Front page issues.

[agentgibbs]

I have been asked by a friend to create a him a webpage. He said he really wants it in html due to, in his own words to reasons related to search engine opimization.

 

My question is , i know front page autmatically converts your actions in the editor into html but is there a difference between this and 'true' html ? and if there is what is the best way around this.

 

He also specified that he did not want java script due to similar reasons but doesnt frontpage autmatically make its buttons out of java script ? what is the best way around this?

 

thanks for any help !

[ToonMariner]

there is a difference.

 

front page takes you input and generates a proprietary html bag of wbank. probably about 4 or 5 times as much html as you actually need.  Best way around this is to not use front page - infact unistall it from your machine asap - it is LITERALLY WASTING VALUABLE DISK SPACE.

 

However the fact that you are even thinking of using front page suggests that you probably don't yet have the skills to do this 'properly'.  The issue is time - if you don't have much just do what you was going to do - if you do go an search tutorials on css layouts, tableless layouts, and search engine optimisation.  That last one is what will get his site a good rating - and its not as straight forward as some think (not that difficult when you know how though).

 

good luck

[agentgibbs]

Thanks for the reply.

 

Im afraid I dont have the time to learn "propper" html. I have always found frontpage easy and thats why i suggested it . I know your not fond of the program but does it make much differenence to search engine optimisation ?

[ToonMariner]

seo is all about how you page content and titles (and still meta data - but not so much!0 tie up with each other.

 

people charge mega £'s for this so you will have to go research it yourself I am afraid - SEO is more art than science - but the art is application of science!!!!

 

good look...

[dbrimlow]

Search engines are about the page content. They determine this by the text the page has.

 

While FP writes garbage code, so long as you have good solid text that describes the service/product/content of the site, then search engines can strip out the garbage, spider the site and index it. But they don't want to work too hard doing so. If a SE bot is having a hard time wading through junk code and all graphics with no actual text ... good bye. And, if the site is about something common, then other better coded websites in the world will rank ahead of yours.

 

The only way for a garbage code site to do better than valid code site is if "quality", "top level" websites link to it.

 

Oh, and the website will only look as you design it in IE. That means 30% of the visitors (Firefox, Mac user with Safari, Netscape, Mozilla, Opera) will see a strange or not working site.

 

This is what your friend meant by proper code.

 

Just be careful and make sure the text of the pages are more important than pretty graphics or cool animation.