Deverill

If you really are interested, go to tanthrough.com and it won't go through my client's affiliate ID so this is not a for-profit post

I like #2 better. He looks a bit younger but not too young and serious but not too serious. Just better all around I think.

You are correct. You don't want to link to competitor's stes but to complimentary sites. In your example, sites that sell fishing poles, GPS units, charts, shiny brass fixtures, etc. but not anyone that sells the same things you do. My charter fishing boat client has links to swimsuits that let the sun through for an even tan and sunglasses for example.

A complimentary site is one that goes along the same topic as yours. If you have an Alligator Wrestling site then a link from a Yo-Yo manufacturer site would help, but a link from an Alligator Museum would be a much better link. The search engines visit the pages of those sites that are listed already and if they find a link to your site they'll add you to the list eventually. It's a much more reliable way to get listed than the submission sites.

Doesn't MT rebuild itself using scripts that run on the server? If that's the case then the only thing that could be in the way is like Mike mentioned about missing a confirm box or something of that nature. From my very limited knowledge of MT I don't think anything like ISP blocks or such could be the problem. (Again, I'm not very familiar with MT so I'm just throwing something against the wall to see what sticks but it makes sense to me and if I'm right it may eliminate a whole boatload of possible problem sources.)

A lot of pages are using Flash. It is well suited to the task because there are ways to tell when a page loads so the progress bar is accurate.

I'm sorry you feel that way, Russ. No one else has said that to me. I guess we're all entitled to our opinions of others, no matter what colors that opinion. Rob is exactly right and did a better job of expressing that than I did because he was able to stand back and be objective. I don't always do well at that when someone is saying TCH isn't providing services they pay for when it is the cheapest host I've ever seen and yet does all these extra things for us that even the most expensive ones don't do. TCH Rules and if by saying so I offended one person then I apologize but won't change my opinion. Rob's right about another thing. This line of the conversation has run its course. Back to happy hosting.

Yes it is, but remember that none of us "pay" for the help page... we pay for hosting and TCH gives us more. Why are you so bitter? Besides, don't submit helpdesk tickets in the tone of this thread or I suspect you'd be met with the same excited desire to jump right on it that you get from me... and being bitter and nasty makes that close to none, I must admit. Also, I said to submit a helpdesk ticket "as appropriate". Helpdesk may be for a broken link in cpanel but not for "the helpfile on SpamAssassin is out of date". I thought most folks that worked for multi-billion dollar international companies learned the art of diplomacy but maybe not. If TCH was a multi-billion dollar a year international company then I'm sure Bill would have the paid staff to sit around looking for problems or out-of-date help files but charging us $4/month he probably doesn't get enough to give himself the salary he deserves, muchless the number of people necessary to scan the entire site. Of course, he'd be well within his rights to take down the forums and helpsite, raise the rates, lower the support we get and still be better than 90% of the hosts out there... but he's not like that. Probably a good thing I don't run the company Ok, let's get this straight right now. You are not my customer. You and I both are customers of TCH. I happen to volunteer time to help out with the forums but I am not TCH... TCH is not arguing with you... Have you considered volunteering to research/write new material or edit bad links? TCH does appreciate any help that qualified and willing people can provide.

Hmmm, I guess we look at it differently because I see the TCH website as a marketing tool and a nice thing they provide for us rather than a "product" that's "supposed to be in production" Speaking of professionalism in the industry, did you happen to mention these things in the forums or in the helpdesk ,as appropriate, or just save them up for when you wanted to make a point? My point here is that TCH is run by a few paid staff and a lot of volunteers. We volunteers don't usually have a lot of time to go looking for problems but if they are identified then we can at least put them on a list of to-do things to get to when we can. If everyone sits back and says nothing when they see problems then we assume it's all working fine. If someone launches with 50-zillion things when they're trying to make a point or slam TCH then it's not as likely that the report will be accepted with great ethusiasm.

Ok. Here's the scoop. If Google has totally indexed your page then there's a good chance that you could find your unique phrase - but keep in mind that it may take months for Google to totally index a page. Remember that even if Google goes to your page it doesn't necessarily index it the first time. Some visits are just to see if you exist and others are to index your content. The Link: command in Google is broken. Do not expect it to work because it won't! If you do a link:Microsoft.com you only get 120,000 links and I know there are tons more than that. Besides, many many SEO folks have been saying for months and months that the command's not working properly.

