₦airaland Forum

- Rollover effects DO make websites look nicer, IF you use the correct colors, fonts... It's an art by itself.

- I know that rollover effects cause the page to load a little slower, but if this what you care about, then why did you use images for you menu buttons while you could use just text?

- You have a website about web design, so you need to show people what you can do. i.e., show some features that are hard to be done by amateurs and that might attract customers.

- I totally agree with Seun's last reply. Yahoo, google, AOL.. offer free services like mail, free webhosting, search... and that's why they need to place ads on their website. But websites that sell a product or a service do not place ads, right?

- Adobe Photoshop just makes life easier. It helps a lot in web design. And it is not what Adobe Photoshop can do, it is what you can do with it! If you are not willing to pay for it, and can go for much cheaper softwares, or even free softwares that come with digital cameras.

- This thread is to criticise your website, so when you get a negative feedback, try to think and ask about the reason, and not defend your work. There is no smoke without fire. This means that we wouldn't be saying negative things about your work if there was nothing wrong with it.

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I got your PM kazey, I will do it tonight since I'm at work right now.

If you're interested kazey, I have a word document of 21 pages that contains info I collected from several places on the internet. Give me your email address and you've got it. It's about Search Engine Submission Tips. Of course, it's not everything about search engine optimization, but the info in that document might help. Interesting to read....
To get more info, you will have to go to website where you pay per visit, but the that document expalins some basics: Thinks you already know, and others you didn't know.

Let me know

It's just a discussion Seun, not an argument. Discussion forums ARE FOR DISCUSSIONS... within a limit. kazey didn't cross the limit because I didn't feel offended about anything, and I don't thik I crossed the limit... right kazey?

Peace... but still I would love to read kazey's reply 

I also think that this discussion can be very helpful to any webmaster who reads it. There are some good info here

- Google, Yahoo, and MSN, which are the major search engines, don't even look at the keyword meta tag. This technique was stopped years ago because webmasters were trying to stuff as many keywords as possible in that meta tag. However, I kept it on my source code because there is no harm in it. However, what is helping me more is my <title> tag. Check it out.


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Based on your keyword, if your site is properly optimized you are ranked only no 8th in google with the keyword "Bruce springsteen biography". Just letting you know.

I have an amateur website only 15 months old, and I am competeing with old websites, with Bruce Springsteen's official website, ... and ranking number 1 to 10 is more than  enough for me. Remember, my website is only a fan website.

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Is "bruce springsteen bootleg artwork" part of the website? i mean the artwork? whats the relation to the content of the site. I taught it was a tribute site with lyrics. and thats where the keywords should be directing. Bringing up that really confuses me.

Yes, it is the second most important topic of my website, and my Springsteen artworks are published here: www.springsteenlyrics.com/artwork

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People reffering to your site too? Confuses me? we are deviating from the main issue.

No, not at all. The link I gave you shows how people are refering to my website. This means what keywords they are searching and through which searchh engine. I mentioned this just to prove a point I made before that people find my website through several kewords, and not only "springsteen lyrics"
Note: The statistics on that page are only for the my website's main page. I also have the statistics for all my website's 2000 pages, and they are all accessed through search engines searches. I would've ginen you the link, by accessing the detailed statistcis page requires authentication. Therefore, I copied it and pasted it below the statistics for Jun 2005:
Top 20 of 551 Total Search Strings
9.64% springsteen lyrics
2.81% devil and dust lyrics
1.96% devil and dust
1.68% bruce springsteen lyrics
1.68% dream baby dream springsteen
1.68% matamoros banks
1.31% frankie teardrop lyrics
1.12% bruce springsteen biography
1.03% bruce springsteen's wife
1.03% springsteen dream baby dream
0.94% bruce springsteen devil
0.84% bruce springsteen's first wife
0.84% devil
0.84% marias bed lyrics
0.75% devils
0.75% devils and dust lyrics
0.75% dream baby dream lyrics
0.75% sharon summerall
0.65% devil and dust springsteen
0.65% maria's bed
As you can see, the string "springsteen lyrics" is only being used 9.64% of the times to access my website.
I just showed this to prove you wrong when you said "But let me point out to you that your domain name is "springsteenlyrics.com" and its very obvious that when the search keyword is "Springsteen lyrics" your site would turn up."

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I just re-commended that you read more on site-optimization, personally i am not a guru in that area, and i don't claim to be "know it all". And so it really amazes me, the way you take the whole issue.

