Critique my site

DEAR TINA: Please can you critique my site http://twoheartsminis.com

Kimberly

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Two Hearts Minis web critique

DEAR KIMBERLY: The critique was given at my FrontPage List and then you asked questions here are the answers to those questions.

Original Critique > "This is a framed site," >>>

KIMBERLY: I am going to work on changing this.

TINA: Just make a new web in FrontPage and start work on a template. First work on a piece of paper your layout for your menus, it really does work:) Then start with your homepage in designing your template. Cleaning up your FrontPage Code this article might prove helpful. and also How to promote your website further down the line. Test your templates and make test one's, ask the FrontPage List for feedback.

Original Critique > "You don't have any text links which is important for search engines and for those that can't see graphics." >>>

KIMBERLY: This is one thing I do not understand.

TINA: Image links lose all the benefits provided by anchor text links. (Which is simply good old fashioned text links that use your key phrase as the text for the link) Anchor text links are vital for your position in the search engine results and this follows with all the seo practices. I really hope you join Cricket's SEO Techniques class, it's the most wonderful help you could ever get in building your site and getting results in terms of sales and visitors.

Original Critique > Your using a graphic for your email link, not everyone can see that link when you use a graphic a text link should be provided see Protect your email address for what to do. This is part a business site and part a homepage site, I'd make your main domain your business site and make a subweb for anything else that way you can promote just the main site, and let friends and family know about the subweb. >>>

KIMBERLY: The whole thing is a business site. I raise, show andsell pygmy goats and I have an embroidery business. I have been thinking of doing a sub domain for the Kimberly's Designs. Which is my embroidery business.

TINA: Ok, see the impression I and others got was that it was a homepage site. If your truly serious join Cricket's seo classes you won't regret it. If you have another business you need to separate that out and use another domain really. Though I understand not everyone can not pay for hosting for more than one site, though I believe 1and1.com lets you do this for a very modest fee. Myself I have around 15 sites and use a reseller account ($35 a month) it's more cost effective for me, you have a bit of a learning curve but I can't afford to pay out more so I had to learn:)

Original Critique > You need a privacy policy and sitemap, sitemap's are essential for a better position in the search engines, not having a sitemap your restricting the bots from crawling your site effectively. >>>

KIMBERLY: All of this I do not understand either. Can you show me a sample of a privacy policy?

TINA: http://accessfp.net/privacystatement.htm and this is my disclaimer too http://accessfp.net/disclaim.htm Here is a very old article I wrote about privacy policies and here is a more up todate one written by Elizabeth

Original Critique > You have lots of pages that are not reflected within the menu, making a text linked menu using includes will make it a lot easier for users to find their way around. >>>

KIMBERLY: Ok am I understanding this right? Instead of using graphics with words on this as links, it is best to use just words. Is this right?

TINA: Yes though you can use both, perhaps use graphics at the top of the site and text links at the bottom if you don't want to give up your graphics ,though they should be easy to read and not add a lot to the page load if you look at http://accessfp.net my menu is all text links but I've made an effort to spruce it up a little as though they were buttons with the main categories down the left hand side again on http://addonfp.com It is best to use includes with menu's see this FrontPage Includes article for more info about includes.

Original Critique > The background on this page is not configured. >>>

KIMBERLY: I don't understand this either.

TINA: In Internet Explorer go to.

Tools Internet Options Colors Untick the Use windows colours and choose a colour for the background that no one would use like spruce pink click ok twice and refresh the page to your site you will see what I mean. I use this method to check my own pages you would be surprised at how many 'big' sites don't have theirs configured try looking at http://www.yahoo.com/

To configure your background in FrontPage.

Right click on the background of a page, choose Page properties. Go to the background tab, go to 'Colour's 'background' and choose your background colour, while you are there change the hyperlink colours from automatic as well to the colour of your choice and the text too. Press Ok. Remember to use the same link colours throughout your site so you won't confuse visitors

Original Critique > Some of the links are 404. >>>

KIMBERLY: what is a 404?

TINA: Here is an article I wrote about 404's. 4 Guest Article - "Error 404: File not Found"

Original Critique > With your photos offset them in spacing by about 5 pixels so the text does
not jut against the side of the image. >>>

KIMBERLY: Don't understand what you mean by this either.

TINA: Click your graphic to select it and then right click and choose 'Picture Properties' from the pop up menu, go to the 'Appearance' tab and see horizontal and vertical spacing on the middle right change the figure from 0 to 5 on both press ok. You will see how the graphic then moves away from the text.

Original Critique > This site could be pretty awesome in presentation, if you keep it as it is you should at least fix all the broken links, configure backgrounds. >>>

KIMBERLY: How do I do this?

TINA: As above on the configure backgrounds for broken links you can use FrontPage's report feature. Running a Broken Hyperlinks Report.

Original Critique > You need a copyright. >>>

KIMBERLY: Can you give me a sample of how to do this?

