Need help regarding redesigning website

[Ganesh J. Acharya]

Hi there,

I want to redesign my website and make that look professional.

I made this about 6 years ago with very little knowledge of internet.
Today I am getting about 4000 visitors a day for the same.

What are the things I need to keep in my mind when doing this process.

[David Stone]

Re: Need help regarding redesigning website

In article
<6b9771ad-788f-4d4c-a33f-2365c8c6942f@n3 3g2000pri.googl egroups.com>,
"Ganesh J. Acharya" <ganeshjacharya @gmail.comwrote :

Hi there,
>
I want to redesign my website and make that look professional.
>
I made this about 6 years ago with very little knowledge of internet.
Today I am getting about 4000 visitors a day for the same.
>
What are the things I need to keep in my mind when doing this process.

One thing comes to mind - if you want people's opinions of your
current web site, you should provide a url for them to have a look!

[Blinky the Shark]

Re: Need help regarding redesigning website

David Stone wrote:

In article
<6b9771ad-788f-4d4c-a33f-2365c8c6942f@n3 3g2000pri.googl egroups.com>,
"Ganesh J. Acharya" <ganeshjacharya @gmail.comwrote :
>

>Hi there,
>>
>I want to redesign my website and make that look professional.
>>
>I made this about 6 years ago with very little knowledge of internet.
>Today I am getting about 4000 visitors a day for the same.
>>
>What are the things I need to keep in my mind when doing this process.

>
One thing comes to mind - if you want people's opinions of your current
web site, you should provide a url for them to have a look!

You'll have to write more slowly; that's a Google Groper you're answering.

--
Blinky
Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://improve-usenet.org

[David E. Ross]

Re: Need help regarding redesigning website

On 7/30/2008 1:46 AM, Ganesh J. Acharya wrote:

Hi there,
>
I want to redesign my website and make that look professional.
>
I made this about 6 years ago with very little knowledge of internet.
Today I am getting about 4000 visitors a day for the same.
>
What are the things I need to keep in my mind when doing this process.

If you are actually redesigning and not merely improving the HTML, I
suggest you might want to look at my
<http://www.rossde.com/internet/web_design.html >. Note the links to
other Web sites that also discuss Web design, especially the link to
"Viewable with Any Browser Campaign".

You might also be interested in my
<http://www.rossde.com/internet/Webdevelopers.h tmland
<http://www.rossde.com/viewing_site.ht ml>.

The most important thing will be testing your pages. You should test
the HTML (or XHTML) at <http://validator.w3.or g/and the CSS at
<http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/>. After you remove all errors, you
should then view your pages with both Internet Explorer (preferably
version 7) and a Gecko-based browser (Firefox or SeaMonkey) to ensure
they display appropriately. (No, they will likely NOT display
identically.) And you should proof-read all content; research indicates
the best proof-reading is done from printed hardcopy. While an
automatic spell-checker is convenient, remember that no spell checker
can tell that you meant "not" when you wrote "now".

Are you really getting 4,000 visits per day? Or are those 4,000 hits
per day? I'm getting about 1,100 visits per day, but those involve a
total of 8,200 hits. In my case, a single "visit" is counted when
someone accesses one of my pages and then uses a link on that page to
access another of my pages, and so on.

--

David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>.

Q: What's a President Bush cocktail?
A: Business on the rocks.

[Rick Merrill]

Re: Need help regarding redesigning website

Blinky the Shark wrote:

David Stone wrote:
>

>In article
><6b9771ad-788f-4d4c-a33f-2365c8c6942f@n3 3g2000pri.googl egroups.com>,
> "Ganesh J. Acharya" <ganeshjacharya @gmail.comwrote :
>>

>>Hi there,
>>>
>>I want to redesign my website and make that look professional.
>>>
>>I made this about 6 years ago with very little knowledge of internet.
>>Today I am getting about 4000 visitors a day for the same.
>>>
>>What are the things I need to keep in my mind when doing this process.