Believe me I know a lot about search engines optimization, and I am just discussing. I am not taking anything personal.

- I also need to note that other websites (the commercial ones specially) pay to increase their search engines ranking. There are special companies for that, and they charge thousands of dollars to proffessionally optimize your website. Of course, I would never pay such an ammount since my website is a none profit project, but still I am competing with those professionally optimized websites.

- Thsi thread was supposed to be about shockreaction's website, but since we brought up this topic...

Using "bruce springsteen lyrics"as keyword, I am ranking #8 on google and #4 on MSN search.

This is because some other websites are more optimized for "bruce Springsteen lyrics". The reason I concentrated more on "springsteen lyrics" and not "bruce Springsteen lyrics" is because the first one, statistically, is more used in searches.

I also rank #2 on google for "bruce springsteen bootleg artwork" and #9 on MSN for "bruce springsteen biography".

go to http://www.nedstatbasic.net/s?tab=1&link=1&id=2223433 and you will see how people are refering to my website, and what keywords they are typing in their search query

But let me point out to you that your domain name is "springsteenlyrics.com" and its very obvious that when the search keyword is "Springsteen lyrics" your site would turn up.

This is not true at all. Try searching for "Naira land", and you will see that you will never find www.nairaland.com
The reason is that search engines crawlers rank websites according to a very complicated algorithm. It also uses some priorities:
- Link popularity
- page title
- <h1> tags
- text contents (upper part of the pages)
- "alt" text on images....

It will take forever to go into the details.

I am not arguing here, I am just discussing, and I think this is what discussion forums are for.

I said "Try to avoid as much as possible the <div> and <span> tags. Try to use only <table>, <tr>, and <td>"
I dind't add anything else because I have a relatively limited knowledge about those 2 tags. I know that they cause problems when resizing windows. I don't want to say more, because as I said, I didn't bother going deeper into them. However, I'll investigate more about them before getting back to this point. Thanks for the link by the way.

A professional design does not require that you use images, infact to justify that you are a good web designer, you should be able to design corporate looking website, without a single use of any images.

Give me an example!

For a better site indexing it is recommended that you use text for the titles rather than images. Please read on Search Engine Optimization techniques. Although you might use images, but make sure you do have header tags that contain your title.

My website uses images as menus, and the header in which the title is contained is only an image. However, I rank #3 on google and #1 on MSN search when I search for "Springsteen lyrics", which is the main subject of my website. I am very professional when it comes to search engines optimization, and I have a very good knowledge about this subject.
I know that text instead of images increases indexing, and avoiding frames also increases indexing, but there are a lot of techniques that you can apply to get even better ranking!!!

Well your honesty is appreciated, but honestly, you need to learn more yourself. We all learn from each other.

I am learning, and I will always be. I was honest about my knowledge in the <span> and <div> tags, and also very honest aboput my knowledge in search engines optimization.

A few suggestions from another webdesigner:

- Try to avoid as much as possible the <div> and <span> tags. Try to use only <table>, <tr>, and <td>

- Eventhough you care about simplicity, but you still need to use simple images. Take for eaxample the design of Nairaland. It's all made of small images: the buttons, the borders, ...

- Since your menu buttons are images, try to use the rollover effect. It will make it look much nicer and pleasant. It will give simple animation to the website. As example, check the menu on my website's header: www.springsteenlyrics.com

- The titles you are using are also images. Try to give them more life. Use Adobe Photoshop.

- I advice you to start redesigning your website all over again, starting from zero. Start by designing it using Adobe Photoshop, and then start slicing. This is exactly what I did for my website. If you have no idea about Photoshop, and you didn't understand what I was talking about, then sorry, but you cannot be a webdesigner. Keep learning.

- I am trying to be honest here, and I hope my negative feedback will somehow be useful to you. I don't know anything about your scripting capabilities (MySQL, PHP, ASP...), but I can clearly see that your design is not professional at all, and doesn't show that DefinedWorks is a professional Internet and Web consulting company specialising in Web Application Development and providing solutions for companies who want to establish a web presence.

Please don't take this personally. We all start somewhere, and keep learning and learning and learning...

Quick answer to this question: I was downloading at 60 KB/s in Apapa!
Yes, I plugged my laptop in my friend's house, and I was downloading at a speed of 50 to 60 KB/s (Kilo Byte)
He is using a very expensive Vsat connection.

Aside: I get an average of 8-9 KB/s on my multilinks, which is good.

Wow! that was a quick reply Seun!
Thanks for the explaination.

