Proud to present webdeveloper.com my website

[DeltaOne]

Hi there friends.
I'm proud to present you my website, I just managed to host it a couple of days ago. Even if the website existed from a long time ago, it was on freewebs.com and had a different look.
I'm very proud of how this looks considering that I'm new with webdesigning.

I read the pinned thread here, and I must say that I get some odd things when I try to submit this to w3c html validator (I do not know what all those things mean :( ).

Please visit my site at http://lucian.goobergunch.net/ and tell me what do you think :)

[mat1979]

it's quite alright with me, but a bit on the dark side though

also, the first page where i had to click on the yellow "enter" button is useless as far as i'm concerned.

then you say:
This is our community. This is House Lucius, and everyone has a place with us, be him male or female, young or old, believer or not.

the him being a female sounds strange to me

also the contact page has a different colour (it ain't black) and so it looks like as if it is a another site altogether. this is true also but to a lesser degree with the affiliates pages.

mat

[Miri]

First of all, congratulations on getting your site up :).

Splash/Intro page: It is best not to include this in your website. Not only is it useless, it also wastes the visitors time, and discourages him/her from further browsing your website.

Frames: It's not such a good idea to use frames. When spiders crawl your website they consider each frame a page, so when someone makes a search they may only get one frame of your website rather than your whole webpage. This will effect your ranking in search engines. Google "frames are bad" for more information.

Colors: I understand your goal may be a "dull" look, but perhaps you should add more dull colors besides white and silver? For more ideas on colors you can visit http://www.colorschemer.com/.

Fonts: When it comes to fonts it's important to have consistency throughout your entire website. I notice the font on the main page is different from the font on the "About Us" page. Try to have website content a certain font, navigation a different font (and perhaps a different color), etc. Also, do a search in the forum for fonts because there are certain fonts that are recommended like Verdana and Georgia since they are easy to read.

Background: The background is great, but it is very distracting when trying to read content. It's a good idea to have a "clean" background for content.

Besides that, this is a wonderful start, especially since you are new to web design.

Keep it up mate!

Regards

[DeltaOne]

thank you for your ideeas.
I never seen the front page as that.... I can give that page away... mmm I think I will
About the colors or fonts, I don't know.. I sincerely like them... I don't know what else should work on a site like that.
About the contacts page you are right... but is a darker color going to work with that.... must try and see, black for sure it's not going to work.
About the frames, heh, I didn't knew that. I have no ideea how to put frames o.O I think joynic.com (the company that gives domain names for free - I got .us.tt from them) gives them... shame. But the http://lucian.goobergunch.net is soo long and has no connection with House Lucius :( oh well, if you don't pay for it, you can't enjoy excellent products.
About the "him" thingy, is it not correct? I was referring to the 'everyone' part... I don't know, english is not my first language :(



Overall, thanks for the critics, I'll try to improve

[Green-Beast]

Consistency in fonts and pages. The site is fragmented. The contact page didn't really work as I think you intended it. I'm using firefox 1.0.7. The text was difficult to read.

I do like the banner though.

Mike

[ray326]

I'm with Mike. Page to page consistency in the look needs some work and stick with sans-serif fonts.

[buntine]

I am a bit confused as to what exactly the House Lucius does/is... Is this a religious thing? Are you a clan of some sort? It there an actual group?

The "About Us" page, I would say, is somewhat cryptic. I know that you like life and gaining knowledge -- who doesn't?

Nice site, though. The simplicity is a plus. But I do not like the idea of a tiled background.

Regards.

[DeltaOne]

Well the vampire stuff is the theme of the site.
I wish it to be some kind of online community :)


Ahh the 'About Us' page... I will have a look at it soon, but I was fairly concerned about not making it like a vampire cult of some sort... I'll talk with my friend and see.