>One thing comes to mind - if you want people's opinions of your current
>web site, you should provide a url for them to have a look!

>
You'll have to write more slowly; that's a Google Groper you're answering.
>

google groper? vas is das? - someone just trying to get indexed?

[Blinky the Shark]

Re: Need help regarding redesigning website

Rick Merrill wrote:

Blinky the Shark wrote:

>David Stone wrote:
>>

>>In article
>><6b9771ad-788f-4d4c-a33f-2365c8c6942f@n3 3g2000pri.googl egroups.com>,
>> "Ganesh J. Acharya" <ganeshjacharya @gmail.comwrote :
>>>
>>>Hi there,
>>>>
>>>I want to redesign my website and make that look professional.
>>>>
>>>I made this about 6 years ago with very little knowledge of internet.
>>>Today I am getting about 4000 visitors a day for the same.
>>>>
>>>What are the things I need to keep in my mind when doing this process.
>>One thing comes to mind - if you want people's opinions of your current
>>web site, you should provide a url for them to have a look!

>>
>You'll have to write more slowly; that's a Google Groper you're
>answering.
>>
>>

google groper? vas is das? - someone just trying to get indexed?

A Google Groups poster and some common wordplay.


--
Blinky
Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://improve-usenet.org
Need a new news feed? http://blinkynet.net/comp/newfeed.html

[Erwin Moller]

Re: Need help regarding redesigning website


David E. Ross schreef:

On 7/30/2008 1:46 AM, Ganesh J. Acharya wrote:

>Hi there,
>>
>I want to redesign my website and make that look professional.
>>
>I made this about 6 years ago with very little knowledge of internet.
>Today I am getting about 4000 visitors a day for the same.
>>
>What are the things I need to keep in my mind when doing this process.

>
If you are actually redesigning and not merely improving the HTML, I
suggest you might want to look at my
<http://www.rossde.com/internet/web_design.html >. Note the links to
other Web sites that also discuss Web design, especially the link to
"Viewable with Any Browser Campaign".
>
You might also be interested in my
<http://www.rossde.com/internet/Webdevelopers.h tmland
<http://www.rossde.com/viewing_site.ht ml>.
>
The most important thing will be testing your pages. You should test
the HTML (or XHTML) at <http://validator.w3.or g/and the CSS at
<http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/>. After you remove all errors, you
should then view your pages with both Internet Explorer (preferably
version 7) and a Gecko-based browser (Firefox or SeaMonkey) to ensure
they display appropriately. (No, they will likely NOT display
identically.) And you should proof-read all content; research indicates
the best proof-reading is done from printed hardcopy. While an
automatic spell-checker is convenient, remember that no spell checker
can tell that you meant "not" when you wrote "now".
>
Are you really getting 4,000 visits per day? Or are those 4,000 hits
per day? I'm getting about 1,100 visits per day, but those involve a
total of 8,200 hits. In my case, a single "visit" is counted when
someone accesses one of my pages and then uses a link on that page to
access another of my pages, and so on.
>

Hi David Ross,

I am not sure the following advise pleases most modern webvisitors:

Image Maps, Java, Frames, Cookies, Plug-Ins, Flash: I do not use them.
On a few pages, I experimented with JavaScript; but I found it was far
more bother than it was worth. I am gradually eliminating that usage. In
the meantime, if you disable JavaScript, there will be no adverse impact
in viewing my pages.

While it is of course perfectly fine to avoid all the above mentioned
technics, it also keeps your page in the last millenium: very static.
I agree that avoiding all these techniques gives you maximum
compatibility, but you all miss out on a LOT of good fun.

Of course I don't know what the OP's original pages are, by JavaScript
for example can make a site a lot more usable and pleasing. And I
wouldn't know how to store userpreferences without cookies.
And when you are into scriptinglangua ges, like PHP, cookies are really a
relatively safe way of keeping/starting a session (at least a lot better
than writing the PHPSESSID in the URL).
etc. etc.etc.

