new powweb customer

[NameCritic]

Just recently signed up with powweb. have mosaicmiami.org there but no site on it yet. building that one.

I have one on a freehost that I will be moving here as soon as I solve a dns problem, but would appreciate a review of that website.

it's http://www.kidsearchnetwork.org

we are a nonprofit missing children organization so this definitely isn't spam. Thanks for any help you guys can give by reviewing thye site. I don't have thin skin so give it to me straight.

oh by the way. Keep in mind it's on a freehost! if the page doesn't load right the first time, refresh it.

[B&T]

I think it is very well done.

Welcome to PowWeb.

[NameCritic]

took me forever. 170 pages that took about 6 weeks. I'm strictly an html guy. no stylesheets. Have to learn stylesheets so it won't take so long.

[Marko Peric]

This isn't a critique, but yeah, I strongly advise you to learn stylesheets. CSS may take a little while to get used to, especially if you've worked with straight html for a while, but once you do, you'll keep finding more and more things you can do with them, and more and more things you want to do with them. It's like cooking with a microwave oven versus cooking with an open flame.

[NameCritic]

As I cook everything in a microwave. no time for anything else. will take that advice and start learning.

[linnetwoods]

I'm afraid I'm still a manual page creator too, I haven't found the time or inclination to create stylesheets either, being quite happy to create templates of my own by making pages I like and then just copying them as many times as I need them and changing the content... That's probably why some of my sites take years to create instead of days but I'm happy enough plodding along...

Anyway, I applaud the content of your site but I find the home page too full and too BRIGHT BLUE for such a serious topic. I feel that someone who is already alarmed/on edge/ panic-stricken or otherwise nervous may be likely to become even more so on opening your home page. I'd be inclined to try and reduce the physical amount of text that draws the visitor to click a topic and read on and to tone down the colour a little to something slightly more tranquilizing...

Great site in every other respect though. Good for you!

[NameCritic]

I appreciate your comments. you aren't the only one who mentioned the colors scheme, so I will look into some changes there.

A little something I like to pass on in return for your time in reviewing my site.

I like to ask web clients a question. If you were going to take out magazine ads for your product, would you design the ad you are putting in teen magazine exactly the same as the one your are putting in the wallstreet journal?

Of course not, you'd design them to each of your specific demographic targets.

Then why do you have just one website?

A website isn't an address on the web, not a store on the web, it's an ad, plain and simple, if you are selling a product. The main advantage over tv, radio, and magazines, is that you have to pay each time you do those ads. Each time you build a website it stays there as long as you want it to at no extra charge except hosting and bandwidth.

The idea is to buy several domain names. Build one site for show and the rest for dough.

Build your first site you want to show off. Get another domain name and build a completely different site on the same topic for the same product, Rinse, Lather, Repeat.

If you build 100 websites selling that product, all different, following different search engine rules, different key words, different metas, different text, graphics, etc. and your competitor only has one website, even one that he dilligently works on, who do you think will do more business?

Anyway, thats my tip o the day for those that may not already know.

[Skunkboy]

*check your Yahoo!, I sent a msg*

[linnetwoods]

Umm... sounds like another sort of spamming, if you don't mind me saying so - I prefer one well crafted site that tells the visitor who is doing the selling; what they are selling; where they are selling it from; how much they want for it - or at least how to find out the answer to that question easily; why one might want that item or service in preference to competing ones and how one can acquire the product/service if attracted by all the foregoing...

If the site engages visitors in a visually pleasant or textually interesting way, so much the better. The idea of banging out a hundred sites all selling the same thing and putting people off surfing the net because one is constantly going round in circles is abhorrent to me.

I don't shop in garish modern shopping malls that are identical to a string of others identical in almost every respect across the country, or world. They are not for me. I like a small, family-run or owner-operated business to spend my money with. I will go to some trouble to support such businesses, including spending slightly more for the privilege of being treated like a person not a spender to be processed.

I like individuals of character, interesting people, and it is with them that I like to spend my money. In the future in your world, it will not matter whether the gizmo comes from you or any other of a zillion webmasters thrusting their goods at the public. It will simply be a matter of price and thus only the global giants will be left in the game.

What you are suggesting is exactly what those globalizers want us all to do - create such a wall of drivel that only a major brand name that can afford billboards right across motorways and intensive television advertising will stand out above it all...

I think that to make money is a perfectly acceptable goal provided that it isn't the only goal you have. Money in itself has no value except that of the things it can buy you. If the way you earn money makes you feel uncomfortable about yourself, or others feel uncomfortable about you, no amount of it will ever be enough to compensate you for the loss of self-esteem involved.

A very rich man and a very poor man have a lot in common. They have to spend so much of their time thinking about money that they are in danger of being enslaved by the thought of money itself rather than being able to enjoy the life they have. Trust me, I have met enough extremely wealthy and extremely poor people, and have been rich enough and poor enough personally, to have an inkling of what I am talking about...

