Thread: We are back with a total rebuild

Hi Everyone,

I have totally rebuilt my farseer site and it is now 75% ready for your critiques and hope to finish today .... I took all the comments from last time and incorporated them and then my computer had a major crash and a week at the pc doctor ... lucky I mostly had abckups but not of the websites ... now I do ...

oops ... it is the one at www.whitesheherds.com.au

thank you

Your page http://www.whitesheherds.com.au/ cannot be displayed, check your links, save and republish.

to bill2006

He Mistyped that link:::
Should have been http://www.whiteshepherds.com.au

That one worked but load time seemed slow here today.

I've been wondering why I was getting no criticisms and have only just noticed I typed my web link incorrectly ... it should be www.whiteshepherds.com.au ... silly me .... lol ... I really would appreciate your advice ....

Hi whiteshepherd,
Very nice page.
Didn't get it: when you go on 'news & information', the options on the side are: "Al", "Bc", and "Be". I don't know what they stand for. Something related to dogs? If not, maybe they should be clearer so everyone knows where they are going to click on.

Cheers,

Hi nzbr ...

thank you for your comments but I don't see what you see ... I see what is supposed to be on the menu ...articles; buying a puppy; and better feeding ... but I reloaded the page just in case ... maybe it's just a glitch somewhere in cyberspace ... does anyone else see what nzbr is seeing ... I'd be inerested in knowing if you do?

Got it. Those are the 2 inicial letters of your next page's tittle. It shows only the inicialns when I use M.Firefox. I changed for a second to IE and I can see the entire link! All good with IE!

Cheers,

Hi, only note on the image. Unless using some real specialist image software. It real bad to enlarge an image by stretching it out using the handles on the side of the image. It will distort & create pixilation the image. Using the handles to make the image smaller is bad, but to enlarge is really a no,no.
On this page http://www.whiteshepherds.com.au/farseercrew.html i noticed the menu doesn’t expand when using fire fox But is fine in IE. ?? Correction! It expands, but not fully. It feels like it is expanding under an image or shape. Maybe worth trying to bring this menu to the front of the page to see if it helps?

Good luck.

Hi
Pixilated main image on the home page and the intensly irritating moving title give an amateur impression which is a shame because alot of what is in the site is well constructed. Watch image sizes such as that on the home page which, inspite of being pixilated, is very large (94 kb: could be reduced to 20kb easily and probably smaller). I just think it is important to get that home page as good as you can make it, otherwise there is a good chance that is as far as your visitor will go.

Hi Collectors,

Thanks for the advice ... I've upped the pixels and the size slightly so it is now in there at its own size ... I am really learning about photos and the web and appreciate any advice ... in fact I have been reading a lot of what you say and trying to apply it ... I've also fixed the other page ...

Hi Proactivator,

Thank you for your advice ... I purposely want the pic to be big on that page and have taken collector's advice to try and rectify the matter ... if I drop it to 20 kb it will be too small .. also thank you for the thoughts about the marquee banner ... I am sorry to have iritated you ... but have taken the comment on board and stopped it so it now only scrolls once instead of twice on the main page ... will fix the others when I get some time ...


As a general comment I have never used firefox (never heard of it before joining here) and understand from seeing other posts it is common for websites to look different in firefox ... I use Maxthon and IE at work and it always looks the same in both ...


thank you again ... need all the help I can get

Hi,
Irritated is far too strong: forgive me, I let my mouth run away. It is your site and you must do as you want your site to appear. What I was saying about image size and optimisation: if you optimise down to say 20 kb or so the image will cover the same size on the page. It is just that an optimised jpeg has far less info to download so you page downloads quicker. You optimise so the image looks just as good on your screen as the 99kb image. In image optimising software (I use photoshop but I believe there is a free program many bluevoda use called pix resizer (I think) you can do all this quite easily. Have a look at the product images on my site: they are all between 20kb and 33kb in size and could be smaller, but the pages are small (in kb) so I just have not needed to go smaller because the pages load quickly anyway.Your home page is over 500kb in size and for me I would get uneasy about that: Have just looked at your home page again and the picture is not pixillated any more so well done, that is sorted but at a tad under 100kb for the image what I said about optimisation still stands. Also, the image near the top of the farseer crew page needs sorting.
Hope it all continues to go as well as it is at the moment.

