Thread: Re-designed old site

Hi,

Please check out my website www.jdkinvitations.com and let me know what you think! Thank you!

Nice indeed!
Why isn't it Centered properly?

Thank you I never noticed that! I guess that's what this forum is all about, I'm blind to so many things I look at all the time!

OK! If you really must know .... before you center in browser, make sure you are completely 'registering left' in the workpane your page design (at the 0/0 axis), so when you do center it, it will not be lopsided.

Also, I love the fact you 'trimmed' your page to make it look like an embossed invitation, or a border with class, but you should be sure to make them equidistant and precise, yes? Throws off my eye unnecessarily.

Lastly, a suggestion to make it more balanced and to keep Branded credibility 'above the fold' where you need it most: I would personally re-size the 'knot' logo anbout 20-25% smaller and place it higher up in the page (in the header, actually) to the right of "Request a Consultation" (which may need to be made a size or two smaller in font size) --- so it's under the cities and above your navigation.
Being blue like it is, by making it smaller so there is more space around it and thus lesser an obtrusive contrast, having it in the header will be something Visitors will immediately associate and use. If possible, link it directly to your ad/mention in the current issue.
Besides .... it eliminates completely the mish-mosh placement at the bottom of the page.
* Don't forget to give the knot's logo a new perfectly SEO-oriented title when saving it at the new size. This way when you import it to use in BV in the Header, it also brings a fair contribution to SEO values!

Very important: In Page Properties, re-title your page completely (lose the "Home" title) to something more like "Custom Wedding Invitations & Fine Stationery from JDKInvitations.com | Home Consultations in Cleveland, Indianapolis, Muncie, Louisville"
Also while in Page Properties, make sure your META is filled out and that all your Keywords are actually anchored in that page's Content.


Just a couple of ideas to help balance things out without having to make the page taller!

...."About" link doesn't work?

Question - what would be a good SEO oriented title that will help out my site in a search? I'm guessing I include my business name and "the knot", but I'm not sure what would be the best name. Also, how can you make a html block smaller? Thanks so much for your feedback.

Paste the link script here, and I will modify it for you (let me know exactly the sixe you want it, and you can experiment by making a placeholder "shape" in BV and noting the width and height in teh X:Y plotter bottom right of the BV workpane).

I gave you a good optimized page title above:
"Custom Wedding Invitations & Fine Stationery from JDKInvitations.com | Home Consultations in Cleveland, Indianapolis, Muncie, Louisville"
or better yet (with fewer words)
"Custom Wedding Invitations & Fine Stationery JDKInvitations.com | Cleveland, Indianapolis, Muncie, Louisville"

Be careful about musing over the use of another's brand (in this case, liberal interpretaton of links, banners, and image for 'the knot')....
Using the brand, business name, or other entity in your web page titles is not only foolhardy, but most likely a violation of most internet agreements: 1. you do not own the rights to promote in first position their name which would be considered dilution of brand awareness or consumer confusion; you are an advertiser, which means any arrangement is by "subscription" of for a term only (when that term is up, so is any value of co-branding, but more importantly you want only sustainable organic SEO values attributed to your site); check the terms of tha agreement that supercedes your use of their HTML link (which was provided via some sort of affiliate agreement), as it will confirm the permitted puse of such banners and links, and specifically should define use of their name, brand, links, and kew word promotions outlines.

Also, I tried moving the pg to 0,0 but it didn't end up centering the page, it left it at 0,0, even though I had "center in browser" checked. 'm not sure why it's doing that. I just changed it to be centered manually after trying out the 0,0.

You should always design your pages "locked-left" into the 0/0 position according to the guides along the edges of the BV workpane ..... once you check "Center in Browser" in Page Properties, your website will automatically be centered when displayed.

The key is to be touching the edges of the ruler guides for both the left side and the top of your web design: it only makes sense if starting at "0" a header that horizontally measures 960 wide shows the right edge at 960 against the rule rather than 983, yes?
Also, once set to 0/0 it is easy for you to accurate determine the spatial relationships of all the elements of your website design.

* If you press on your keyboard CONTROL + "A" at the same time, all the elements in your BV workpane will be 'highlighted' and are now a group that you can move at the same time perfectly aligned with either your arrow buttons or your mouse. Click once anywhere on the screen to 'release' the grouping.

