Comments about my website

[Jack1102]

do these come with advertisements attached.

For 80% of the sites I have looked at, they seem to be made by Vista Print, using a premade template or freewebs etc, leaving the designers own mark on your website - not very good in business (but thats imo!)

I could've had a lovely site, using a pre-designed template, but we opted for DW, and designed our own (albeit not that good code/google wise). Now, many people have given advice, most of which we have took onboard and hopefully this time next week the site coded site will be finalised and uploaded

 

[Ruth Mills]

do these come with advertisements attached.

For 80% of the sites I have looked at, they seem to be made by Vista Print, using a premade template or freewebs etc, leaving the designers own mark on your website - not very good in business (but thats imo!)

I could've had a lovely site, using a pre-designed template, but we opted for DW, and designed our own (albeit not that good code/google wise). Now, many people have given advice, most of which we have took onboard and hopefully this time next week the site coded site will be finalised and uploaded

No, JQuery and Superfish et al. are Open Source Javascript libraries that you just download and include in your website, much like you are currently doing with Spry. So no nasty adverts on your website.

 

[Jack1102]

so, shouldn't Spry be used in Dreamweaver then, or would you advise against it and use summit like JQuery or Superfish

 

[bhhdesign]

do these come with advertisements attached.

For 80% of the sites I have looked at, they seem to be made by Vista Print, using a premade template or freewebs etc, leaving the designers own mark on your website - not very good in business (but thats imo!)

Your spot on there mate the only things Vistaprint promote is themselves they are not interested in back end coding and I can honestly say I have never seen a vistaprint site at the top of google
Someone maybe able to show me one, but I would say that the site is against no or very little competition

I am with you about not being good for business, its like having a hotmail account for your business email.

 

[Ruth Mills]

so, shouldn't Spry be used in Dreamweaver then, or would you advise against it and use summit like JQuery or Superfish

At the end of the day, they're going to accomplish the same sort of thing. I'll defer to BHH to explain why he doesn't like Spry; my main reason for recommending Superfish is that it's worked very well for me on several different websites and it's open source - as well as the matter of it still working if Javascript is disabled.

 

[Jack1102]

I am with you about not being good for business, its like having a hotmail account for your business email.

for the sake of £2.99 per year, you might as well pay for a domain name which comes with several dozen "business" email addresses such as: [email protected] or [email protected] which looks much more professional than sending an email with your address: [email protected] :|

And, tbh, anymore than two email addresses on your website is just OTT. What the point in having;

sales@, bookings@, name@, info@, enquiries@ etc.. Imo, the most you need is name@ or bookings@ because whichever email a (potential) client emails, its going to end up being read by the same person! YOU!!

At the end of the day, they're going to accomplish the same sort of thing. I'll defer to BHH to explain why he doesn't like Spry; my main reason for recommending Superfish is that it's worked very well for me on several different websites and it's open source - as well as the matter of it still working if Javascript is disabled.

When our friend recoded it, he included 8 main menu buttons, but this did not include a sub menu within one of the main ones and, having read and took in some comments on here about having sub menus so google can pick out words better etc etc, we have opted for 7 main menu buttons, and 1 5 sub menu within a main button if that makes sense, as follows


Home - Treatments - Prices - Offers - Gallery - FAQs - Bookings

- Sub 1
- Sub 2
- Sub 3
- Sub 4
- Sub 5​

So, in total, a 12 page site as above. Mainly coded, to get rid of tables, and using (at present), Spry Menu, i think this will be a big improvement to the site I designed/created 12 months + ago.

With regards to hosting etc Ruth, would you or Bhh - be a good one to speak to?

 

[Ruth Mills]

Your spot on there mate the only things Vistaprint promote is themselves they are not interested in back end coding and I can honestly say I have never seen a vistaprint site at the top of google
Someone maybe able to show me one, but I would say that the site is against no or very little competition

I am with you about not being good for business, its like having a hotmail account for your business email.

Generally, I've yet to see a free template-based site that passes W3C validation; the *worst* automatically generated code I've seen so far is probably Mr Site - as for some reason they open their list entry tags with <LI> and close them with </li> (or vice versa - I forget which) - which is going to make pretty much any XML parser have a major hissy fit!

