check out the latest in DIY websites

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Permalink Reply by Mary Tonner-Third Age Consulting on February 24, 2009 at 12:22pm

Great stuff Jean....I will take a look at it.
Mary

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Permalink Reply by Graeme Simpson on March 2, 2009 at 4:03pm

Hello Mary,

Just remember these free/cheap DIY sites are never as good as having one done by a webmaster - they are always a comprimise. Some you have very little control over the HTML code in the back-side of the site. Some tend to load in heaps of extraneous code - totally un-necessary in most cases, many put their own titles in and so forth - terrible. Especially for a fussy old bugger like me - I get annoyed with it - I might add, I am a Virgo! - that may explain it.

I have just spent about 12 hours sorting one of these DIY's out for someone. It basically looked ok, but once you got in behind the code, it was a mess. If you do go for this, make sure you have full control over it, from the editing of the code to the upload.

Graeme

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Permalink Reply by Debra E Clark on March 2, 2009 at 4:47pm

Hi Graeme, I'm a virgo too and just have to get in there and find things out for myself... so anyway, I built my website using www.weebly.com. I'm only half way through it and have some work to complete yet but I'd be interested in your thoughts regarding weebly, and my website but please be kind :) lol. I've done the site grader and that came back with a lot of things to do which I will be doing when I have time but essentially it seems to be doing quite well so far. Like you say there are limitations but I just found it so good... Before this site, I had a site that I co built with a web friend of mine and that site did okay too but I just love the new look of the weebly site. My website is www.admincorp.co.nz.

Graeme Simpson said:

Hello Mary,

Just remember these free/cheap DIY sites are never as good as having one done by a webmaster - they are always a comprimise. Some you have very little control over the HTML code in the back-side of the site. Some tend to load in heaps of extraneous code - totally un-necessary in most cases, many put their own titles in and so forth - terrible. Especially for a fussy old bugger like me - I get annoyed with it - I might add, I am a Virgo! - that may explain it.

I have just spent about 12 hours sorting one of these DIY's out for someone. It basically looked ok, but once you got in behind the code, it was a mess. If you do go for this, make sure you have full control over it, from the editing of the code to the upload.

Graeme

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Permalink Reply by Graeme Simpson on March 14, 2009 at 2:24pm

Hi Debra,

Looks quite good. All pages have minor errors (well to be fair, not errors, warnings) which are things like "&" not being written with the "amp;" after it and a few other things not required etc. Not serious, but nevertheless nice to have perfect. If you use Firefox, there is great free add-on called "Validator" or HTML Tidy - this will find faults and make editing a lot easier.
One major thing as far as search engine friendliness is concerned is page titles (in the HTML) All your page titles are the same from what I could see, except the last word. A real NO NO.

Every page Title, Keywords and Description should be unique and relevant for that page. The "Keywords" tag is not that important these days, but does no harm to have it. All words in the keyword list again should be unique and found on that page - any surplus, just dump them.

The Description tag should be a unique, meaningful description of that page, using your keywords. The Title goes without saying must be Keyword rich and relevant.

In SERP'S (Search Engine Results Pages) it is the Title tag which becomes the clickable anchor text, so must be tempting to click on. "About Us" or "Contact Us" doesn't really rev anyones motor. Usually the description under that is taken from your Description tag, so again make it meaningful and above all, have one. You only appear to have one on your home page.

Sort that lot and things will be a lot better. There is of course a lot more, ie. the percentage of keywords on the page, the amount of "BOLD" on the page etc - links etc, but that's a longer story.

Good luck,

Graeme


Debra Clark, AdminCorp said:

Hi Graeme, I'm a virgo too and just have to get in there and find things out for myself... so anyway, I built my website using www.weebly.com. I'm only half way through it and have some work to complete yet but I'd be interested in your thoughts regarding weebly, and my website but please be kind :) lol. I've done the site grader and that came back with a lot of things to do which I will be doing when I have time but essentially it seems to be doing quite well so far. Like you say there are limitations but I just found it so good... Before this site, I had a site that I co built with a web friend of mine and that site did okay too but I just love the new look of the weebly site. My website is www.admincorp.co.nz.
Graeme Simpson said:

Hello Mary,

Just remember these free/cheap DIY sites are never as good as having one done by a webmaster - they are always a comprimise. Some you have very little control over the HTML code in the back-side of the site. Some tend to load in heaps of extraneous code - totally un-necessary in most cases, many put their own titles in and so forth - terrible. Especially for a fussy old bugger like me - I get annoyed with it - I might add, I am a Virgo! - that may explain it.

I have just spent about 12 hours sorting one of these DIY's out for someone. It basically looked ok, but once you got in behind the code, it was a mess. If you do go for this, make sure you have full control over it, from the editing of the code to the upload.

Graeme

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Permalink Reply by Mary Tonner-Third Age Consulting on August 17, 2009 at 8:47am

A bit further down the track Graeme since you comments. I am a Virgo too and I like to do things myself but I have had a web designed do my website for my Third Age Homeopathy website in order to get it up and running, but it is frustrating as I have Front Page and this was done by Dreamweaver so to have changes done I can't do them myself. So now that I have the 'Life & Health" focus covered with my Homeopathy, Life Coaching & Hypnotherpay 'hat' I am setting up my second business 'hat' aimed at helping small businesses, Third Age Business Dynamics I am looking at setting the website up for that myself as I want total control of it. I will certainly take on board your previous comments. Many thanks, Mary

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