Nicely done! Looking forward to the minor updates, like on About Us page > last sentence: did you mean to write "They OFFER ..." or something?

ooh thanks for catching that.

Gorgeous, very well done.

Didn't check all of the links, but under "personalize", the link to "paper colors" is not working. Links are the bane of my existence...

Your layout focuses on the product. Really nice job. Best of luck to you!

I would recommend creating mailto: links for your contact email accounts at the bottom of your home page. Personally, I usually do not bother with contacting a business if I cannot click the email address or fill-in a form without it automatically opening up a new outlook messages. Guess I'm lazy but it's all about convenience I think.

If you aren't sure how to create it, it's pretty simple. Highlight the email address, and go into the menu to create a link. Rather than using the "http://", drag the arrow box down and choose the mailto: Enter the email address and you are done. play around with it, it could give you more conversations when people take less steps to contact you.

Best of luck!

Thanks, I will definitely do that!

On the "paper colors pg", which I have called "Color-selections.bvp", I have it saved like all my other pages, and I actually looked at it online yesterday, but now the link doesn't work, as mentioned in the previous post - Iget this error message. Any idea why?
Not Found

The requested URL /Color-selections was not found on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/2.2.15 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.15 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 Server at www.jdkinvitations.com Port 80

That's because you forgot to add the .html at the end of the link. Also, I would recommend not capitalizing the name of your pages.

Also, I would recommend naming the BV pages the same name as the name of the links on the site. It will help with SEO when the robots see a link's name matching the actual link, it looks more legit that way for the robots :)

thanks

Is there any benefit of not having pages centred? If someone has a small screen, isn't there something to be said for having the page over to the left; then they only have to scroll to the right and not both ways - unless you want your page to be narrow that is.

Originally Posted by pioneerVicki

Is there any benefit of not having pages centred? If someone has a small screen, isn't there something to be said for having the page over to the left; then they only have to scroll to the right and not both ways - unless you want your page to be narrow that is.

The key is the actual width of the site: 960 pixels is the widest standard acceptable in W3C compliant builds, as it is evenly divisible by 2, 4, 12 etc. in the way computers configure display according to screen resolution and across all browser platforms - MAC included. It will be a few years and a couple evolutions of Windows before things catch up to the 1024 "trend" that consumers have been inching toward for the last 3-4 years.

That being said, if your site is no wider than 960, even if the monitor resolution is set at 800x600, it will display with only 5% horizontal scroll ... negligable in most compositional respects and with little or no User inconvenience. The 800 wide resolution must still be preserved due to a majority of unsophisticated Users in developing countries using less than current systems just as browsers must include the sloppy and cumbersome code for IE6 as a bottom standard due to so many increments available until you get updated to the cleaner, more universal IE8.

With that concept now explained in basic terms, I can say that I in fact have one website that was specifically designed to be flush-left, and it was only for the uniqueness of the design, the presentation, and the novelty that supported the site premise (purpose) entirely, as seen here.

But, this is the only site I have created to be so, and for good reason: most consumers have a difficult time keeping optical and cognizant focus off to one side (the base reason my Content on the site is so minimalized = easier reading, shorter attention spans, and greater rentention).

In all my builds from any of my sites/businesses/companies, including support from my SEO enterprise (I have some extremely well-known clients, BTW), I prove the optimal build as one with a site centered in the browser.

To answer your question: Wider sites allow for more white space between elements, more room to orgainze Content display without seeming crowded or confusing, and to have access to more emphatical license that more pixel footprints provides. And, technically, the SE's actually do rate whether or not a site is centered, as it figures into how they evaluate balance and construct according to their Perfect Page Model.

I could list volumes of documentation to support my preposition, but honestly, for those that know of me these many years, you should simply take my word for it (or spend hours doing searches in these very forums to find references and docs).

I am more concerned with my fellow Blue Voda Users that simply think nothing of creating a site at 1100, 1300, and even 1600 pixels wide. It is so prevalent and unfortunate to find people doing things in defiance of actual standards and sincere advice and counsel .... they will learn the hard way, I suppose .....

Wow .... again, General. You should write all this down so people like me could have the real info to go with all in one place, rather than playing hit or miss with everyone else's posted advice and doing the hunt and peck to find these real pearls.

Thanks Tony, that's a great idea!