What you have had will be forgotten long before what you have done...

[NameCritic]

As for the last post here. Is McDonalds spamming by having thousands of locations? How about Pizza Hut?

If you were building a business outside the internet you sound as if you would have only one location forever and would never be willing to expand.

As I said, this is advertising. The more ads you take out the more results you get. That is the bottom line.

As for the rest of it. Build each website as if it is the only one you have. Make each one serve it's purpose even if it's the same purpose your other websites are performing.

Each website will attract different customers not the same ones over and over as you seem to assume.

If Ray Kroc had thought that way, we'd all still have to travel to California to get a big mac.

[linnetwoods]

Interesting comments, NameCritic.

How will the different websites attract different customers? Just how many ways are there to describe a Big Mac to a search engine? How many MacDonalds outlets are there in any one geographic location? Does every MacDonalds store have it's own website?

Do some stores have a blue MacDonalds sign whilst others sport a green or pink one? I don't think so.

It is the very uniformity of MacDonalds that has gained them the psychological advantage that made you choose that name to describe a burger ahead of any other.

Q.E.D. old fruit...

[NameCritic]

people find your website in many different ways, I'm sure you agree on that. Different people use different methods.

Bottom line. If you built two websites, even if they were identical, different people would find the two websites more often than the same person finding both.

the spider for one engine finds one but not the other and vice versa as well as a thousand other factors that determine how people find your website.

Cingular sells cell phone service, so does at&t, so does bellsouth. Yet it's all really cingular wireless under any of those names.

Best way to beat your competition is to be your competition in a way.

No time to explain it further. Not really trying to debate you on the topic. I've built around 3000 websites, bought and sold about 1500 domain names back when there was profit in it, I've seen it work. You do it anyway you want. Won't effect me. Just trying to pass on a tip that I know through experience works. Trying to be helpful. Your way works for you I'm happy for you.

[Kitchensink108]

I've never really seen somebody use that strategy before. Just saying that if you look at the big name sites, Amazon, Google, etc, they have many different sites, but the only difference between them is the language. It's highly possible for one site on its own to succeed, and I just don't see how having two of the "same but different" sites will increase hits, given that if they didn't find one, how did they find the other?

Anyways, moving on. Critique:
-Color scheme
-No Bravenet hit counters
-No Google search boxes unless it's appropriate, which I don't feel it is
-The layout just seems cluttered with links. You have the links up top, left links, right links, links in the middle, it just never ends! I suggest looking into drop-down menus or something (you can find many of these just from a Google search).
-I don't like the location of the marquee. I would recommend relocating it to either the top of the page or above the "Welcome" message.

Stylesheets will help you a lot, but so will PHP. You have like a three page long script just for your date. If you convert it to PHP you'll cut down the filesize a good deal, making download times faster and using less bandwidth.

[linnetwoods]

Wow, NameCritic! That's an average of 230 websites per year since the first ever site went online in 1992, assuming you were one of the very first to publish a website... Not sure whether to be impressed by your output or horrified at the likely absence of much originality in sites churned out that fast...

It takes me four days to create a 20-page website and get it online, including gathering and creating images, creating copy and a session for final tweaking with the client, so I could manage 91 websites a year if I were to work flat out. Assuming some sites had less pages, I might manage a hundred per year.

Some of my sites, though, have several hundred pages in many categories so they take rather longer to produce, thus my true output is about eight websites per year, of which most are for people who pay for them outright, including copyright and thus my name does not appear anywhere on them.

I don't really understand bandwidth but, surely, a hundred identical, or almost identical, websites must consume more resources than one?

I'd be very interested to know, since traffic is clearly a very high priority with you, how good the traffic-to-sale conversion is using the 100 webs-are-better-than-1 method.

Anyway, as you say, we didn't come here to have this particular conversation and, as you also say, each to his/her own...

[Kitchensink108]

I don't really understand bandwidth but, surely, a hundred identical, or almost identical, websites must consume more resources than one?

I'd be very interested to know, since traffic is clearly a very high priority with you, how good the traffic-to-sale conversion is using the 100 webs-are-better-than-1 method.


It would use the same amount of bandwidth as one central site would, but the disk space would be incredible. If you have 100 sites, you're using up 100x more space on the server's (or servers') hard drive(s). Theoretically it might use less bandwidth, because each "copycat" site is of such low quality that is uses much smaller files than a single, high-quality site. But then, on the many-sites-strategy, you're bound to have a decent amount of people that find both/all sites. They peruse each site a bit, confusedly wandering about, asking themselves why the same company has so many different but same websites, which in turn uses more bandwidth.

