frame/tables template and files Question(s)
I'm new to site design but I do know html, tables, frames (ok, I'm a little rusty, and I'm learning javascript.
I'm designing a large reference site with a frames/tables template to hold the navigation links, logo, etc., and 1 frame to hold the selected file - there will be app. 260 files, each will be search engine optimized, and will have some graphics.
FIRST QUESTION: How do I make it so that someone doing an internet search chooses one of my files and also gets the template, and not just the file itself???
2ND Q: How do I design the site so that it loads quickly....it is going to be pretty big.
Thanks for any advice
The Webmistress posted this at 07:37 — 27th June 2003.
She has: 5,586 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
Personally I wouldn't use frames, you have the problem of the search engines actually crawling the site properly and also pages breaking out of the frameset from a results page. This can be fixed by putting a framestuffer code onto each page - search google for one.
As for making the site load quickly, you really need to just make sure that each page (you're not going to be able to preload the whole site) is a reasonable size and that any graphics are well compressed.
Even if you have a huge site consisting of thousands of pages you don't have to use frames and the site will load as quickly as your page size allows it to.
Julia - if life was meant to be easy Michael Angelo would have painted the floor....
Suzanne posted this at 14:59 — 27th June 2003.
She has: 5,507 posts
Joined: Feb 2000
Julia's advice is the best option.
Second best, because sometimes you need to use frames (usually in applications only):
For the pages IN the frames (not the frame itself) you can try the below. This is JUST A SUGGESTION, not tested, and not inclusive of all browsers:
if ((top == self) {top.location.replace(newURL);
}
You'll need to read up more on how to specify what page is in the frame, or you'll lose people and annoy them.
Megan posted this at 15:51 — 27th June 2003.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Have you looked into using Server Side Includes onstead of frames? I haven't seen your design, but this is usually a useful way of applying your template to every page without worrying about frames and associated search engine problems.
Megan
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The Webmistress posted this at 16:02 — 27th June 2003.
She has: 5,586 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
How do SEs deal with SSIs? If the navigation is called from the SSI do the SEs see it?
Megan posted this at 19:00 — 27th June 2003.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
I'd hever though of that one but I'm assuming that it wouldn't be a problem. I've been trying to do some research on the topic but there isn't a whole lot out there on SSI's and SE's. One message board post I found stated that since the spider sees the rendered HTML page it will therefore see the SSI content just as the user sees it in the browser.
(this is from Webmaster World forums
)
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Suzanne posted this at 00:18 — 28th June 2003.
She has: 5,507 posts
Joined: Feb 2000
Just supporting what's been said -- the spider calls the page, then the server puts it together for the spider. It doesn't follow include links, just the page. SSIs (or includes) do not affect SEO at all.
HOWEVER, they can affect server performance. If you have many pages that are mostly static, you may want to do something like many blog software applications do, and generate those pages into static files and only update them as needed so the server is only issuing text files, not parsing documents.
The Webmistress posted this at 09:58 — 28th June 2003.
She has: 5,586 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
So if the spider wont follow the links then it does affect SEO as the site will not get fully crawled and indexed!
Julia - if life was meant to be easy Michael Angelo would have painted the floor....
Suzanne posted this at 14:26 — 28th June 2003.
She has: 5,507 posts
Joined: Feb 2000
sorry, no -- it doesn't follow the include links because they don't exist to it.
Say index.php has this include (SSI works the same):
<? include "whatever.php"; ?>
A spider won't go get whatever.php on its own. It won't know it exists. HOWEVER, it will know whatever is inside whatever.php because the server will have taken that information and written it into the page that IS crawled -- index.php.
So the page comes to the spider as you see it when you browse, not as it's written on the server. It sees one file, not two (in this example), and that one file is the combination of both individual files residing on the server.
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