I think you are on the VERY safe side avoiding all those techniques, but
that also makes boring pages with a 1995 look and feel.

just my 2 cent.

Regards,
Erwin Moller

PS: You also wrote a lot of useful things on that side!


--
=============== =============
Erwin Moller
Now dropping all postings from googlegroups.
Why? http://improve-usenet.org/
=============== =============

[Adrienne Boswell]

Re: Need help regarding redesigning website

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed "David E. Ross" <nobody@nowhere .not>
writing in news:qcOdnYbFts rNKQ3VnZ2dnUVZ_ jydnZ2d@softcom .net:

While an
automatic spell-checker is convenient, remember that no spell checker
can tell that you meant "not" when you wrote "now".
>

I have found the best way to deal with this is to listen to the page being
read to me by my browser. I use Opera speech. The human brain, given
enough letters, can read a misspelled word, and might miss it. A computer
will stumble on it, and thereby, it is easily caught. Of course, listening
you would absolutely pick up "Not is the time for all good men..." vs "Now
is the time...".

--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services

http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info

Please respond to the group so others can share

[Bergamot]

Re: Need help regarding redesigning website


Erwin Moller wrote:

David E. Ross schreef:
>

>Image Maps, Java, Frames, Cookies, Plug-Ins, Flash: I do not use them.

>
JavaScript
for example can make a site a lot more usable

Hmmm... my experience has been more the opposite, especially where it
comes to things like DHTML menus, but that's beside the point.

and pleasing.

"Pleasing" is very subjective. Care to point to an example site?

I think you are on the VERY safe side avoiding all those techniques, but
that also makes boring pages with a 1995 look and feel.

Depends on what the site is about and who the target audience is. It
isn't as simple as "they're always bad", though there are few valid uses
of image maps and frames, and Flash is abused more often than not.

At any rate, avoiding their use has nothing to do with a "1995 look and
feel". A site can look very stylish without using any embellishments
other than some well thought out graphics and CSS.

--
Berg

[Steve Swift]

Re: Need help regarding redesigning website

Bergamot wrote:

>JavaScript for example can make a site a lot more usable

Hmmm... my experience has been more the opposite

>and pleasing.

"Pleasing" is very subjective. Care to point to an example site?

I'll answer both with one example from Nationwide (www.nationwide.co.uk)

Their online banking requires my user number and a "password" (and a few
other things). It has a checkbox to remember the user number.

It would be nice it if put the cursor in the User number field, which
requires a tiny amount of Javascript.
It would be *really* nice if it were clever enough to recognise that I'd
saved my user number, so it should put the cursor in the "password"
field instead. This requires a tiny bit more Javascript. I've written to
them about this, but my suggestion fells on deaf ears. (If you need an
idea suppressing, then ask me to suggest it. The take-up rate is around
0.1%)

It is little flourishes such as these that make life pleasant, as when
someone holds a door open for you.

--
Steve Swift

http://www.swiftys.org.uk/swifty.html

http://www.ringers.org.uk

[Erwin Moller]

Re: Need help regarding redesigning website


Bergamot schreef:

Erwin Moller wrote:

>David E. Ross schreef:
>>

>>Image Maps, Java, Frames, Cookies, Plug-Ins, Flash: I do not use them.

>JavaScript
>for example can make a site a lot more usable

>
Hmmm... my experience has been more the opposite, especially where it
comes to things like DHTML menus, but that's beside the point.

Hi Bergamot,

Sure, you can always find some noob that screws things up.
But that goes for C, C++, Pascal, anything. ;-)

If programmed right DHTML menus should work just fine.
They hide away a lot of info you do not need at that moment.
For example: A large storage of different categories with each a lot of
subcategories, etc.

When programmed poorly, they will only annoy you, or even bug the page
beyound reasonable usage.

>

>and pleasing.

>
"Pleasing" is very subjective. Care to point to an example site?