As for the tiled background, I think that even if it's done on a resolution of 800x600 it looks great on a 1024 one. Other resolutions, I don't know, I heard people are not using other resolutions (to see sites in - you may use a resolution of 2000 but the page is not full screen... no ? - never tried it)

[DeltaOne]

Ahh, about the font thing... I am a big fan of Courier... I have this odd feeling that using Georgia and Verdana will ruin how the site looks... but I am going to try.. editing the pages now, might take some minutes.. please tell me how do you think it looks *done*


One more question... do I need some kind of DOCTYPE Declaration inside my pages?

[ray326]

I am a big fan of Courier... I have this odd feeling that using Georgia and Verdana will ruin how the site looksMost people think sans-serif fonts are easier to read on a screen, serif fonts better for print. Of course the distinguishing characteristic of Courier in that bunch is it's fixed pitch. Looks like the About page text is bold; it would be better as normal weight.

do I need some kind of DOCTYPE Declaration inside my pages?Only if you want a fighting chance of the pages looking the same in IE and web browsers.

[buntine]

IE and web browsers.

haha. Cool.

[DeltaOne]

What DOCTYPE Declaration should I use? I saw there are ..4,5 of them.. must I use all?

[Green-Beast]

For your site I think you need to use this one:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">


Mike

[DeltaOne]

well on the site that I use to host I don't use frames, I don't think that can be it (the us.tt extension apparently gives me frames, but I can't fix that).

Is the <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN"> good? I had that on the first page, have no ideea how that got there....

I uploaded it on every page, let's hope it's good, took me a while to copy/paste the same thing on hundreds of pages

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

if you have no frames use this one
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

and this one with frames

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">

Your background shouldn't be repeated

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

Here is a list of valid doctype declarations
http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html

[Green-Beast]

I see the use of frames when I view the source code which is why I suggested the DTD I did.

Mike

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

Yes, but i believe that the frames are add by some kind of free host?

[DeltaOne]

Yes LiLcRaZyFuZzY is right, the frames are added by the free host. The *real* page is http://lucian.goobergunch.net/ Is it that bad, the background?
Because I find it extremely cool, how it looks on 1024...

If it looks that bad I'll fix the background with the doctype declaration, but it's only for 800x600, it will leave a big black space all over the place.... :(
Considering that, what should I use then? :(

[KDLA]

FYI - I suggest you do a grammar and spelling check on your site. I caught a couple of errors:
"Visitators" in your statistics section (should be "Visitors")
"to better understand the ideas and the believes" on the About Us page (should be "beliefs")

The About Us page is quite vague. I was unaware this was a site about vampires until I saw the metadata. You may want to consider rewriting that page to be more specific about your organization, including its goals, objectives, membership info, etc.

Speaking of metadata, it needs an overhaul:

<META name="DESCRIPTION" content="Greetings my friends, and welcome to this site\. If you are new, I bid you welcome, if you are an elder, I bow in front of you, mylord\.">
<META name="KEYWORDS" content="house:lucian:house, lucius:lucius:house-lucius:laurentiu:vampire:vampires:join:member:anarchy:anarchy, online:">

Don't know if your web host is screwing this up, but you might check on it. Things that need to be corrected:
- The backslashes need to be deleted from the description.
- The description should be more than just the first sentence on your page. It should be, frankly, a description of your organization.
- Within the keywords tag, the colons {:} need to be replaced with commas {,}.
- Omit the redundant metadata in the keywords. You might consider more keywords than you've got listed - those are pretty narrow in scope.

Lastly, a centered layout would be better. My browser/screen settings cause it to appear on the left, leaving a huge amount of space on the right.

Kind of creepy, but Good Luck -
KDLA

[DeltaOne]

mmm.... must be the free hosting stuff.... on lucian.goobergunch.net I don't see ":" ..

