Deverill

Just another way of wording it... Have you ever seen websites that talk about something and then they have a link to relevant books on Amazon.com? That's a common affiliate program. The webmaster has signed up with Amazon and they get X% of whatever a customer spends there if they followed their link. The poster you referred to is saying that if you are getting a cut of the hosting fees for someone who follows your link to come here then to blog about how wonderful we are here would be deceitful and dishonest. As Don said, we don't have an affiliate program. For $4/month HG would be paying us to host customers if he paid us anything. I honestly don't see how he keeps it going on the servers in the datacenters as it is considering that he has to eat, pay electricity, fees, internet access, server costs, advertising, paid staff, etc, etc.

Robert has some great suggestions and I have seen the same thing. Also, if you go to, say, Yahoo.com and hit a bunch of refreshes or their pages does it hang or is it only on certain sites, or certain types of sites such as ecommerce, that it happens?

Please remember also that the figure does not claim to include scheduled outages for maintenance purposes. These are, from my experience, very infrequent and always for the better good in the long run whether it is processor upgrades, moves to better datacenters or emergency patches for security sake.

Hey Matty. There is a lot of information out there but we must be careful because there's as much bad as there is good. It is exciting to have the "Aha!" moment about something and then put it into play and see the results. There are certainly no all-knowing folks around about this stuff because as soon as we learn something "they" change the algorithms or something else happens. I have reworked my most important client's site to get rid of the tables and use CSS-P and I can already see a difference. It's too soon to tell the full impact, especially when they are changing things daily, but it's both fun and hard-work. If I had my way I'd be doing web designs full time but the Key West economy is a problem for now. All the best on your site rework! I hope it works out well for you (unless you're competing with my clients! )

Hey, I just read this quote from GoogleGuy and thought about this thread. For those who don't know, GoogleGuy is a frequent forum poster at WebmasterWorld.com and is an "inside source" at Google. Although, as he will tell you, he does not know everything - most of what he says is pretty interesting. I hope this has something of value for someone. "I advise people to spend less time on their toolbar PR, rankings, or a single keyword phrase and more time seeing how they do across several search engines, seeing if they can be relevant for diverse phrases, and on looking at their logs to figure out what keywords users are typing to really find the site."

By all means, and it changes on a weekly basis sometimes. Especially with Google. Keywords and, more importantly keyword phrases, are very important and always will be. The optimal density is anyone's guess. As the SEs improve their algorithms (I say with faith that they actually will) it will become more important to make pages for our visitors instead of the SEs because they'll one day be smart enough to detect most spam/scam techniques and will not reward them. (I hope!) For what it's worth, I've heard several folks say Google is broken again as of a few days ago. I personally have tracked the rank position of my one client's fishing site and the position is bouncing up and down so much its graph almost made me seasick! Take care!

Perhaps an email to your clients saying that any official email from you would come from MYBUSINESS NAME and not "the xyz.com development team" or anything other than the company name. Many of us have a company name different from the domain name, or if not it is still "different". For example, "Jim Sewell Computing Solutions" is not the same as the "jimscomputing.com devel team". Prevention and end-user education are our best tools against this stuff currently.

Of course you have. If anyone is successful then there will be someone with "stories". There are even folks saying that TCH is a bad place to host Seriously, I put no faith in stories like that unless I see the contradictions myself and they are in context and make sense to me. I'll not defend Jill, it was just one quote I had handy and it's up to each of us to beleive whom we choose. All I know is that what she says is in line with lotsa other folks in that there is no magical percentage and that if you write copy that makes sense it will be the "right" density. Best wishes on your optimizations!

Depending on what you are doing with CSS you could have divs in the wrong place or overlapped or even in a string all above one another. I've seen all these myself but am by no means a CSS expert. Besides, "ex" is a has-been and a "spurt" is a drip under pressure so what's that make an ex-spurt?

