Thread: New Cabin Site

What do you think?! Any comments or suggestions appreciated!
http://www.trailsend-cabins.com/

Its looking pretty good! On your cabin page your one bedroom and two bedroom sits right down ontop of the text in my browser, you might allow for just a smidgeon more space there..

Geeze.. I cant smoke, I cant bring my dog and cats! LOLOL.. Im teasing, i realize these make for wear and tear on property, but.. alot of people will want to bring animals.. I think on this kind of get away!

Karen

I tried to move the text down. Did it work? In my browser it is ok, so it's hard for me to know how much to move it down?? Anyone else having that problem too??

Thanks for the comment!!

Saustin,

I like your site, like the color scheme, goes well with your theme "TrailsEnd". I like the directions page but I would suggest that you open up a new browser when your visitors click on "click here for map". By doing this, you don't loose your visitor. With so many things going on in the MapQuest window, your visitor might drift off to something else rather than hitting the Back Key to bring them back to your site.

I believe the way you do this is when you insert your Hyperlink, from the HyperLink window, find the field labeled "Title" click on the down arrow and select "_blank". That should do it.

Oh, and I agree with Karen on the pet issue, smoking I can do with out but I don't know if I could go anywhere like that without my pup.

Site is looking good, keep up the great work!

Saustin,

My bad on one thing, find the field labeled "Title" should read, find the field labeled "Target".

Ooops!

Wonderful! Thank you :)

And sorry guys...mother-in-law says no pets.

LOL, there are some places that say "No Mother-n-laws".

HA! I wish!

Love your quote by the way....

Mother-in-Law, huh?
Well.......I guess it could be worse! LOL

Might want to start thinking about properly Titling your pages, and after using the KeyWord Digger (in BV), start to also SEO-prepare your site best you can....although most of your hard-rank will come from unique visits due to your promotion and placement in relevant directories and other strategic envoirnments, Content and site relevancy is still going to be important for a smaller site like this!

Well designed, and clarified logistics express the clean site as meant to be.
Good Work!

I like your site. Simple, yet clean. Not a lot of people can do that. Good job.

Originally Posted by AmaDee

I like your site. Simple, yet clean. Not a lot of people can do that. Good job.

Concisely designed Simplicity can be "bare minimum" and still be incredibly effective, like this!
This "SE non-compliant" minimalist site is not constructed with SEO metrics in mind: all "traffic" is purposefully the result of traditional marketing, complimentary promotion, and direct referral! (Helps to minimize the workload that comes in, assuring 100% fulfillment)

Wonderful website. I think you have done very well. You will want to listen to vasili about the search engine optimization. You might want to search for a pdf file that Brethers has put together that has some great info.

Also, I noticed that the only page that is centered is your home page. You may want to center the rest of them.

Congratulations on a great job!
Cindy

Maybe might want to use same header for all pages and center. One photo on attractions page second row last pix the photo is flawed and takes away from a Great looking site. Really like the color scheme.

I thought all my pages were centered....not sure to fix that???

And I must have been in the middle of updating my site when you noticed that the headers weren't all the same....they are now :)

How do I maximize my search engine searches for my site to come up?? I've tried to name the pages in a certain way, but is there more to it?

Oh, and not sure what you mean by the one photo being flawed??

There's quite a bit to it. Your keywords play a part in some of the search engines. Your page descriptions play a part. You want to have rich original text on your sites, and key words that match that text. You want to have a sitemap. You want to submit your sitemap to google. Probably one of the most impartant things is your incoming links. You want to join forums about travel and camping or cabins and bed and brekfast places. there you can post on those forums. You want to make sure that you're URL is in the signature of your posts. You also want to try to get other web sites that are related to yours to post a link to your site on their site. Those kind of links do a lot of good.

Let me make a suggestion. Your contact email would look more professional and legitimate if you used your webmail from vodahost. If you want to, you can redirect all of your emails to that address to your hotmail account. Businesses using hotmail, aol, msn, or yahoo accounts are often looked upon as unprofessional. I use my aol, so i just have everything redirected to my aol email. Good luck.

Thank you for the suggestions. I will definitely look into them!

I have a question though....how come the font I originally used shows up differently on different computers? Is there a way to keep it the same on all?

Its because different computers use different browsers.

There's not much you can do. Internet explorer is different from mozilla and netscape and all the other browsers out there. they all see things the same, but choose to display them differently. They do it to differentiate between them so that they can get customers to choose one browser over another. You can just try to make the most browser friendly page you can and the rest is really just up to them.

Hmmm, so much for using "fun" fonts then, huh? That's a bummer. Thank you for your insight! I really appreciate it!

Somtimes you see on web sites a note that is something to the effect of:

This site is best viewed in such and such browser. You can tell your clients which browser displays your site the way you want them to see it, but it's not really recommended. Some web designers consider that very unprofessional and a tell-tale sign that the designer is a beginner. Who really closes down their browser, then reopens another browser just to see a web site. I guess some hard core pornography addicts are the only ones i can imagine doing that, but don't get me started on that subject.

