how about this for a template?

[davieling]

Hi there,

Myslf and my mate just finished designing a template for a website (italian hotel in rome)

the url of the template is: (none of the links work as it is just a template)

http://glassco.co.uk/hotel/english/veneto.htm

i am a bit worried that the search engines wont find the h1 an h2 tag as they appear so far down....

also do you think the page is too busy? does it take too long too download...?

im thinking of changing the links on the left from gifs to just plain text with rollover effects (using a style sheet) but would that make much difference?

i would really appreciate anybodys comments on absolutely anything to do with the page.... you can be as cruel as you like as I have tough skin (you have to have if you live in Scotland believe me)

many thanks
warm regards
david ling

[Blue]

Hi davieling,

A couple of threads you might find helpful:

http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=537&highlight=table+trick

http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=177&highlight=table+trick

You should definately put your Javascript in an external file, and take a look at CSS (do a search in here) as you can clean up your code a lot using it.

**********

One thing about the site that sort of bothered me was the center pic of the fountain and two doors was skewed counterclockwise. If you could rotate it a little clockwise I think it would look much better.

I really like the header graphic and the general site layout looks real nice too.

You may wish to widen the whole site a bhit as you have about 100 pixels to play with at 800x600?

All-in-all I think it looks pretty good!

[davieling]

many thanks for your swift reply

i read your all the comments on the two threads that you posted me and they have been quite illuminating.

i particularly like the way that chap designed the site: http://www.claritypackaging.co.uk/

making the h1 tag appear at the top of the body even though the left hand side menu bar should be before it ! Neat! but how do you do it? I know it is with a CSS sheet but can anyone give me any pointers?

also putting all the javascript into an external file sheet sounds magic but do you have any advice on where I can dind tutorials on that?

your help is gratefully appreciated and many thanks for your positive comments regarding the overall layout of the site.

cheers
david

[sanity]

Hi David,

As you suggested I would consider making the nav options text rather than images as this way it is better for the spider to crawl. Apart from that it's looking good :up:

Sophie

[Blue]

Hey davieling!

Here (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/t495/s.html) is another (quite long) thread on CSS which should be some good reading.

Everything you wanted to know about CSS. (http://www.w3.org/)

Topstyle CSS Editor (http://bradsoft.com)

External Javascript tutorial (http://www.pageresource.com/jscript/jxtern.htm)

This ought to get you started. :cheers:

[Hasenfefer]

"making the h1 tag appear at the top of the body even though the left hand side menu bar should be before it ! Neat! but how do you do it? I know it is with a CSS sheet but can anyone give me any pointers?"

Does anyone know 'specifically' how to do that or could point me to a tutorial or something similar where I can learn how to?

I'm playing with TopStyle and reading various articles about CCS in general but can't find anything specifically about the above subject.

Thanks - Has

[markymark]

Has and Davieling,

Yeah, I know how to do that, as claritypackaging.co.uk is one of mine. It is pretty simple really.

But can I explain it clearly here, that is the real question. I'll give it my best shot.

Basically I have used in-line css to make any text I chose appear where ever I want it to (this is compatible back to NS 4.01 so no worries about browser issues here).

The tag is this <div style="position: absolute; top: 200px; left: 150px;"></div> You can put anything you like between these tags and position it on the screen as you want. One word of warning - if you use tables here, NS can get confused, but there are simple workarounds (set the tables to absolute widths for example).

In the case of the Clarity Packaging site, I didn't want the left navigation to be the first thing seen by the spiders on every page. In fact, I wanted it to be the last thing they came to.

What I did was this: designed the site in the normal way with a left hand <td></td> tag for where the navigation would be. The td tag was set to an exact width. Then, to keep this space open and avoid any browser issues, I put a transparent.gif here as a 'placeholder'. This meant that when I used the <div> tags shown above, the navigation would slot in exactly where I wanted it to be. I placed the code for the navigation at the bottom of the html code, where it would be picked up last.

Similarly, the <h1> tag was done in the same way, as using this <div style="position: absolute"></div> tag, I can always ensure that the first thing seen by the spiders is that tag. It also allows more freedom in the layout.

See www.plus-size-plus.com for another example of placing the <h1> tag. But in this case, rather than using in-line css for the navigation bar, I used the table trick , which is explained in one of the threads here.

The best application for all this is when you want a top navigation bar or are optimizing a site that has one - you can keep the look of the site and still allow the spiders to reach the real page content first.

[markymark]

External Javascript: Cut and paste your script into a text file, call it something.js, then reference it in the head section of your code like this:

<script src="something.js"></script>

Done.

[Hasenfefer]

markymark, THANK YOU.

- Has