CSS really is inconsistent in the older browsers but the latest versions seem to be coming pretty close to the standard. Consider your visiting audience and see if it is worth it to go CSS or if you need to accomodate the old-tech-hanger-ons. CSS has a lot of benefits. Two are control over what the viewer sees and benefits to search engine optimization because of less <TR><TD> clutter. Learning's fun! Enjoy and ask if you need anything!

I went to DMXZone to look at the product and it says: Server Model ASP JavaScript, ASP VBScript TCH does not currently run any ASP services (unless something new has happened) so unfortunately it does not look like it will run. I don't know what you plan to use it for but if it is just for photo album type things then I would suggest the Web Photo Album 2.2 if you have MX. Otherwise there are PHP scripts that do the on-the-fly image resizing. I used to use one but it was awkward to make look good. You may want to check hotscripts.com as they have a lot of goodies like this. Best wishes!

Another thing you can try if you are adventurous is to open the file in a text editor, preferably one better than notepad but it will do, and see if there are any text strings in the middle of the programming gibberish that may give you a clue what it is. I searched for vbsystem* on my XP-Home system but no hits either.

Hi BlackCat. Thanks for the kind words. It is always nice to see someone come here from a bad host and be able to actually enjoy their hosting experience! Welcome here and if you ever need anything just ask!

That's a pretty neat tool. Thanks STS!

Jill Whalen who is a SEO expert (public speaking engagements, big dollar clients, etc, not just self-proclaimed) says: There's one tool at www.live-keyword-analysis.com/ that seems to treat them as if a phrase is 1 word, but I don't know the answer to you. I do know that many of the pros consider a magic keyword density to be chasing your tail and that we should just write copy for the visitors and talk about what the site's about and the rest will take care of itself. Of course there are things you can do for SEO but this is the single most solid advice I see repeated again and again. Hope that helps!

Kasey, While I believe you are correct that SEs will look at comments, I would be very hesitant to use this. Consider the devastating consequences if the SE programmers decide this is just a way to spam the SEs and start penalizing you for them. Also, from everything believable I can find, Google ignores the Keyword meta tag now. I may be wrong, but don't count on meta tags for your ranking. The hardcore, long haul, honest SEOs that I have read all say that content is the way and to avoid anything that may be viewed as spam like the plague. The scheisters that want to take your money and run will use any trick that works today, even if it will get your site banned for the next 20 years. Be careful whom you believe - the Internet is full of people with "advice"... like me Use your own judgement and research everything you attempt thoroughly before doing it and you'll be ok. You can usually tell from a site if they are catering to fools and rip-offs or serious legitimate SEO crowds. Best wishes! It's a jungle out there so be careful people!

My five: 1. Google even though they are brain dead from time to time. 2. Yahoo! 3. MSN 4. AOL 5. Ask Jeeves Yahoo! because they are connected. They just bought several SE's. MSN and AOL because there are a lot of folks that use them because they "came with the computer" (or with AOL). Not everyone is willing to go looking for a search engine when IE or AOL has a search box right over "there". Ask Jeeves because it has a fair following and caters to a different type of user. Here's a link that may be of interest: searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156451 It's Nielson ratings for search engines.

Heya Nat! Long time no see! A few things to consider. Mostly opinion so take it for what it's worth. 1. As a designer, you are worth whatever your time is worth to you. It may be that you have a lot of free time (Yeah, right - I know better) so your time is worth a little. If you highly value your time then you're worth $200/hr. Now whether you can get someone to pay that is another question. 2. There are a TON of unknowns in a website. Will they have graphics you need to tweek or scan-then-tweek? Do they want a 3 page site or a massive monument to music, life and everything else? Will they provide you usable information or will you have to research it yourself? These and many others make it nearly impossible to make a fixed price list. 3. Get a written contract and control the payment of the money. Many designers do 1/3 up front after the initial meeting, 1/3 when final design is approved and 1/3 when the finished product is delivered. NEVER trust anyone or say "It will be X dollars when I'm done." Even the best of intentioned folks can get squirrely and then you are out all that development time for nothing. 4. How to set fees is up to you. Do you think that 5 pages for $X is reasonable or do you think they will nitpick you to death so that they never get a final version? If the latter then an hourly rate will protect your time investment. If you think a lot of folks will want a one-page site then charge by page. It's totally open and there does not seem to be an "expected method" so you are free to do as you wish. As for me, I set it up based on size of site (bare-bones, small business, hobby, etc.) and related a number of pages, search engine submissions and graphics to each. Any variance from the "template" fees can be negotiated such as extra photo touchups. Best wishes to ya always, amigo. If there's anything else just yell - hope it helps!