Regards,
James.

By George ... I think I got it .... now I understand and I really like that ... big job ahead to go through everything and fix it all .... thank you so much for helping an Ozzie whi is all new to this ... Currently building my business site so will apply all this to the images there first ... we due to launchon july1

thank you James for your help

Can anyone help me with optimising my site for the web spiders ... I know someone has written something about SEO but I can't remember who? And I have searched the forum but can't find it?

Thanks for your help

Hiya, Bethers is not a bad place to get started on this side of things. Have a look at her SEO link on this page.
http://www.vodahost.com/vodatalk/members/bethers.html

Good luck.

Thanks Collectors ... and congratulations ....

Pleasure & thank you.

Hi, just went through your site, and am a big dog lover. I am parcial to Golden retrievers though. You have done really good on your site, and the pics look better than they did. You still need to resize them, http://www.snapfiles.com/get/pixresizer.html you can down load a free resizer at this site. You also need to reread your text, ie: farseer crew page 3rd sentance, it should read German, and in the 5th sentance, I think you ment "I just love taking... that's just a couple of examples.
I like the way you have the banner come and stay. All in all you have a great site!!!

Thanks for your comments SAman ... I find it really hard to edit my own work and appreciate anyone picking up mistakes ... I find I see what I think I wrote rather than what I did write ...

I'll spend the weekend tweaking the other issues and appreciate all the feedback ...

BTW I had golden retrievers as a kid ... fantastic dogs ... I actually tossed up between getting another goldie or a shepherd when I got merlin ... unfortunately I am a shepherd addict ...

thank you

I've read Bethers' article on SEO ... it is excellent ... I have a question though ... can/should you use different keywords on different pages to help optimise them in regards to that page's content?

Originally Posted by whiteshepherd

I've read Bethers' article on SEO ... it is excellent ... I have a question though ... can/should you use different keywords on different pages to help optimise them in regards to that page's content?

Hi Kym:

Exactly, your words should be relevant to each page's content - different pages - different content - different keywords ... you are exactly right ...

Very pretty site indeed ..

You have a picture problem on this page ...
http://www.whiteshepherds.com.au/ourfriends.html

You might consider centering this line of text at the bottom on your pages ...
In Australia white shepherds are known by many names — white ***** shepherd, white german shepherd, berger blanc suisse witte herder — but all are white shepherds from the same parentage.

What about right justifying your text throughout your site? Just makes things look a little tighter .... - a border around your page area? ... just personal thoughts, not necessary ...

I noticed a few dogs with the name of Holly - lol .. I had to look at those .. I guess those are Sherri's dogs. Is Sherri a person or a dog?

Nice ... very nice Kym!

Holly

Thanks Lady Eye ... it seems I am finally getting the hang of this ... I am currently going through my white shepherd site and fixing all this ... I am building a new business site so I will now be able to apply this to that ... It is great there are so many people willing to help and it feels good to be getting it!

lol Kym:

I have edited my post ... you might want to have a look ... since you are going through your site you might consider too, having your menu at the bottom of your page as text links, and you might consider a H1 header too ...

Hi Holly,

Well what do you know ... lol ... Sherri is the prefix name for merlin's great grandmother and she was a gold sable; and his grandmother was a gold sable called Holly as well ...

Thank you for your kind words ... it means a lot coming from someone with your experience and whose work I admire ...

Thank you for the tips ... what is a H1 header and how do I do it? And when you say having the menu at the bottom as text links do you mean as a site map ('cos I've been thinking about doing that) ? Or move it from the side to the bottom totally? If I do that how do I make them text links?

How do I put a border around the page area?

Sorry ... more questions .. lol ....

Is the pic problem on that page the farseer banner at the top ... I noticed at work today it was not working ... come to thnk of it if it was not working you would not know what was supposed to be there .... lol ...

kym & merlin

Originally Posted by whiteshepherd

Hi Holly,

Well what do you know ... lol ... Sherri is the prefix name for merlin's great grandmother and she was a gold sable; and his grandmother was a gold sable called Holly as well ...