What about the classic use of Javascript: form validation?
Javascript saves you a trip to the server only to hear you missfilled or
forgot some fields in the form.
I use Javascript for that, and focus to the filed where the client
should change things. You can see that everywhere.
Isn't that an improvement? More pleasing?

(Of course the serversidescrip t should check too, but that is of little
importance for the discussion.)

>

>I think you are on the VERY safe side avoiding all those techniques, but
>that also makes boring pages with a 1995 look and feel.

>
Depends on what the site is about and who the target audience is. It
isn't as simple as "they're always bad", though there are few valid uses
of image maps and frames, and Flash is abused more often than not.

Agree.
I see Flash 'abused' all the time. The most annoying usage displays a
splashscreen that cannot be clicked away.

But to name a very popular site that uses Flash and JavaScript: youtube.

>
At any rate, avoiding their use has nothing to do with a "1995 look and
feel". A site can look very stylish without using any embellishments
other than some well thought out graphics and CSS.

Agree.

CSS surely improves webpages a lot, but using that also decreases
compatibility. If you go all the way, you must target LYNX too, which
doesn't do a very good job displaying webpages with perfectly valid
HTML/CSS. ;-)
How much compatibility do you want?

Well, the way I look at it: Webtechnology changes every day.
It you do not want to keep up pace, you be out of business sooner or later.

Regards,
Erwin Moller

--
=============== =============
Erwin Moller
Now dropping all postings from googlegroups.
Why? http://improve-usenet.org/
=============== =============

[Ganesh J. Acharya]

Re: Need help regarding redesigning website

On Jul 30, 11:02 pm, Blinky the Shark <no.s...@box.in validwrote:

David Stone wrote:

In article
<6b9771ad-788f-4d4c-a33f-2365c8c69...@n3 3g2000pri.googl egroups.com>,
"Ganesh J. Acharya" <ganeshjacha... @gmail.comwrote :

>

Hi there,

>

I want to redesign my website and make that look professional.

>

I made this about 6 years ago with very little knowledge of internet.
Today I am getting about 4000 visitors a day for the same.

>

What are the things I need to keep in my mind when doing this process.

>

One thing comes to mind - if you want people's opinions of your current
web site, you should provide a url for them to have a look!

>
You'll have to write more slowly; that's a Google Groper you're answering.
>
--
Blinky
Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project:http://improve-usenet.org

the website is kamashastra dot com

[Bergamot]

Re: Need help regarding redesigning website


Steve Swift wrote:

Bergamot wrote:

>>JavaScript for example can make a site a lot more usable

>Hmmm... my experience has been more the opposite

>

>>and pleasing.

>"Pleasing" is very subjective. Care to point to an example site?

>
I'll answer both with one example from Nationwide (www.nationwide.co.uk)
>
Their online banking requires my user number and a "password" (and a few
other things). It has a checkbox to remember the user number.
>
It would be nice it if put the cursor in the User number field, which
requires a tiny amount of Javascript.

Here comes the subject part...

Automatic cursor placement can be a bane more often than not. I curse
most sites that do it because that placement doesn't happen until the
page is completely loaded. istockphoto.com is a good example of poor
judgment on such things. I can be mostly done browsing a page of 100
thumbnails when the page finally finishes loading. Then the cursor is
helpfully placed in the search box back at the top of the page, the page
jumps back to the top and I lose my place. If JS weren't required to
view enlargements I'd most happily disable it, as I do for most sites.
I've complained to them about it, but they don't seem to care. As it
stands, I use them less and less because of the user-unfriendliness of
their site - and it's all because of JS.

It would be *really* nice if it were clever enough to recognise that I'd
saved my user number, so it should put the cursor in the "password"
field instead.

It's online banking. I'm surprised they have a "remember my ID" in the
first place. Most sites that deal with such sensitive data take steps to
*prevent* remembering any log in info. BTW, if the cursor is in the ID
field, shouldn't it take just a press or 2 of the tab key to move it to
the password field? I'm a keyboard user and do this on every site that
has a login, so it's an automatic thing for me. It would be weird *not*
to do it.