[NameCritic]

if all the sites were 20 page websites or even 5 page websites. I believe websites are simply ads. some ads are 1 page. some are 2. some are 150 pages. production-wise your estimates are very low. It took me 6 weeks to build my last 170 page website and that was part -time. When I did this full-time I could produce them even faster. I know people who have built more than I would ever dream of doing.

In one day you can put out a lot of material. Much slower if it's for clients who want to make changes and review everything, etc. When you are building them for yourself you don't have those hangups.

As far as whether you agree with the way I talked about doing websites or not, matters very little. I simply put it out there. use it or not. disagree or agree. I wish you all the luck in your ventures and hope you will also share information when you have ideas that really do produce.

That's what it's all about, sharing information. Everybody gets to do things their own way. Ain't the web wonderful?

[linnetwoods]

If one were not to pass comment when a glib remark like 'All websites are just ads' was made, it would be like agreeing that this is so, when it is patently not so!

I have seen countless sites that are not selling anything, not advertising anything, simply sharing knowledge, art, empathy or whatever with anyone who would like it, especially sites that are hosted by servers like PowWeb who are clearly not pitching their wares at the giants of global commerce. Indeed, your missing child site appears, at first glance, to be one of them, or did I miss something whilst taking a quick look?

When the archaologists of today unearth an ancient site, it is very rare that they find two items that are identical, because there was a time when every person's output was unique, hand made and distinctive. Every trader worked at becoming known as a master in his field and sought after by his target market. Everything was done with thought and artistry.

What are the archaologists of the next millennium going to find when they unearth the cities of our era?

It is bad enough that, given a medium like websites, in which almost anything is possible, some people choose to produce material that is copied from someone else's or thrown together with no thought except for to push one or more products at their target market on the basis that throwing enough mud at a wall will result in some part of it finally sticking.

It would be even worse if nobody could be bothered any more to point out that every badly thrown-together site, every duplicated, dull and cynical site on the Internet is another obstacle that must be overcome by those who do take time and care over trying to produce sites that make people want to return to the Internet more and more often.

The alternative is to let that mass 'market' that you feel you are advertising to, be put off by the impression that the Internet is just another facet of the same pushy, relentless marketing machine that has already rendered most television unwatchable, most city streets ugly and most people slaves to the credit trap.

If your sales methods are as successful as you say, and your output as prolific, then I am rather surprised that you do not have your own dedicated host server and no time to spare in chatting to the likes of us more laid-back and clearly uninformed amateur web-dabblers here on these forums...

[NameCritic]

If one were not to pass comment when a glib remark like 'All websites are just ads' was made, it would be like agreeing that this is so, when it is patently not so!

I have seen countless sites that are not selling anything, not advertising anything, simply sharing knowledge, art, empathy or whatever with anyone who would like it, especially sites that are hosted by servers like PowWeb who are clearly not pitching their wares at the giants of global commerce. Indeed, your missing child site appears, at first glance, to be one of them, or did I miss something whilst taking a quick look?"

If you read all the posts above, I said "if you are selling something". Of course there are thosands, hundreds of thousands of websites whose purpose is not making a buck. And yes mine is one of them.

"If your sales methods are as successful as you say, and your output as prolific, then I am rather surprised that you do not have your own dedicated host server and no time to spare in chatting to the likes of us more laid-back and clearly uninformed amateur web-dabblers here on these forums..."

I've had dedicated servers. If you did your homework, you'll find I've been around awhile. I don't buy and sell domainn names, appraise them, or speculate on them anymore. I am no longer a member of the General Assembly under ICANN, but when I was I fought harder for a quality Internet than you may imagine. I have been one of the most outspoken critics of ICANN policies and have fought hard for the rights of individuals and domain name holders. All because I didn't want corporate america to ruin the Internet.

The fact is, they are doing so and have already done so to a certain extent. I love your ideals and even agree with them, however "IF you are going to market a product on today's web and IF your main goal is to sell product, you have to compete" My suggestion on how to do so is one proven method. It is not the ONLY proven method, nor did I claim that it was.

I simply shared information, which is what the web is truly about, the free sharing of information across nations, across cultures, and without boundaries.

That being said, I spend my time searching for missing children, physically searching for them, not just running a website. The web is an interest to me and I thought I might take some time to see if I can learn anything new here in the forum and to share what I know. I really don't have time for attitudes. So I've pretty much decided I don't have time to post here any longer.

I have no need to defend what I have done for a quality Internet, the success I have enjoyed, nor what I do for missing children and this is the last time I'll do that. I had forgotten what it was like to try to help people in forums, they are all experts and have no time to listen, they usually just want to argue about who might be the smartest.

Not interested. Cya.

[mlearn]

I am going to ignore the on-going conversation and talk more about the site in question...