Thank you for your kind words ... it means a lot coming from someone with your experience and whose work I admire ...

Thank you for the tips ... what is a H1 header and how do I do it? And when you say having the menu at the bottom as text links do you mean as a site map ('cos I've been thinking about doing that) ? Or move it from the side to the bottom totally? If I do that how do I make them text links?

How do I put a border around the page area?

Sorry ... more questions .. lol ....

Is the pic problem on that page the farseer banner at the top ... I noticed at work today it was not working ... come to thnk of it if it was not working you would not know what was supposed to be there .... lol ...

kym & merlin

lol Kym - yes it is the banner - change it's name - banner is being banned, lol ... or so I've read, but in any case changing the name and reinserting it should do the trick to fix this photo ... (hint - you can right click, and see the name of the photo )

Is that the reason the gold sable link in the middle with D in front is not clickable - does that mean what I think it means, so sorry ...

A H1 header is actually more search engine tips, what it is is a line of code that you insert at the top of each page and it is a text header that the search engines really like, lol ... so you will want that ... I will grab the code and come back with it for you ... for each page, you will want to add a unique title in the area you change ...

For the text menu - that would be in addition to what you have ... it's an extra .. and what you do is use the new feature in BV9 - Text menu - add it and apply the links in the same way, it's just extra for seo's and those visiting your site too ... Using the text menu, opens up the boxes for you to type in the links ... but if you ever just wanted to link a line of text, you simple, highlight the text you want linked, go to insert, insert link and type in the url again ... this then makes that line of text clickable ... neat eh!

To add a border around your work, your page, you can insert a shape, insert a rectangle shape, and on the properties of the shape you can add a 1pt or 2 pt border, you can make this the same color of your background, but add a white border. When you have this shape stretched to fix all elements within your page ('800 wide by whatever length) right click on it and move to back, this will then go behind everything you have placed on your page ... you won't have to move all your work to add this shape ... I would add the border colour as white ... naturally, so would you, lol ...

Just ask away if I have confused you or you need further clarification, it's not a problem at all ...




HERE IS THE H1 Code

<center><h1><font face="arial" size="3" color="FFFFFF"> <b>This is where you can type what you like</b></font></h1></center>

You can type what you like in that header code there Kym, you might use a phrase that tells what each page is about, the title of each page .. the code is already set for white ... but you see where all those F's are ... that is the color - that is the color for white - you could change that to whatever color you wanted, but I think you want white ... you see where it says arial, you can change that to "trebucket ms" and you see the size "3" you can change that to "2" or "1" or even "4" ... you might like "3" though ...

Anyway, you take this code, and apply it to a html box ... found under insert, advanced, html ... you then copy and paste that code into that, you then resize that html box (using your judgement as to how long you think the line of text that you inserted (the red text area above) and place that html box below the header on your page ... this is good for search engines ... Don't worry if you have to fool around with it to get it centered and sitting correctly, that's just normal, lol

An ror sitemap - this is also for search engines, and there are a few threads flying around about that - have a look, or if you need help, let us know .... the link to do so is in that thread and it is pretty easy to do ... you do know how to upload a file via your ftp manager ??? If so, that is half the battle ...

P.S. Thanks for your kind words.

Hi Holly,

Thank you for this ... you are amazing ... I will try it in the morning as it is getting really late here ...

The D in the pedigree stands for dam and S stands for Sire ... lol ...

I do know how to upload to ftp ... just drag and drop? I have not really used it as blueftp is not working at the moment and support has sent me a link to another ftp to use ....

I have no doubt you will be hearing from me sooner rather than later ...

thanks again for all your help .... I'll put some more hard work in over the weekend ...

merlin sends you snuggles to say thank you

Originally Posted by whiteshepherd

Hi Holly,

Thank you for this ... you are amazing ... I will try it in the morning as it is getting really late here ...

The D in the pedigree stands for dam and S stands for Sire ... lol ...

I do know how to upload to ftp ... just drag and drop? I have not really used it as blueftp is not working at the moment and support has sent me a link to another ftp to use ....