The Google link: command is broken and has been for quite some time. It is not trusted by any of the SEO experts I "hang with" and can be easily shown to be broken. One thing you can do that is accurate as far as I know is to search for +jikrantz.+se -site:jikrantz.se It shows anything with "jikrantz.se" that's not a link from your site itself. The punctuation throws it off if you just search for "jikrantz.se" by itself.

Hi Betty. There has been "those kinds of people" for years. It's totally stupid! I can and have hand coded. I use Dreamweaver for most of my stuff. I have used hand-coding tools like HTML-Kit. I've even used Netscape Composer and MS Word to make web sites. The facts, as I see them, are: There is no special skill to hand-coding. The greatness of a site has nothing to do with the tool used to create it. Standards compliance is good. More folks can read your site. If you want to make a website for Toyota you better learn it all. If you just want to have fun then ignore all the elitist snobs. It makes me think these people have no self esteem and in order to make themselves seem better than others they manufacture inadequacies based on the one thing they can do - hand code. I just broke several boards this weekend by smashing my body into it so does it make Don a goofball because he uses a saw? Of course not! (I study Taekwondo in case you wonder why I do that. )

This is incorrect. A virus program could easily pick 5 random contacts from your address book and send something to them. In fact, I would write one that does just that so it would not be immediately obvious you were the source of the problem. I'll agree with those who have spoken already - it sounds like a virus of some kind and what "hacker" would waste the time to spam a few of your friends by hand? It would take a lot of time and have very little payoff as far as spammers go.

Never been hacked but one time my girlfriend (at the time) asked me my password and in my sleep I gave it to her. The really weird thing is that she's deaf and I fingerspelled the password! I woke up the next morning and she told me how she got on.

My opinion, and that is all that it is, is that the search engines can handle bigger and more complex pages now than ever before and should be able to index your site wherever the menu is unless it's huge and messy.

As Bob says, no one can be totally sure and it does depend on your particular set of hardware/software/settings/etc. I have personally installed it on 3 systems and they have gone off without a hitch.

Although the meta tags won't hurt, they really aren't used much for search engine placement. Some search engines still use the description tag for the text they show with your site in the results. As for keywords, pick 2 or 3 phrases of 2-3 words that someone seeking your services would put into a search engine and focus on those phrases. Don't try to cram every phrase you can think of into your page - just focus on 2-3 and if another part of your site deals with something different, optimize that page (or pages) for those phrases.

They are both right, Thomas. The search engine ranking improvement by putting content first is probably not big now days but as Berlie said, they often use the first thing they see to describe your site so you'll want it to be good. Use CSS and you can put it anywhere you want and not have to worry about it.

With all due respect, the problem is that you have reached out to the community. The community, by which I mean the people on these family forums, can't do squat to help with any billing problems you have with your account. I'm a forum moderator and even so can't even see your account info or helpdesk tickets. And was not being uncaring or telling you to go away, he was only saying that you need to take it up on the helpdesk where the folks can help you will read your issue and the rest of the world won't see your passwords or that you were spamming or that you didn't pay the bill or whatever the issue is. (I know it was only a credit card issue but these are only examples.) You wouldn't chat with the customers in the washing machine section at Sears about a payment on your account and expecting resolution from the forums is the same... we're mostly customers, some are mods, and then a couple could help but they're busy doing helpdesk tickets and may not see your issue for hours.

I use The Bat at home but use POP3, not IMAP, so I probably can't be much help. Have you looked at the latest version they came out with a month or so ago? It may have better support than the older version if you happened to be trying to use that one. If there's anything I can help with, feel free to PM me like if you decide to go to POP3 or something else - I'd be happy to try.

Here is a thread I started asking for some photographic images. It may help a bit if that's the kind of thing you are looking for. Definitely you'll need a graphics program like Photoshop or even Macromedia Fireworks. Photo Image thread.

I have no experience with .info domains but I do know that with Google the links to your site and the words usedfor them makes more difference than the keywords. My gut feeling is that there would be no "penalty" for .info but I have no evidence that is true. Which engines are showing the different results - is it mainly Google or are they all doing that?

It shouldn't - most of those programs look like browsers to the server.

Ah, don't give it another thought - it bites us all at one time or another.

Is Oscar a cat or a Gremlin? He looks a lot like their leader.