You guys cant blame them now, they are called Youth Refined INTERNATIONAL

Even sitepotter is a manipulated template. I've thoroughly enjoyed this thread. It just shows us more clearly that the internet consists of the good, the bad and the ugly. My advice to everyone is that whatever technique you know and use, aspire to be the best in it. Or what do you guys think?

that last page was hilarious. so when does the competition start?

all hail the prophet!

Its interesting to know that the loud talking "Flash guru" has suddenly gone "AWOL" since his "sites" has been confirmed to be based on stolen ideas.I am sure if he had not made so much noise,his secret will still be secret.

Oasis,much as i respect your works and opinion,you seems to have limited web designing to dating sites and selling things.I wish to point out that some sites do NOT need to be search engine friendly,they have to be flashy!!! eg: Celebrities sites,footbal clubs sites etc,  their fans will wait for the sites to load even if it takes 3 hours!! Besides while it is true that search engines do not index flash based websites because of the absence of texts,you can get around this by embedding your flash in html and adding metatags to the head section of the html.(i hope this wont bring uneccessary attacks on my works and person!!!)

Kris, if the reason why you design websites is for dating,then you must go the way of Oasis and be a Seo expert.

It's a big ruse that search engines can't crawl flash sites. I have read some tricks that you can use to make your flash websites SEFly.

I will post the link when i find it again.

*passing by, looking for a toe to step on *

So who are the top ten web designers now?

We will never find out!

Even if we post pics from all afore-listed sites, We will never find out Top Twenty! anyway, we still keep learning/gaining from listed sites! keep it up folks!

may be we should rate the designers on this forum insted, well my nominees are, Timmy (me), farriel, Rotimi, Tommy, Kris(shit head), oasis, Joftech (not sure), who else

Count me out!

Ah, why do you wish to be counted out, Oga Joftech.

As for you Kris, I have no idea who the prophet is, and I'd appreciate your telling me. So at least I can satirise him, like the Danes did.  

Timmy, which one wey you slam yourself for the first position now? You dey forget say some very bad guys like Tommyruns (even though na Nelly be him chief inspirator na a very good designer,) and others are really tight?

@farriel, fish head, in no particular order, and who say Tommy is better than me, i only acknowledge his skills @ joftech, no shizzle, u OUT

You are right there whitesoftx,we will never find the best 50 designers self.What do you expect when designers nominate themselves for the award,who no go nominate himself?if you asked me to i will nomite me,me,me,me,me 50 times.
I think the best thing is the thing rest small,let anyone that considers himself guru enough go contest on the global scale.Imust agree though that the sites posted have been tremedousin shedding more lights on the whole thing.KEEP IT UP GUYS!!!

Oga Timmy, I actually don't enjoy such remarks. If we're looking for the Top Ten Designers, how then is it listed? In an unordered manner, or there's a countdown of some sorts with the best guys heading the list? So if you mention your name first, and mine second, Rotimi, etc. How should I perceive such nominees? No be I go think say na a countdown you dey list out?

You could really have pointed that out easily, without sounding the way you did. You dey hear?

And yes Joanny34, designers don't nominate themselves. Na audiences they cast such votes. Audiences and seasoned professionals whom can serve as judges.

where I dey ?@Timmy

you dey bench ( ) just a joke man

Farriel:

Ah, why do you wish to be counted out, Oga Joftech.

As for you Kris, I have no idea who the prophet is, and I'd appreciate your telling me. So at least I can satirise him, like the Danes did.

Timmy, which one wey you slam yourself for the first position now? You dey forget say some very bad boys like Tommyruns (even though na Nelly be him chief inspirator na a very good designer,) and others are really tight?

You want to know who the prophet is, then read all the post by joftech.

Joan

joanny34:

Its interesting to know that the loud talking "Flash guru" has suddenly gone "AWOL" since his "sites" has been confirmed to be based on stolen ideas.I am sure if he had not made so much noise,his secret will still be secret.

Joanny34, i beg take am easy now, i never read any place wey the guy dey do loud talking. Na me you fit say do loud talking, but then it's not loud talking due to the heat i carry!

joanny34:


Kris, if the reason why you design websites is for dating,then you must go the way of Oasis and be a Seo expert.

Thanks for your advice, but i do all kinds of works, not only dating sites. And the dating site is doing great. Though my portfolio site has iframe, but still it's indexed by google and even if you search for "nike panna" my site shows up on the first page out of about 185000 results. Now that is something!

Well, people might think, what the hell is panna, well visit this http://nikefootball.nike.com/nikefootball/panna/hasFlash.html site to find out more. One of the competitors is even named after Okocha.
Once you are on the site click on "check out the highlights here"

Farriel:

Na audiences they cast such votes. Audiences and seasoned professionals whom can serve as judges.

i dey - audience

You be audience, Oga Codec? I no know oh.

@Kris. Have read all Joftech's posts in this thread. Can't still detect who the prophet is.

*Scratches head and wonders*  

Could it be ***** (Timmy)?  

@Farriel, my pointing out who the prophet is will make me also a prophet. Ok read post #208 by joftech.

It's a big ruse that search engines can't crawl flash sites. I have read some tricks that you can use to make your flash websites SEFly.

I will post the link when i find it again.

Let me help you out:

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060117-082751

Oasis,much as i respect your works and opinion,you seems to have limited web designing to dating sites and selling things.

Assumptions based on one piece of evidence can be a dangerous thing.  You would make a horrible PI.

I wish to point out that some sites do NOT need to be search engine friendly,they have to be flashy!!! eg: Celebrities sites,footbal clubs sites etc,  their fans will wait for the sites to load even if it takes 3 hours!!