Hi Noah, I looked at your site and have a few answers and comments for you. 1. It is great that you are getting it right before submitting it to the search engines. This is a big mistake many folks make. 2. As for Flash, go to the site and click on View Source to see exactly what the Search Engines (SE) see. You will find that since it's a flash file there is almost nothing there for an SE to use to rank your site or even list what it's about. The most common solution to this is to either redesign as HTML instead of Flash or to add some quality content below the regular screen so the SE's have something to work with. Most folks won't scroll down but if they do make sure the added content they see makes sense and is not just an obvious trick to get high rankings. This will also help visually impaired or non-flash using people to know about your friend's business. 3. Meta tags - you don't have enough, in my opinion, text for the description. Remember that this is the tag *SOME* SE's use for the description of your site. If you make it a 2-3 sentence description of what the business is about it would be better. You also have way too many keywords. For SE placement purposes you'll want to restrict your focus to 2 or 3 words or phrases. You may do the research and find that a much-searched but low-competition phrase is "interior designer". Use that for your main page but for other pages you may wish to focus on "interior design examples" or "Beautiful living rooms". Each page can have its own focus. 4. index,nofollow on the index page would cause the SE's to index your main page but never look at the other pages in your site that it links to. noindex,nofollow on the other pages would cause them to be totally ignored even if a SE happens upon it. Leaving these tags out will tell the SE to search for and index every page in your site. 5. Alt tags are not very useful in light of the fact there is not much crawlable content on your site (because of flash). A crawler will have very little to work with as it is now. Best wishes and nice site!

Thanks for the kind words, Randall! We're glad you're happy here.

yes, I just posted in another thread that it seems Google has made a moderately major PR recalculation over the past couple of days too. My original post was on positioning but it may be partly related to the PR recalcs. Best wishes on the new PR sticking!

I think it's more of an algo tweek than a dance. They did seem to have a somewhat major PR recalculation going on the past few days though. The best thing to do is put good content on the site that folks can use, forget trying to trick the search engines, and don't sweat the short term fluxuations. Another very important thing is to ask yourself, "How would I promote my (my client's) business if Google didn't exist?" There are other directories and search engines to get onto, which will help your PR on google by the way, and there are other marketing methods we must not forget such as your email signatures and business cards having the web address.

I just read this from the blog at ODP (DMOZ's other name:)), for what it's worth: It seems that DMOZ is losing it's umph as a major player. It's still going to be crawled by Google, for now at least, and that will help get you into Google for sure, but it's not such a big deal as it once was. In fact, some SEOs advise against obsessing about DMOZ. Try it and if you get in, fine and if you don't then fine too.

Just wanted to throw out there that I'm hearing that Google is getting goofy again. There are some really strange results lately and everyone is pretty much holding their breath for a few days to see where things settle. If your site dropps out of sight (pun intended) then just sit tight for a few days. A lot of folks hurt themselves trying to second guess the latest changes and it's really just the programs doing their calculations.

Make sure you look at your logs to see which assets are being viewed and which of them are the biggies. I worked for a company called the Multi Player Game Network and we were commonly called MPGN. I did a search on the abbr and it took me to a ton of sites about a strange neurological disorder by the same name. Kind of a cosmic irony there, eh?