-I will agree with other people, sorry but the color is not appeasing...
-Instead of learning CSS, learn PHP first. Most of my site is database driven and it allows you to create a few pages that server up almost all your content. It is a much better way to spend your time. Then you are not worrying about how it looks on every page, you don that once, and then you can just worry about content...
-I do not like how the page is so Narrow, sure I run my computer at a high resolution, but I am sure that it still would not fill up a 1024x768 screen. I am guessing you built it for 800x600... Use dynamic sizing and stuff like that...
-I do not understand those loading pages... Are you getting content from other sites? It just seems like there should be some better way...
-The links down the left and right side just seem very random... There are books, then other information then other books... It does not seem to be organized and the page goes on way too long. There is too much scrolling, create sub pages for "Related Books"... "Related Articles"... and so on, do not try to cram everything into the front page...

I love the idea of the site, but I do not like the UI... work on it... use some PHP and other stuff like that... Good luck... If nothing else, consider using a Content Managment System (CMS) they let you focus more on the content and less on the design...

-Matt
http://www.LearnFamily.com

[Kitchensink108]

CSS/PHP debate:
CSS is used for styling, and helps keep a consistent look throughout your entire site even if you make a small layout change.

PHP/MySQL is used for content. It helps you manage content and generate content on the fly. This allows much more flexibility in what gets displayed: when, why, and how.

From the looks of it, you definitely need to focus a little more on styling, but your site wouuld work great with databases, too. Something I like to do (in small amounts) is use PHP to generate CSS, but that involves learning both languages. Oh, and CSS is simple. PHP is easy/moderate if you've had some programming experience before. I don't know how easy it is if this is your first language.

[NameCritic]

Soon I will be turning the site over to a new webmaster. Running the org takes all my time, however I really appreciate both getting back to the topic and for your suggestions.

I agree with you about the link for related books and related articles to cut down on the length of the pages. Great idea. That is something I will handle with the next edit which is way overdue.

The database idea is also the way to go, missing adults are found often and keeping up with that and updating the page is very difficult. With a database it would be much easier I assume. That would also solve my events pages. Those change often as well and we have a lot of events to announce. I need a good calendar for that.

Someone else mentioned an easier way to display time and date. Like to know a lot more about that too.

As far as narrow. I still think you need to build for 800x600 and know most people are still on that resolution, however I could do it in 100% instead. But you mentioned another way to achieve that. Like to know more there too.

My expertise doesn't lie in design or choosing colors, etc., obviously. More towards marketing and content. I'm recruiting a person who owns a prominent web development company to the Board of Directors and I'm hoping to get away from it for the most part except for maybe updating the database, etc.

My hope is they will rebuild the website for me along with other more focused websites. What I had tried to explain before and maybe didn't do such a good job of it, is this website contains all the things kidsearch does.

I also own RunawayTeens.org and we search for runaways. So will be building a focused website on runaway teens only. We publish Most Wanted Newspaper and will be using mostwantednewspaper.com to strictly focus on that topic. FloridaMissingChildren.org will be strictly about children missing in Florida. So there is one website that has everything, then several websites focused on specific topics or portions of the main site.

Different people will find different websites. People searching for specifically for runaway teen info will find the runawayteens.org website more relevant to their search. People searching for other specific topics will find the sites that are most relevant to their search terms. Those who get our business cards, letterhead, etc. will get to the main website for the charity.

I know subdomains can achieve some of that but seperate websites on seperate domain names get treated seperately by the search engines. Sounds overcomplicated to some but not really very complicated IMHO.

Thanks again for all the great suggestions.

[Kitchensink108]

IMO, your layout works, and if you only have the option of excelling in scripting or styling, for your site, scripting (which goes hand-in-hand with databasing) is the way to go. Easy way to display the date: <?php echo date('m-d-y') ?>

[linnetwoods]

...if I gave the impression that I thought I was smarter than anyone (patently NOT true;-), let alone you personally, or that I wanted to put you down in any way. Looking back at what prompted your response, I can see how my comments came across far less humourously and appeared far harsher than was my intention and I am humbly sorry for failing to moderate my output properly. I am also sorry for having passed comment on anything, or anyone, without researching properly - as you pointed out, I didn't know enough about you to make some of those remarks, however flippantly they were made.

PLEASE don't stop posting helping people on these forums, including me - we all need each other and you would be sorely missed by everyone, not just me. What you are doing out there in the real world as well as on the net is really important.

Having just spent most of the past couple of weeks in court as an interpreter on a horrendous case involving a runaway minor, I fully appreciate the stress you must be under in your work and I would ask you to accept the small sample of that level of stress that I have just tasted as a mitigating circumstance in my appalling scribblings.

I have, I think, unconsciously been coming to the forums most evenings lately (after quite a long absence) as an escape from the days' ghastliness. How horrible to think that, if this place has seemed like something of an escape for you too, that you should meet someone behaving like such a horrible old harridan as I have, instead of the person I like to think I am usually...

Once again, I apologise to you, and to anyone else who found my remarks offensive.