The 'About' page will be edited... soon (when I get ideeas)
I'll edit the errors soon too... thanks to notice.
But I still am confused about the doctypes ... :(

[DeltaOne]

I've done editing and fixing the pages.
I've added this to every page, I hope it is good
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
I've edited the spelling errors.
I've put some more keywords at the meta.
I will write something else for the 'about' page when I get some inspiration
I will probably do something else for the 'contact' page
I can't do this centered.. unfortunately; too much complicated, and I really like the way it is now.
I hope it looks better on other browsers now...

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

did you put a no-right click script?

[Green-Beast]

Those are some improvments. I don't understand the complication with centering your page. I did see one big problem, though, so big I don't even understand why your styles work. You have this rel link:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="css.txt" type="text/css">

And you really need to have this (remember to change the file extension for the actual style sheet):

<link rel="stylesheet" href="css.css" type="text/css">

Good luck.

Mike

[DeltaOne]

Oh, I really think that .txt is valid for css style sheets....
As for the centered thing... I have each thing from there under different 'div's so to warp everything up and center is quite hard to do.. it means that I have to de-fragment and do the pages again
By the way, I just made my site compliant with W3C standards, it says that it is valid :)

[Green-Beast]

Ok.

[ray326]

HTML 3.2That one's WAY out of date. You need to be 4.01 Strict if you don't have frames or other nasties.

[DeltaOne]

Do I need 4.01 Strict? I put Transitional there... I'm very confused on what each of them do, but if I need the strict one I'll edit the pages again.

[LiLcRaZyFuZzY]

Yes, the html 4.01 strict doctype declaration is the recommended doctype for html

[Green-Beast]

Strict standards are the best to adhere to.

[DeltaOne]

I've got this problem... major :(

Whille trying to see if my website got approved by google I kept searching for "house lucius vampire member lucian laurentiu" or something like it. But it doesnt find it, even if I have those keywords added.
If I do a search for House Lucius I find it, it's second on the page. Why can't I add more things to the search? :((

[Green-Beast]

You need to submit the site to Google and/or wait for spiders to index it. You're jumping the gun.

Mike

[DeltaOne]

Ahh, the odd thing is that google finds my site (if i add as a search the words house and lucius or if i put the first paragraph of text). So I must wait ..

In the mean time, I have added the 'About Us' page, changed my DTD from strict to transitional (I can't validate it if it's strict) and I no longer support the us.tt domain name. No more frames :)

[aamir619]

gd but a bit dark on the background bad for eyes go for something lighter. Gd effort though

[dera]

use a form of redirecting instead leading a dead link, you can also change ur domain to go to your site as for your new site keep the fonts more consistant.

[DeltaOne]

Ahh sorry for that, the main reason why I gave up the "us.tt" thingy is because it put some unwanted frames.
Thanks for the reply, I edited this front page with the correct link.

I have this question (now that my page can be found on google site search :D )... I've read something about having a robots.txt file in the root directory.. do I need to declare it with the meta tag (the one with index, follow) or not? I don't know :(

[KDLA]

It's good to have it for various search engines, especially if you link to many things within your site.
You'll need to add:
<meta name="Robots" content="Index, Follow" />
to your metadata.

KDLA

[DeltaOne]

Do I need to add that to all of my pages?
The problem is that I have alot of 'disclaimer', 'contact us' pages, that have nothing to do with the ranking of the site, so I don't want to jeopardise it by doing something stupid... (as I don't quite understand how these things work)

[DeltaOne]

Sorry to post this, but I'm confused... while trying to validate a certain html page named 'affliliates.html' i get this very very odd error. I have absolutely no ideea why it gives this error, it's something with some </center> tag but.. heh :(
I think this is the url of the file at the validator (http://lucian.goobergunch.net/affiliates.html) (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Flucian.goobergunch.net%2Faffiliates.html)

Can someone help me out? Point me in the right direction?

[Green-Beast]

It's not the <center>, but located next to it... you need to close a table </table>

[DeltaOne]

Thanks, I don't know how I missed it :o

[KDLA]

Add the Robots metatag to all of your pages. This metatag not only tells a search engine to index that particular page, but also anything that is linked from it. For example, if you've got a navigation menu on the Contacts page, the search engine robot will index the Contacts page and every page linked to in the navigation area.