In Nigerian ISP circles, this simply means that you won't know what you're getting until you try it out, and the quoted bandwidth figures are all made up.

Yes, I thought the same thing about shared bandwidth! The problem is that I don't know any users for Cobranet or Netcom so I can test their download speed or at least ask them about it.

And yes, My Netcom seems very promising, the way they present it on their website. The above prices I got them from them by email. The setup fee seems very expensive compared to Multilinks. It is about N80,000!
This cannot be tested since the service is not available until next month.
From the email I got from them:
"...you will get to purchase one when the service is commercially available by next month."

About Cobranet, here's their website: http://www.cobranet.org, but they don't mention a lot on it.
From the broshures I've got, they offer Vsat, Broadband, or DSL
Vsat is very expensive and old technology, according to them.

Broadband and DSL are actually the same: same set-up fee, same monthly cost for the same speed. Only hardware differs, and DSL, if it's good, is weather indepedent.
So for Broadband and DSL, they offer dedicated bandwidth and shared bandwidth.

Their dedicated bandwidth is too expensive (prices in USD):
[table][tr][td]Bandwidth
in Kbps[/td][td]Ratio
(1:4)[/td][td]Ratio
(1:2)[/td][td]Ratio
(1:1)[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]64[/td][td]540[/td][td]656[/td][td]895[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]128[/td][td]1060[/td][td]1295[/td][td]1755[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]256[/td][td]2075[/td][td]2543[/td][td]3450[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]512[/td][td]4050[/td][td]4962[/td][td]6700[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1024[/td][td]7900[/td][td]9677[/td][td]13100[/td][/tr][/table]

Their shared bandwidth seems to be a nice offer. They charge per user, and each user gets a connection speed of 32Kbps to 512Kbps, depending on the trafic, but it will never go less than that, as they claim. They also say that most of the time it is around 100-150Kbps. The sales woman said that the unit was KB/s (kilo byte), but that can't be true. It sure is Kbps. Prices (in USD):
1 IP - $100
2 IP - $160
3 IP - $220
4 IP - $280
5 IP - $340
6 IP - $385
7 IP - $430
8 IP - $475
9 IP - $520
10 IP - $565
11 IP - $610
12 IP - $650
13 IP - $690
14 IP - $730
15 IP - $770
16 IP - $810
17 IP - $850
18 IP - $890
19 IP - $930
10 IP - $970
....
100IP - $489300

Regards,
Eddy Wehbe

Introduction:
Hi all,

My name is Eddy Wehbe, and I'm a newbie here. I am Lebanese, and working in a printing factory in Ikeja. I have an MS degree in Control and Robotics. Hobies include networking and web design, so I think this forum might help me a lot, and I also can be helpful on many topics.

(www.SpringsteenLyrics.com is one of the websites I designed; check it out, and let me know what you think.)

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Back to my subject:
I am redesigning the network in my company. I'm searching for an internet connection that satisfies our needs. We are now using 3 Multi-Links CDMA Stations on 3 of the computers (1 in each department), and sharing them on the network.

My evaluation:
We are paying 1x15,000 + 2x10,000 = N35,000
(one is 24hrs and the remaining 2 are till 6 p.m.)
We are getting an average download speed of 8-10KB/s on each

What I want:
What I'm using is not so effective; 3x8KB/s is a little slow for 20-25 computers, eventhough we only use Outlook Express and a little of web browsing.
I need an internet connection that can provide a higher speed, with a not so higher price.
I am also interested in Intranet, since we actually have 2 companies here in Ikeja.

I am investigating about the 4 internet providers I know about:
1- Cobranet (not convinced with their service)
2- DirectonPC (I heard they suck)
3- Netcom (no much info about them yet, and their Vsat is a little expensive)
4- Starcomms (no idea at all)

Can anybody recommend other companies, or give his opinion about the above
If you are using an internet service that might suits my needs, can you tell me how much you're paying, and what download speed you are getting.

As I learned from their website, Netcom are introducing a new service, called MyNetcom. It will be commercially available by next month, and they're offering the following prices:
BASIC - N6, 000.00 Monthly (100Kbps)
Plan 88 (Off Peak) - N15,000.00 Monthly (1Mbps)
HOME – N20, 000.00 Monthly (300Kbps)
PROFESSIONAL - N45, 000.00 Monthly (600Kbps)
If converting from Kbps to KB/s is simply dividing by 8, their service would be great! But I don't think it's the case
Anybody knows about it?

Thanks in advance,
Eddy Wehbe