limit. 20 kilobytes without images.

The text on the page is really what people want to see instead of the graphics, so I'll make sure the text is easy to read and downloads first.

Except for the photography section, all of my JPEG images are progressive, so they get clearer and clearer as they download, instead of creepig downward". But most of my images are gifs.

I like CSS because something only needs to be said once and the change is made sitewide. It saves precious loading times.

I have some formatting to do with the h1 tag and it will look marvelous.

I saw the other site, and it is very visually appealing yet simple. I hope your meeting went well.

[paulzon]

Hi Rakesh!
Just back for a bit, before I go up to my brothers for Christmas.
Wow, it is cold where you are.
London has warmed up a bit now, however it is snowing where I am going!
I didn't actually do anything on the computer last night because I was watching a certain 55" LCD television.
Don't! It will suck your brains out! ;-) ... It's a Sony one isn't it? My brother was going to get the same thing, but he can't decide between a "Sony" and a "Philips", which is also very good, it has ambient lighting on it which supposedly "enhances the viewing experience"!
When I do submit to a category in DMOZ, which one should it be?
I have three main site sections: Photography, Games, and Political Animations. Or I could sum it all up by putting it in a Personal Homepages category.

I looked on DMOZ, and have narrowed it down to these categories:

Top: Games: Video Games: Browser Based: Collections
Top: Arts: Animation: Cartoons
Oooooh! ... that's always the most difficult part when your site isn't highly specialized! you're the one who knows your site best, however I would steer away from the personal homepages bit, unless you are famous!
It is basically a personal photography site. I just can't find a category that sums all of that up effectively.
Well you seem to be getting there! ... have a good think about it over the Christmas holiday!
Subscribing to webmaster forums is a really good idea, I'll find some more over the weekend.
Good! did you check out the ones that I suggested?
I made a backup of the XML document, so I swapped them back and it worked. However, I'll change it so it can still open HTM documents but the default document extension is HTML.
I thought that it would be easy, I usually just reinstall when things go wrong, without forgetting my preferences.
My limit on page size if 40 kilobytes including images. I see that people are expected to have high speed connections because the site has huge files on it (games, animations, photos) that people with high-speed connections would want to see. I'll think about going to 60 kilobytes including images as my page limit. 20 kilobytes without images.

The text on the page is really what people want to see instead of the graphics, so I'll make sure the text is easy to read and downloads first.
Erm, yeah, don't be TOO strict, think "guideline" rather than "rule" if this causes problems. Text always downloads first. I have a 1Mbs connection, so I do check things out on my DW 56k simulator occaisionally!
I like CSS because something only needs to be said once and the change is made sitewide. It saves precious loading times.
Yes, that's one of the reasons why it's so good! but I was just making the point that you COULD, if you wanted to.
I have some formatting to do with the h1 tag and it will look marvelous.
It looks good already! however your borders are still askew, at first, I thought that one tiny adjustment to your CSS should correct this, although I noticed that it is not the same on every page, so you may need to make a small adjustment in your HTML instead. If the problem persists, I will check it out for you when I have the time!
I hope your meeting went well.
It did, thanks! ... better go now, more Christmas stuff to sort out!
Have a nice holiday and keep in touch!

Paulwww.zonicweb.net

ps What did you think of the alterations that I made to my site?

[paulzon]

ps Hope you have a Happy Christmas too! :P ... don't eat too much!

Paul.

[rocketrak]

Paul,

First of all, Merry Christmas to you.

I know I'll be having just that, because I am getting a Dell Dimension 4700 with 17" LCD monitor for Christmas, my sister will be getting an Inspiron 600m, and my mom is getting a Toshiba M35X notebook.

I have only encountered snow three times in my life. Once when I was so little, I can't remember, once when I went on a hike in Sedona (that is in the photo albums section of my site), and once when the temperature here was 35 degrees, and there was snow, but it melted before it hit the ground.

Yep, my dad's TV is a Sony. We were also looking at Philips, but my dad liked the extra features on the Sony, as well as its looks (the black bezel), and the HDTV tuner built-in. The speakers, although small, sound almost as good as our Klipsch tower speakers.

Statcounter also has a category selection for your site on its configuration page. It has long been "personal homepages" for me, but I will change that to something more photography-related.

I'll have to sit down and determine what Photography category my site is best in for DMOZ.

I saw webmaster world and webproworld. I am subscribing to webproworld because it is free. Both have really good ideas for webmasters.

Also, another good site is Grantastic Designs (http://www.grantasticdesigns.com/tips.html). The link above is to their Tips page, with all kinds of tips about web design, print design, search engine marketing, and banner/promotion design. A very good resource.

About the Dreamweaver XML document, I'll worry about it after I get my new PC after Christmas.

I'll keep the "guideline" mentality in mind. That is a much better idea, and I will make sure that all the main information is text.

I have finished my Phase 4.55 sample page, and it will be online in a few hours. The page without images is 10 kilobytes, and is 18 kilobytes including images. Although small, it is visually appealing to some degree, and I will place it online, with a link to it from my homepage, and a PHP poll regarding what people think about it, by this evening.

I have a lot of CSS that is on the webpages themselves. With the sample page, there is no CSS on the page itself. Every bit of formatting is done via the external CSS file, which is only 2 kilobytes currently.

My next Phase of the site (Phase 5), will be the ultimate of what I am trying to achieve. If I like Phase 4.55 enough, I will just rename it Phase 5 and proclaim the site "completed", and Krevtek's mission fulfilled. But that will take a long time.

I have a 3mb connection to the Internet, so I haven't actually experienced any long download times for a single web page. You mentioned a 56K simluator, is it a program on your harddrive, or is it an online simulator? Is it free? I'd like to try it out, because I can get a good feeling of what a 56K user experiences on my site.

The borders for my navigation bar are not CSS issues. Some pages are miscorrectly aligned. The new Phase 4.55 will fix all of these problems, which will be released in February. I still need some feedback from site visitors, which is why I will set the poll up.

Your site now looks wonderful. I like the way the text links are, and I like the navigation bar. I like the overall "dark" color scheme of your site. Great job!

[DSL Guy]

KREVTEC - interesting site. Well done. Already some page rank.

I browsed your link exchange but somehow don't see info on how my link gets displayed. Did I miss it? Also, is there option to link thru text only or would I need to display your graphics?

[webado]

3 year old thread? :lol:

[raysor]

Thought I had read it before!