I won't argue with that.  My only beef with some of us here is that we throw unoptimised images on the web, and argue that size doesn't matter because the tartget audience is on broadband.

I happen to be working on an e-commerce site that is heavy on graphics.  But, I'm striving to keep the image sizes down, while still looking good. 

Preview the site at: http://www.mytruefans.com/

Check out the forum, chatroom, store,  etc.  The bio pages are coming soon.  Hold your critiques.  Site is not finished yet.

I built the site on a template supplied by the client, and spruced up with my personal touch.

So, like I've said a dozen times here, anybody can grab a template and modify it.  Therefore, the real test of web knowledge, is programming skills.

Besides while it is true that search engines do not index flash based websites because of the absence of texts,you can get around this by embedding your flash in html and adding metatags to the head section of the html.

Search engines do complex things that only SEO experts know about.  For example, if your flash/image file is 50k, and you do have all the ascii text for a search engine to index, you still get rated lower than say the same page without grapics/flash.  Did you know that?

Ah Kris! Now I know!

I've read a lot of posts here and I have to say I've been impressed by lots of sites here. Kudos! Where everything quickly falls apart is when you try using a text-based browser like Lynx. How exactly does your site look? I think all images should have an "alt" attribute and plugins like flash should have alternate text. If you think I'm talking crap, remember that's exactly how search engines "see" your site - as plain text.

I know my site isn't very good [I focus on keeping simplicity to the maximum] -- http://azuka.zatechcorp.com -- but it validates as XHTML 1.1 and you don't get encumbered with javascript effects [the dropdown menu works in most browsers except IE becase IE supports the css :hover pseudoclass only for links]. Before you point out that I didn't do the design, I should say I'm using Wordpress and I wrote the template from scratch.

@Zahymaka

You totally understand what I've been trying to impart upon these boneheads in here about the essence of web design.

A webpage must be designed to be easily crawled by a search engine.  And what all that boils down to is: text, lots of it.  Not flash, not heavy graphics, but text.

I'm sure that saying your site passes XHTML 1.1 validation means nothing to most.  But to those who understand web tech, you deserve commendation for the effort.

I see that people could post comments to your blog.  That is what is likely to break your page in the long run, unless you've turned off html, or you've written an html validator into your site that sanitizes inputs and checks tags before posting.

Thanks for the compliments. No, my comments don't accept html and it was very easy for Google to crawl my site -- I got it on the web in January and almost all my posts have been indexed. Speaking of XHTML validation, I always make it a point to validate my site after making a post.

Concerning design, I always focus on eliminating as many images as possible -- when the page doesn't load very well you don't get as many problems as those pages that use spacer images.

By the way, what do you think about the XHTML 2.0 draft? I think it sucks!

By the way, what do you think about the XHTML 2.0 draft? I think it sucks!

You're ahead of me on that one. I have so many projects lined up, which leaves me with little time for pending standards.

Well, the XHTML 2.0 draft is currently being contended by the majority of web designers. I haven't looked at it but from what I hear, they intend to do away with the "a" element and instead add a "href" attribute to all elements. Based on that we're going to have code like

<div href="#">
<ul href="jjj">
<img href="ppp" />

I mean, links and that's that
If it eventually gets pased into w3c "law", most designers are threatening to boycott it and go no farther than XHTML 1.1.

Hello All,

Very interesting topic. Witnessed how 2 Nigerians that boasted about copied work being their original works were uncovered and they simply disappeared with the sites in question becoming unavailable for different reasons.

To use templates or not to use them:

As long as you do not claim the work of another as being original, I don't see anything wrong in using templates. Is yahoo, amazon, ebay etc not sites built on templates?

To design a site for search engine or not to do so:

Unfortunately, a lot of people have buried their heads in what the search engines do to the detriment of the jobs websites are supposed to do.

I do not need google, yahoo or any search engine for my business to succeed online. All I need is an easy to use website with relevant content that makes sense to the target audience (not to me) and some form of easy payment system.

Did people get to know about yahoo through google? What of CNN? Amazon nko? Ok, which search engine helped google?

SEO is simply an industry that was created by a group of online business people to make extra money online. Algorithms change every now and then. A site may rank well in google and becomes almost no existent in yahoo.

Instead of website owners trying to make the websites work for their target audiences we hear debates about SEO all the time.

In reality, is google really effective? How many times have you search for certain keywords only to get trash as search results?

It is about the fact and not hype.

I believe someone can publish a site today and have it doing well in google in 3 or 4 days even without submitting the site to google.

Even if you spend all the time and money to get your website to rank no 1 in all the major search engines, it will amount to nothing if your target audience do not use the search engines to reach you.

Calendars, business cards, radio adverts, newspapers, tv adverts, bill boards are still avenues of getting your information out to the public. Search engines is just one channel and to tweak your website to make google happy when it may affect your business adversly is pure nonsense in my opinion.

Moderation is key and balancing the different efforts be it design proper, marketing, SEO etc is where the game is won and lost.

Afam:

Hello All,

Very interesting topic. Witnessed how 2 Nigerians that boasted about copied work being their original works were uncovered and they simply disappeared with the sites in question becoming unavailable for different reasons.

@Afam, great point there, but my question is who are the two Nigerians. Ok i know of the Nelly site one, but who is the second person?

Hi Kris,

Can't remember the guy's name -- a site that you (I think) helped to produce the original template he used even after he claimed the work was original.

Maybe, not on this thread but I am sure you know the site I am discussing here.

Same guy built a hospitality site and I can't remember seeing his posts/contributions since then.