Joined: 29 Sep 2003 Posts: 15 Location: Rushden, UK
Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2003 3:45 pm Post subject: Don't make the same web building mistakes as I did!
Hi Everyone,
This is my first post on the board and I would like to start sharing my web building mistakes with you, so that hopefully, you won't make the same mistakes as I have.
My dating affiliate site has been online for just over a week now. I have been building it for the last eight weeks in my spare time. If you are only building a very small site these types of mistakes may not cost you much time. However, if you plan on building a large site like mine (140 pages so far) you would do well NOT to make these simple mistakes.
After designing my front page I then started using a copy of it as a template for the rest of the pages on my site. The idea being that the rest of pages would have the same navigation and look at the top, bottom and left hand side of each page. What I failed to realise was that my original front page had a spelling mistake on one of the links. I ended up with 140 pages with the same spelling mistake on every one.
This obviously wouldn't do, so I got straight into altering every page and uploaded the new pages to the web. That wasn't the end of it either; I should have looked for other mistakes as well!
I had also failed to spot that one of the links on the template was missing. This meant that I had an orphaned page that wasn't being linked to at all. If I had only checked the template properly after the spelling mistake was spotted. Yet more wasted time spent correcting all 140 pages again.
Moral...
Always make sure a web page is word perfect and check that the links work ok before you start using it as a template for the rest of your site.
Now that I am posting this advice on the board, someone is bound to point out another similar error on my site, but I hope not.
Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2003 5:21 pm Post subject: Re: Don't make the same web building mistakes as I did!
Jason Lewis wrote:
If I had only checked the template properly after the spelling mistake was spotted. Yet more wasted time spent correcting all 140 pages again.
Well, to avoid editing hundreds of pages because of some spelling mistake or missing link, there is server side include (SSI). This way you build few files for menus and stuff, then include them in "template" with few lines of script. So, when you find a mistake in menu or header, you simply edit that one file and that's it. Saves a lot of time and nervous system as well
I can't help feeling that you have seen Rosalind Gardner's dating sites
Blimey - "twisted evil" - that's a bit strong...
I've just taken a look at Jason's site and compared it with Rosalind's Sage Hearts...
The sites look very different, read very different, and Jason even concentrates on the UK dating market, whereas Rosalind certainly doesn't. Apart from two (very different-looking) men holding bunches of flowers, quite where any similarity lies, I'm not sure.
Sorry, but I can't work out where you're coming from...
Does Rosalind have another dating site that you were referring to?
All the best,
Charlie.
P.S. I like the site design very much, too, Jason. _________________ "Before I speak, I have something important to say."
- Groucho Marx
Sorry Jason, my bad.
I should have probably explained in a first place.
As with Jason's site I don't refer to content, neither graphics, just the site structure seemed somewhat similar. But that's pretty much all the similarity there is. In fact, Jason's site seems to have more content than Rosalind's and there are ofcourse different services, speed dating for example, which as far as I know is not even exactly online dating service (but it is hot nowadays, at least that's what I've heard).
Anyway, I have pretty good idea, why I brought up the thing up in a first place. About hour before seeing Jason's site I saw another dating site, which was way more similar to Rosalind's. Well, not graphics, but the overall look. I don't know maybe that one was false expression too.
And don't ask where the :twisted evil: came in. I'm personally suspecting little green men messing around with my post
Jason, I hope you didn't take it too personally. Your site is nice indeed, I honestly like it. Since I'm putting together dating site myself and have seen so much bad and ugly sites lately, it's real delight to see nice and clean site like yours for a change
Ok, what else ... hmm ... Am I surfing too much?
Rene
This obviously wouldn't do, so I got straight into altering every page and uploaded the new pages to the web. That wasn't the end of it either; I should have looked for other mistakes as well!
When facing with a problem like this, I use a text editor that is able to Find and Replace in multiple files. My favourite would be the Editpad Light which is free.
Jason,
First congratulation on your new dating site. A nice design. I agree with Rene you should use SSI in future if you want to build a big content site. This will help you to save a lot of time to update the site in future. I have change one of my main site to SSI a few months back and it take me quite some time to redesign it again. However, now I can easily update my site within a minute, which I grad I did it afew month back. Just make sure your hosting provder do support SSI before you do it.
Joined: 29 Sep 2003 Posts: 15 Location: Rushden, UK
Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 1:17 pm Post subject:
Hi Reneton,
Don't worry I am not offended in any way, in fact I want to thank you for your compliments. You are right in your comparison, as I was influenced by Rosalind's Sage-Hearts site among others.
I must of looked at a couple of hundred dating sites during my research and I noted down about 10 sites that I liked the look and feel of. I also paid attention to other sites that had a good Alexa rating even if the design was poor. I figured they must be doing something right. I then set about putting all these ideas together in my own way.
With Sage-Hearts I liked the uncluttered feel as you mentioned. I think the white space is appealing and this is an area I have tried to emulate.
Thanks for all the tips regarding SSI/PHP and search/replace techniques, I will be reading up on that.
I must of looked at a couple of hundred dating sites during my research and I noted down about 10 sites that I liked the look and feel of. I also paid attention to other sites that had a good Alexa rating even if the design was poor. I figured they must be doing something right. I then set about putting all these ideas together in my own way.
If anyone's interested, there's a good few opinions expressed on the subject of "influence" and "copying" in the following thread...
Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2003 7:17 pm Post subject: SSI Tutorials?
I use Dreamweaver for site building and use the template function. But I am interested in SSI and how it works. Does anyone know of a SSI tutorial out there?
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