The photo of man with fish. He has a red dot on his classes.
Or maybe I'm seeing things. Under Potters Flowage

Looks good om my PC, loaded quick...Looks like a place I need to go to, I need a break.

If you want to show it on my site let me know.

www.thebarefoottraveler.com

Yeah definitely....add Trails End Cabins to your web site! Thank you for offering! Do I need to do anything or do you have it from here? Just let me know.

About the sunglasses, that is a reflection of his lenses. I can "clean" it up in Photoshop??

I will see if I can just take it..

How do I post my sitemap to google?

Originally Posted by aconstas1

Its because different computers use different browsers.

There's not much you can do. Internet explorer is different from mozilla and netscape and all the other browsers out there. they all see things the same, but choose to display them differently. They do it to differentiate between them so that they can get customers to choose one browser over another. You can just try to make the most browser friendly page you can and the rest is really just up to them.

Nothing to do with browsers whatsoever!
This topic has been discussed many times, and solutions can be easily found by doing a Forum Search rather than guessing.

The reason you see this "shifting" of fonts computer-to-computer is merely due to the vast styles available, but not always present on each unit: thus, a much shorter list of "universal fonts" that will display on all units exactly as you create them.

Traditionally, these fonts are : Arial, Verdana, TimesRoman, Courrier, Tahoma, and for the most part (US users) BradleyHand, Comic Sans, and a few others. Here are some lists of reputed "web-friendly" fonts to keep in mind (from a Google Search, and another site): Try this, or this.

If you are determined to use a font you know is not universal, you will need to create an image instead, which will then present without a defaulted font or abberational presentation. You can do this in MS Publisher (making sure your textbox background is exactly the same as the colored background on your page), Paint, or other common program and saving it as a JPG image.
* HINT: create your "image" larger than the actual finished size you require, for when you use, say the VH "pix resizer" to reduce the size, it will refine the edges and nuances, ridding it of fuzzy edges and broken lines...

Originally Posted by saustin

How do I post my sitemap to google?

create a google account. on their home page you want to log in and click the business link. From there follow the link to submit your web site. in there you find the submit sitemap section. there you post the URL to your sitemap and submit it. your site map should be in your public_html folder with your index.html file and your index page should have an active link to that sitemap. good luck. i hope that helped.

Originally Posted by saustin

How do I post my sitemap to google?

If you create and imbed a robot.txt file on your website (invisible to all but the bots and spiders), it will automatically be picked up and create the desired results you seek.

A good thread here: http://www.vodahost.com/vodatalk/goo...ighlight=robot

Originally Posted by aconstas1

create a google account. on their home page you want to log in and click the business link. From there follow the link to submit your web site. in there you find the submit sitemap section. there you post the URL to your sitemap and submit it. your site map should be in your public_html folder with your index.html file and your index page should have an active link to that sitemap. good luck. i hope that helped.

If you create and insert your file as above, VodaHost will submit your site once to all the engines free ..... the above suggestion is not necessary, but may prove helpful later when you seek further-reaching strategies.

Do a search to find the "sitemap" thread....

Sorry....got timed out...

You'll find a lot of info, resources, and more in this thread back from "the good old days" : www.vodahost.com/vodatalk/search-engine-topics-vodahits/1458-sitemaps.html#post9507

It's not so much as simply creating a file of all your links (which Google's tool does)and a ROR file, but also placing them properly on your site.

Thanks for all the help guys! It's funny with my font not showing up because I used BradleyHand. Oh well, I will either create an image out of it or imbed a robot.txt file like you suggested. I've never heard of a robot.ext file before so I will have to check into the link you provided me.

About the sitemap, are you saying that VodaHost automatically does this for everyone? I will have to check into the links you provided me for this also.

Hmmmm, I think I have some revising to do on my meta tags....

http://www.widexl.com/remote/search-...-analyzer.html

Nice site.
-Your font is not a usual one so most computers will not have it. Best to use your first option and create a *.jpeg or *.gif image.
-Yes, VH will do it once. You have to request it.
-Bethers is so much betetr with MetaTags, but it seems that you repeat "cabin" and "Hatfield" too many times. Delete most of the repeated words.

Good luck

Really? I thought repeating the words was a good thing? I just added Hatfield and Cabin to all the pages last night....now I'm really confused!

Originally Posted by saustin

About the sitemap, are you saying that VodaHost automatically does this for everyone? I will have to check into the links you provided me for this also.

No, you have to create and install the sitemap yourself, using the links and tools mentioned. The ROR and bot.txt elements are separate and compliment your site map.

When you site is really "finished" and you are ready to make your splash, VH will submit it to the SE's one time for free. For another great feature to keep abreast of your developing SEO, consider the VodaHits program, where for less than $50/yr you can actually participate in optimizing your site with monthly submissions, reccommended tweaks, etc.
Really worth the few dollars, and it's the only such paid SEO program out there that you are an important part of the process itself, which is another wonderful learning expereince......all from your Trusted Provider, VodaHost!

Thanks for all your help guys! I had VH submit my domain to the search engines yesterday and now it is literally the top on every search! I'm super excited about that!