TINA: Copyright © 1999 - 2004 AccessFP - Tina Clarke. All Rights Reserved.
see 4 Guest Article - 10 Tips for Protection

Change from USA date Format

DEAR TINA: I have inserted the guestbook template from FP 2003. The guestlog.htm results show the USA date format, I want it to return dd/mm/yyyy, how do I make it default to that please, if possible in FP?

Mac (FrontPage Newsgroup)

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Changing the date Format in the Guestbook

DEAR MAC: Go to your Guest book page and click 'Submit Comments' to select it. Right click and click 'Form Properties'. Click 'Options' then click 'Saved Fields' you can change the date formatting there. When you have finished click ok till your out and save the form, close the page and save. Recalculate hyperlinks under tools then publish.

Microsoft Image Composer Support

DEAR TINA: I think Microsoft IMage composer came with my Front Page 2000. I'm trying to find a support or discussion group to ask a question. Can someone tell me where to find it? That is, assuming that one actually exists.Thanks in advance.

Catt (FrontPage Newsgroup)

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Image Composer help

DEAR CATT: I have a section on my site at Image Composer Guide which lists more links and help.

Broken Hyperlinks Report

DEAR TINA: When I do a broken hyperlink report FP shows links in docs also. Is there a way I can configure FP not to show links in docs, just links in HTML pages.

Rohit

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Customise the Broken Hyperlinks Report

DEAR ROHIT: Make a custom report. Go to the Broken Hyperlinks report View Reports Problems Hyperlinks and on the Hyperlink column click the down arrow. Choose Custom and in the first pane select 'ends with' and in the second type .htm or .html which ever your using, if your using both, you are allowed to make another selection.

FrontPage Meta Tags

DEAR TINA: In the Head as default, FrontPage 2000 writes:

<.meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<.meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">
<.meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">

I've found that I can extract this and nothing seems to happen. But what is meta, and why did FrontPage 2000 elect to place it as default?

Bill Fischer

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FrontPage Meta Tags have their uses

DEAR BILL: The two FrontPage tags are there so that you can see which version is being used to make the site (and as an ad of sorts) and also it tells SOME of the fp icons in folder view (and the other views) which icon needs to be displayed for what is going on. If you notice they are different depending what is happening, like weather a file is open or closed for instance, it does not affect them all, you can find out more about them at. FrontPage Icons

<.meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">

Defines the name of the program which created the web document. This is used for reference purposes only and does not affect search engine placement. The above means it was created in FrontPage 2000.

<.meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">

Used by FrontPage to define SOME of its own icon's within the program and is also
similar to the above meta.

Meta tags impart information to various platforms for example they can tell a browser what character set to use or how tell a search engine about your description and keywords. They go between the head tags.

There are two types of meta tags http-equiv and name. The first gives you extra control over the page by allowing you to define more information to be sent to the browser in the http header.

The second lets you define information external to your document, which might include search engines or spiders etc. You can find out more about them at: Meta Tags Tutorial

If you want to remove the tags you can do so with a Free FrontPage Addon at: No FrontPage Meta For FrontPage 2000, 2002. It works for FP 2003 as well, however FP03 already has the option.

Removing the tags has no ill effects, it just means SOME of your icons won't display as before. Some people don't like to have them showing.

They do have their uses though. Crafted with FrontPage

FP - E-mailing forms

DEAR TINA: I recently upgraded from FP 2002 to 2003. I'm trying to build a page that has a form on it. When a customer enters info on the form I want the form to be e-mailed to a certain e-mail address. So, I've created the form with all the required fields. Then I right click on the form and select "Form Properties". When the pop up box is displayed, the "Send To" options and "Send to Database" options are grayed out and I am unable to send the form results to either a file or an e-mail address. The "Send to other" option is fine.

I've created several forms in FP 2002 this way and I don't remember having this type of problem. I'm sure I must be missing a step some where but for the life of me I can't figure out what it it. Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening and what I need to do to fix it?

Susan
Larry Kacher

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Compatibility

DEAR SUSAN: When something is greyed out in FrontPage, it is usually because of Compatibility issues.

FrontPage 2002

Tools Page Options Compatibility Tab set all boxes to custom and tick everything click ok and say yes when it asks to refresh your web

FrontPage 2003

Tools Page Options Authoring Tab

set all boxes to custom and tick everything. Set Schema version to Internet Explorer 5.0 click ok and say yes when it asks to refresh your web

In particular make sure Author-time web components is ticked.

Notepad

DEAR TINA: The thing about Notepad, is when I have copied a script and paste it directly into fp html, it doesn't come out right.. I have to paste it in Notepad first, then copy/paste into FP..My question is... why won't it come out right if pasted directly into FP?

Jeanie
Jean's Multiplicity

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Copying and pasting to FrontPage

DEAR JEANIE: It does this because it's carrying across the formatting from where you first picked it up, even if that was another page in your own web within FrontPage.

When cutting and pasting scripts unless it's from a textarea box you need to copy and paste to notepad, then copy and paste to the HTML View (fp03 Code View). Using either right click menu or the keyboard makes shorter work of this chore.