It is little flourishes such as these that make life pleasant

Again - pleasant is subjective. What you think is a helpful feature will
be the opposite to someone else. It's up to the site to decide which
side of the fence has more of their users, or more of their important
users. That doesn't mean they always do the right thing, of course. ;)

--
Berg

[Bergamot]

Re: Need help regarding redesigning website


Erwin Moller wrote:

Bergamot schreef:

>Erwin Moller wrote:

>>David E. Ross schreef:
>>>
>>>Image Maps, Java, Frames, Cookies, Plug-Ins, Flash: I do not use them.
>>JavaScript
>>for example can make a site a lot more usable

>>
>Hmmm... my experience has been more the opposite, especially where it
>comes to things like DHTML menus, but that's beside the point.

>
Sure, you can always find some noob that screws things up.
If programmed right DHTML menus should work just fine.

"Work" is relative, and "noob" isn't really part of that equation. One
of my online banking sites has such menus. They are dependent on a tiny
type size and are completely unusable when text is zoomed, and I can't
read their fly-speck text. The site is unnavigable when JS or CSS is
disabled, making the whole experience pretty painful to me.

Would you call that working, or programmed by noobs?

>>and pleasing.

>>
>"Pleasing" is very subjective. Care to point to an example site?

>
What about the classic use of Javascript: form validation?
Javascript saves you a trip to the server only to hear you missfilled or
forgot some fields in the form.

I'm not sure "pleasing" is the right word for this, but this is
certainly a wise use of JS as long as there is still server-side
validation going on. Using JS *instead* of server-side processing would
be unwise.

(Of course the serversidescrip t should check too, but that is of little
importance for the discussion.)

I think it is important. There is the issue of dependency on JS as
opposed to using it for embellishments. The form validation you speak of
should be an embellishment, and can be A Good Thing. The DHTML menus
used by my bank is a dependency, and A Bad Thing, at least for me.

>>I think you are on the VERY safe side avoiding all those techniques, but
>>that also makes boring pages with a 1995 look and feel.

>>
>Depends on what the site is about and who the target audience is. It
>isn't as simple as "they're always bad", though there are few valid uses
>of image maps and frames, and Flash is abused more often than not.

>
Agree.
But to name a very popular site that uses Flash and JavaScript: youtube.

JS and Flash suit their particular content and target audience, so you
made my point.

>At any rate, avoiding their use has nothing to do with a "1995 look and
>feel". A site can look very stylish without using any embellishments
>other than some well thought out graphics and CSS.

>
CSS surely improves webpages a lot, but using that also decreases
compatibility. If you go all the way, you must target LYNX too, which
doesn't do a very good job displaying webpages with perfectly valid
HTML/CSS. ;-)

Since when does lynx not properly handle valid HTML? Any problems you're
likely to see in lynx that are attributable to CSS are things like poor
page structure and dependence on absolute positioning for it to make
sense. Lynx and even archaic browsers like Netscape 4 can do just fine
with semantic, well-structured markup - sans CSS.

The trouble is the mindset that it must look the same in all browsers.
It doesn't, and it won't anyway.

Well, the way I look at it: Webtechnology changes every day.
It you do not want to keep up pace, you be out of business sooner or later.

Nope - it depends on the site and the target audience. Just because some
new web technology is there, doesn't mean you have to use it. Gratuitous
use of such things can make a good site bad.

--
Berg

[dorayme]

Re: Need help regarding redesigning website

In article <d-OdneJW8NQNGgnVn Z2dnUVZ_j2dnZ2d @comcast.com>,
Ed Mullen <ed@edmullen.ne twrote:

It looks to me as though the site was generated with Frontpage. 'Nuff said?

OK! Perhaps the OP was seeking merely non-technical advice then...

--
dorayme