I have no doubt you will be hearing from me sooner rather than later ...

thanks again for all your help .... I'll put some more hard work in over the weekend ...

merlin sends you snuggles to say thank you

Oh Kym ... that's so sweet ... and my Lady and I both send snuggles to Merlin ...

I've attached her pic for you to see ... she is my beautiful baby girl!

You have a good night ... It's not nearly noon here yet ... I'll be sleeping when you wake, I always miss that Australian Sunrise, lol ... :)

Oh Holly ... she is gorgeous ... what would we do without our gorgeous faithful companions ... are you originally Australian???

it is 12:31 here and I am trying to get the news page finished but I don't have a hope ... just falling asleep at the computer ... maybe by the time you rise you wil see some differences but have a busy day tomorrow helping friends plant a garden in their new house they are going to rent out ... so probably won't get to the website again until the afternoon ... Oh, and merlin has a pampering session in the morning ... he just loves it when our friend Bonnie comes over to give him a bath and a blow dry .. lol ... he hurt his leg last week so has been on exercise rations and is going stir crazy so he will also be helping plant the garden tomorrow ... lol ... he is very good at weeding ... have a great day ...

merlin sends lady lots woofs and snuggles and says she is very pretty ...

lol Kym ... no, I'm an aussie wannabe, lol ... well an everything wannabe, lol, but just a canadian .. lol ... (isn't that awful, lol) I am just joking .. lol

I think Merlin is howling for her, lol ... and I'll bet he can kick up a bit of weeds, hope he doesn't eat them, lol ... sounds like you have a nice day ahead of you, enjoy it, I hope you get plenty of sunshine to plant and then plenty of rain to soak them down and embed them good!!

Well you have lots of time to work on and enjoy your site, it is totally functional and beautiful as it ..

Woofs and snuggles from Lady right back to Merlin ... :)
She'd love him!!

Take care ... have a zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ;lol

Hi Holly

Lol ... I did a quick example here http://www.whiteshepherds.com.au/news.html ... not sure about the border ... what do u think?

Hope you zeds were restful ... Take care

kym & merlin

Are you awake already Kym ... goodness did u sleep? lol ..

I enjoyed the clip .. do you know Tia and Ices puppies were born on my mother's birthday, isn't that something ... and oh that is a great clip you made there ... nice .. 8 puppies ... wow ... Do you still have them all? You will soon need to part with them won't you?? They certainly have the life, I can tell .. :)

Hmmm ... at first I thought it was too white, but then I thought no, lol .. decisions, decisions, why not try that burgandy color that you have as an underline under your header orpossibly even a darker blue, maybe we might like that better ... lol ... I kind of got to liking the white after a few minutes though too ...

Lol Holly ... I got a few zeds ... just flat out busy not enough hours in a day ... never mind ... so much is happening rihgt now and my dog obedience club asked me about fixing their website ... I told them I would but they would need tochange host to VodaHost ... etc ...

I thing there is some synchronicity going on here ... Ice & Tia's puppies are owned by my friend in Sydney, NSW and that's amazing they were born on your mother's birthday ... my long drawn out search for that perfect puppy looks like it may end here (purple pink girl is my & merlin's new friend if her US import bitch is not pregnant to Ice) ... and puppies are 8 weks old on my birthday in July... I hoping this girl will be the beginning of breeding at Farseer (but not to merlin he is desexed) ....


I have done a couple of different things incorporating your suggestions ... could you take a look at http://www.whiteshepherds.com.au/index.html and http://www.whiteshepherds.com.au/thebeginning.html and the other one is still there .... this last one really jumps off the page ... please ignore the unworking (yep new word been a long day) stat counter ... I'm going to change it completely to tiny when the website is back up & the only reason I keep it is to really annoy someone here in Australia who ******* every move I make on the web ... lol ...

I tried the burgundy before the white and it did not work at all ... please let me know what you think ...

Merlin wants to know what sort of breed Lady is ... he really thinks she is lovely and sends her cyberwoofs and snuggles ....

I have been working on my website taking into account everyone's suggestions ... I have finished about 75% ... all the primary menu pages are finished but may still need tweaking ... comments please ...

thank you