If I were to recommend a free website provider, I'd probably go with Weebly if any (particularly as it's possible to point domain names you've bought from a registrar of your choice at a Weebly site - e.g. 123-reg or 1and1) - but I digress - and Jack will probably shoot me for going off topic again

 

[Ruth Mills]

With regards to hosting etc Ruth, would you or Bhh - be a good one to speak to?

Not sure what BHH is running, but I have a couple of Dell servers in a Midlands-based data centre that I use for hosting all of my stuff; setting up FTP access is easy enough.

 

[Ruth Mills]

hotmail account for your business email.

Hotmail can be really goofy too if you're trying to send emails to it from a website contact form; if your website contact form is sending email to a Hotmail address - but the sender's address is a Hotmail, MSN, live.co.uk, etc address (i.e. pretty much any Microsoft email address) then Hotmail will probably return a "success" code to the outgoing mail server, albeit with a bit of extra warning text tacked on - but will then junk the message because it hasn't originated from a Microsoft IP address.

But because the Hotmail server returned a successful status code, the application won't then flag up an error - so the client will assume that their email has been sent OK from the web contact form - even though Hotmail will then have subsequently junked it so it won't get to its intended recipient.

 

[Jack1102]

Not sure what BHH is running, but I have a couple of Dell servers in a Midlands-based data centre that I use for hosting all of my stuff; setting up FTP access is easy enough.

I was going to start a new thread, but now seems the time to post on this one (even though i'm hi-jacking my own thread!)

We currently use the 1and1 Home package which gives us;

10GB webspace
Unlimited Traffic
Unlimited emails (who would need more than 10 per person - be honest)
and various over features

We're thinking about downgrading to the 1and1 Beginner Package, saving £35 a year (The Home package is double the Beginner cost)

Beginner gives you;

5GB webspace ]
Unlimited Traffic
Ultd Emails etc
and 80% of the other features

but if this would be enough to run 3 websites similar to (and including Gentlehands). I'm 99.99% sure it would, but just wanted to check.

Have used FTP upload for months, so know what I'm doing - its simple, straight forward and no messing.

 

[Ruth Mills]

We're thinking about downgrading to the 1and1 Beginner Package, saving £35 a year (The Home package is double the Beginner cost)

Beginner gives you;

5GB webspace ]
Unlimited Traffic
Ultd Emails etc
and 80% of the other features

but if this would be enough to run 3 websites similar to (and including Gentlehands). I'm 99.99% sure it would, but just wanted to check.

Have used FTP upload for months, so know what I'm doing - its simple, straight forward and no messing.

Can't see why it shouldn't be; 5GB is shed loads of webspace - you'd realistically only need more if you have *huge* image galleries, or lots of multimedia content like music and video.

To be honest, I'd be inclined to stick with 1and1 and downgrade the hosting package to save yourself the £35 per year - it would be a lot easier than moving your website to a different server and having the hassle of having to update all your settings...

 

[bhhdesign]

So, in total, a 12 page site as above. Mainly coded, to get rid of tables, and using (at present), Spry Menu, i think this will be a big improvement to the site I designed/created 12 months + ago.

Jack you are missing the contact page, and like I mentioned in another post, terms of use and a privacy statement is required, I have got generic ones where you can just find and replace the business names through DW.

And with the contact page brings another two pages as you need the php to either display an error page or a thanks for your message page so thats just added another 4 pages to the mix.

As for hosting it depends what you want, I use xampp on my pc to test all my sites but as for hosting companies I would use different ones for different sites, We do not personally have our own dedicated server we are looking into this at a later date, I cant remember the name of the company but it costs £40 per year and you can host upto 20 sites unlimited bandwith, the only trouble is that the add ons are very restricted. If you want the url let me know and I will search for them again. Oh and you get one free domain name.

 

[Jack1102]

Bhh - the contact page is named as "Bookings" unless you think its best to keep it as "Contact Us"

We aren't using a "contact us" form, as Tracy prefers to use a simple contact us email link which will allow the user to email us direct rather than completing a form.

