8×10Gallery.com

Archive for April, 2007

I have been using CoffeeCup Google Sitemapper to build a sitemap for Google as well as for the site itself. It’s amazing what gets revealed when you see the whole site at once!

CoffeeCup goes through and shows all the top level HTM files and builds a map of the structure. As I looked through the heading I noticed lots of inconsistencies. I used different names, different abbreviations, nothing had a Page 1, Page 2, etc next to it. Quite frankly, it was a mess!

With the map in hand I went through and pretty much renamed everything. I figure if I can’t visually make sense of this site, then Google and Yahoo will never make it through alive!

So now all the related pages have the same title, they’re numbered so you know how many pages there are, they have consistent keywords, and consistent page descriptions. Had I done this all along it would have only taken a few minutes to keep the site organized. But since I put 18 galleries up and didn’t check any of them, it took me hours to fix this nonsense.

I have also been using the CoffeeCup Sitemapper to create my Google and Yahoo sitemaps in XML format. It has been very helpful with that! You can exclude portions of the site, skip over PHP code and choose which types of files you want included. Right now I have over 550 pages indexed with Google and each time a gallery gets added or I make significant changes I make a new sitemap and submit it. I have to say, the CoffeeCup Google Sitemapper has been very helpful with this! I use it directly on the server to index everything. It parses through the files on the server itself and picks up on everything. To make the HTML sitemap it goes with the top level hierarchy and builds the map from that.

Since Expression Web doesn’t have a sitemap utility built in (I will now feign surprise!) this is a great little add-on. And for around $20 it’s a damn good deal. You can get the Sitemapper at http://www.coffeecup.com/google-sitemapper/. And as a real cool bonus and because I am an Internet Coupon Code fiend, if you use the code: 226sTs when ordering, you will save 20% off the total price. This coupon should work with any purchase. Since they make a ton of web apps and the Sitemapper is working so well for me, I’m tempted to try some of their other offerings. I might look at their menu builder if this site becomes a lot bigger. Sliding menus would be cool! 

Hopefully the site is stable now and will get better indexing and ranking scores with Google. It’s hard to find things when you have it all misspelled isn’t it?

Keywords: Coffecup Google Sitemapper coupon code 226sTs save 20%

I’ve been struggling with DNS issues for the past two days! Somehow the wrong entry made its way into the DNS table and I’ve been working to set it straight. The site keeps disappearing from the Internet. Hopefully now the problem is corrected and the site will stay running.

There are changes galore on the site, but I bet you won’t see a single one of them! I realized I need to fix all the gallery pages with the correct titles and descriptions. I spent who knows how long setting them all to the correct display information. It really has nothing to do with how you see the site, and more to do with seducing the Googlebot to index this site correctly. It’s kind of hard to get the right keywords when everything says “picture gallery” in it.

Here’s to hoping the site doesn’t come crashing down around me again!

The first day of April did bring its showers and the weather has decided to go for a cold snap – relatively speaking anyway But I did take another quick jaunt over to the botanical gardens to see what there is to see. You have to be quick to capture some of those flowers! Some don’t even last a week! Several of the flowers I shot on Wednesday of last week are already gone, the petals dropped off and nothing is left but a stalk. I guess that’s all part of the experience.

I did get a few good ones which I added. I’m still not quite getting the white flowers to show up correctly. I thought with the cloud cover the flowers wouldn’t look so translucent. They still are. I guess I will have to keep working on it. I did get some other good flower shots; at least I think they are.

And on a side note, HTML gives me a rash! I hate that ridiculous language! (Every time I look at HTML I get a weird Wordperfect 5.0 Reveal Codes vibe from it! Isn’t this how MS Word unseated Wordperfect as the top word processor, by not having to look at formatting codes?? And if you don’t know what Wordperfect is or the Reveal Codes option, then you’re just a pup in the computer world my friend!) But anyway, I don’t use IE anymore; I switched over to Firefox well over a year ago. The point is, what I see in Expression Web is the same as what I see in Firefox. I made the wild assumption it would also be the same thing I would see in IE. Well, that’s what ya get for thinking! IE does not render my pages the same way. The main problem was the Announcements section looked different between the two browsers. In IE, the text is much larger and bold. I spent a couple of hours last night trying to figure out why. I thought if it looked correct in the Web Editor it would look correct in the Web Browser, especially since Almighty Microsoft made both of them!

After staring at the HTML tags I discovered the problem. A tag was opened, but never closed, and then open again. So in effect this made the whole section adhere to that tag. Apparently, Firefox and Expression Web were smart enough to realize it was a false tag and ignored it. IE didn’t see things that way. I guess you can’t always rely on WYSIWYG actually working. I would make another smart-assed MS crack, but I’ll refrain. But the lesson learned is, even if you don’t use the other browser, it’s probably a good idea to at least double check your work from time to time to make sure you aren’t looking like a total goof! So to all the IE users out there, sorry the page looked odd. It should all be straightened out now. See, told you all this was a work in progress.

Anyway, enjoy the flowers, because there are a lot of them!