This comes in handy for Google PageRank: the more pages that are linked to pages in your site, the higher your page ranking.

As to "no content" pages being indexed, I wouldn't worry about it. Unless the visitor happens to type in words specifically found on those pages (such as your name or address) into the search form, they will not show up in the results. Just to make sure, though, create specific metadata for these pages, rather than using that of the homepage.

For more about Google PageRank, visit: http://www.google.com/technology/

Good Luck -
KDLA

[DeltaOne]

Thanks for the reply, I have added the
<meta name="Robots" content="Index, Follow" />
But I have one question...
I've noticed the slash ( / ) after the ...content="Index, Follow" />,
Do I need to use "/" at the end of each meta tag? Or where else should I use it? Or is specific just for this meta tag?
Thanks :)

[KDLA]

Sorry about that. Please delete the slash. Your DOCTYPE is different than mine (I was lazy and cut&pasted this from my own page's coding) and won't validate with the slash in there.

Nice call -

KDLA

[DeltaOne]

Oh thanks, edited it. :p

[DeltaOne]

Oh, I have this maaajor problem..

What could have happened to the ranking of my site?
When I googled 'House Lucius' yesterday (and each day till today) it came up first. Now it's 4th (after house-lucius.uv.ro - the first website where I hosted my site, and that is now empty but won't fade out :confused: ).
What have I done? :(

It appears that its back again. Don't know what I did :eek:

[LJK]

Hi -
Have you thought about having the site on 1 host server instead of the 3+?
[And integrating the home page design elements into the Forum & Guestbook?]

Sparse, as mentioned. Nice header. Agree with the few prior posts recommending
that the bkgnd. NOT tile - use it as bkgnd pic for the container div - then some simple
pattern for the body tag so big resolution types can have it all...

Have Fun Wittit,
El

[DeltaOne]

Trust me it is just hosted in one website.
The other two I haven't even added their URL to google, but they appear, and can't get rid of them! :( (even thought they once belonged to me)


Unfortunately I don't quite understand the part with the background.. can it be the same for a resolution of 800x600 or 1025x756 without getting it tiled?

[DeltaOne]

I have installed Google toolbar with the PageRank thingy... why does it say that my page has a rank of 0? :(

[KDLA]

Your page probably has a page rank of zero due to the metatag/metadata problems you previously had. You'll need to just give Google time to update its index. Google spiders on a schedule - not sure what it is, but it isn't daily, for sure. I want to say it's six weeks, but don't hold me to that.

You'll want to contact your old web host and have them redirect the old website address to that of the new one - I'd recommend for a time period of six months. You might have to pay for the domain address, but it won't be much. From a usability standpoint you need to have this redirect transition period for those who might have already bookmarked your site and/or provided links to it in directories.

Once you become "known," and links are made to your site, your page ranking will increase.

KDLA

[DeltaOne]

I have one very ... big odd problem.

My website has dissapeared from the Google search system. What happened? :confused: :( :(
Please enlighten me :(

[KDLA]

Just came up as the number one result when I typed in "house lucius."
KDLA

[DeltaOne]

....that is.... odd....
I still can't find it even if I type the link to the site (as http://lucian.goobergunch.net/)


ODD :confused:

[KDLA]

I lied - must have been a cached file. Once I cleaned out the history files, "house lucius" didn't show up in my results; even when I added "vampire," it still didn't show up.

As I suggested earlier, you might try waiting until later in the month to try again. Google spiders on a schedule. It might have spidered your site while you were working on the metadata, or before you corrected it.

For instance, I added some pages to my website last week. Even though our site was set up with Google and optimized for their particular search engine, my new webpages still don't show up in search results, even when I type the exact name in the search box.

Truly aggravating -- yes....

KDLA

[vasam]

background is bad. it is hard to read text above it.