Where would the privacy statement site on a website like ours? Maybe under FAQs?

Can't see why it shouldn't be; 5GB is shed loads of webspace - you'd realistically only need more if you have *huge* image galleries, or lots of multimedia content like music and video.

To be honest, I'd be inclined to stick with 1and1 and downgrade the hosting package to save yourself the £35 per year - it would be a lot easier than moving your website to a different server and having the hassle of having to update all your settings...

I'll get onto that this week as the renewal is due 11 Dec so we'd get a bill for the following 6 months @ £35, then one in June for the same amount to take us upto this time next year. With the £35 Tracy is looking to buy "manicuresinnewcastle.co.uk" etc etc, so we can direct them to Gentlehands as "manciuresinnewcastle" is what people will search for when looking for something like what we offer.

 

[Ruth Mills]

Jack you are missing the contact page, and like I mentioned in another post, terms of use and a privacy statement is required, I have got generic ones where you can just find and replace the business names through DW.

Now that's some boilerplate that I'm missing... should be easy enough to add across the board with a bit of XQuery magic though. Probably worth adding though just to make sure that everything's kosher with those legal vultures and whatnot.

We do not personally have our own dedicated server we are looking into this at a later date, I cant remember the name of the company but it costs £40 per year and you can host upto 20 sites unlimited bandwith, the only trouble is that the add ons are very restricted. If you want the url let me know and I will search for them again. Oh and you get one free domain name.

Interesting... I doubt if you'd be getting 100% use of an actual physical server for 40 quid a year... it's probably a virtual machine running on a server with a fair few other virtual machines. I ordered servers built to my required spec from Dell so I could seriously pimp the memory on them and install the operating system and everything else I need personally - and pay a monthly fee to the data centre for co-locating them there.

I just use the Linux box upstairs for testing stuff... back in the dark ages it actually used to host stuff via our rather crappy broadband, but now just receives incoming emails as well as running a clone of the Java environment and database stuff that the live servers run, and other than that it's just used as a networked file server...

 

[Ruth Mills]

With the £35 Tracy is looking to buy "manicuresinnewcastle.co.uk" etc etc, so we can direct them to Gentlehands as "manciuresinnewcastle" is what people will search for when looking for something like what we offer.

As far as that goes, it's definitely best to have just one domain name serving up the site (e.g. www.gentlehands.co.uk) - and configure the other domains to just do an HTTP redirect to www.gentlehands.co.uk - but I'm guessing that is what you would be wanting to do anyway.

Having mirrored content (i.e. identical websites served up by two or more domains) is a definite no-no for SEO; Google themselves recommend against it.

 

[angelina221]

I don't know what's happening. I log on to salon geek and it's all in English. For some strange reason though, when i click onto this thread, it's in a completely different language! Perhaps you computer geeks can shed some light on this!

 

[TracyS]

I don't know what's happening. I log on to salon geek and it's all in English. For some strange reason though, when i click onto this thread, it's in a completely different language! Perhaps you computer geeks can shed some light on this!

That made me laugh lots :green::green:

It's like an episode of Code Wars on here!!

xx

 

[Ruth Mills]

That made me laugh lots :green::green:

It's like an episode of Code Wars on here!!

xx

It was last night/early this morning - quite literally in fact! Thankfully we seem to be past the worst of the childishness now though (of which I am as guilty as any) and are working as a team to get Jack to create you the best possible website - as well as sharing lots of useful tips along the way (I can certainly say I've learned some useful stuff tonight)...

 

[TracyS]

Well personally I think you're all worth your combined weights in gold and if the occassion arises the drinks are on me! (No Jack, that doesn't mean you can have my Magners when you get home tomorrow!!)

:hug:

 

[Jack1102]

Thats Ok TracyS, I can drink Rosé

Ruth - with regards to re-direction, we have purchased said domains.. is it best to wait until our site is totally redone (just waiting for Bhh on something, then a couple of hours work we should be good to go) or can we start linking them up, and how would you suggest doing this.