perlgoodies

You really can't design a full pledged web site using a WYSIWYG editor. They aren't there for designing web sites but rather to give you something to work on. You're supposed to use them to design the main structure of the site and then go into the code and rework everything to your needs. Editors produce ugly code that sometimes doesn't render properly in all browser and USUALLY doesn't W3C validate! But of all the editors out there, Dreamweaver is a top choice and you get a 30 day trial. I won't go into PHP but PHP shouldn't be used anywhere on a web site. Ever.

I would not suggest www.diyestores.com. They are a very poor ecommerce provider and they charge far more than the service is worth.

It certainly does look better but I have a few suggestions. * On each of your sub pages, the font changes from bold, italics, regular and some even change font faces. It's not considered acceptable to change the way text appears on every page. There has to be consistency to make it easier for the visitors to read. * Your text area is way too small (in width) and needs to be larger. Not sure what it looks like on your screen resolution, but on my 1028x the main content text spans about 50% of the available area leaving 50% of the main content area to be unused real estate. Real estate should be at least 75-80% filled with text or images. Hope this helps!

It's no problem I can try and find a few resources of the PHP problems that arise, specifically with this cart. PHP in itself is NOT a safe choice for anything secure, it's not just oscommerce. I will look tomorrow.

I'm sorry, can you direct me to the post where I suggested php? I looked at that past thread and couldn't find it.

I'm not sure about the logo, specifically the dots. Logos are supposed to be easy to read but I had to look at the logo 2.5 times before I could understand what it was saying. The rest of it looks really nice but I'd consider making something other than dots fill in those gaps a little more

OSCommerce is an extremely insecure shopping cart, specifically because of their use of the PHP language. I would never install this script, there have been TONS of reports of web masters getting hacked through the use of this shopping cart. HostGator.com is an excellent web host IMO.

Most search engines are free to submit to. Google is one of them. The trick to getting to Google to list you is NOT submitting it to them but having them FIND your web site by incoming links. This is to say, if Google finds your web site via someone's page who is linking to you, it will index you you as well. This is almost always faster than submitting to them-- simply get other established web sites to link to you for a few days and you'll be up and running. It IS free to submit to Yahoo as well. They have a FREE and PAID FOR submit. Of course, it's worth it to pay them if you have the cash. Free submit tools do not work for the real search engines and will almost certainly get you blacklisted from them. There are VERY few programs out there with licenses to submit to search engines like Google, and if your site is submitted to them falsely via an unlicensed program-- ZAP. Always do submissions manually or have a legit program do it for you. Hope this helps.

Hi, this is my professional opinion of the the site. When reading, please remember I am critiquing the web site, not you. The site looks good, overall. It's very simple and easy to navigate. I would drop the two huge images on the front (the two scent photos). They load okay on highspeed connections but it would definitely make 56kers die of age before they load completely. Always think of them before making a web site because if they can't access and load things quickly, there might be a number of other problems as well. The entire web site is a shopping cart and this will cause your web site/business to lose the "personal touch" that is usually the selling point of small businesses and especially crafters like bath and body and soap makers. This is saying you put selling your products first instead of welcoming new people to your business and learning more information about you. Large sites such as Best Buy are strictly a shopping cart because they are corporate and aren't known for their closeness with its customers. Craftmakers should strongly reconsider using a packaged shopping cart for their web site. You will probably lose a lot of potential customers. The contact us button on top is a direct link to your email address. This is not an acceptable form of contacting from a web site. Not all users have POP3 email access which is required for a mailto: link to work. If they don't, nothing will pop up for them and they will not be able to contact you. There are two ways to make contacting you easier for everyone: 1) Make a contact page and list your mailing address, e-mail address and phone number. 2) Add a real contact form to your web site and ALSO add the above information (this would be much more friendly to your web visitors in case they'd like to contact you via other means) Your logo will need to be changed into something that screams your company/services/products. Let the logo do the talking to your web visitors why they should choose you for candle buying. I hope this helps.

A home page is a personal web page for a hobby. Say, you have pictures of your cat on there or your small bowling club. A personal web page has no real purpose other than collecting things you like and putting them up for your friends and family. Home pages are not a site set up for selling products or services. A web page, company page, web site, is a site developed around a common theme to present information, products or services to other people. This would include a search engine, chatroom web site, or a small candle making business. The main difference between a home page and a real web site is how it looks and who it's made for. Above, I used home page to describe the type of page a user may have created. It shouldn't be confused with "home page" meaning either: 1) The main page of every web site can be called the home page 2) The page your browser opens up to by default is also named a home page Would you buy products from a web site that looked like a personal home page instead of a real web business?

Hi, The following is a collection of thoughts and opinions on the web site from a professional perspective. I do web design for a living and I ask you not take anything in this personally but just thoughts to help you get your site on the right track. Problems: 1) Your main page is entited "homepage". This will need to be changed as soon as possible so search engines don't index it as such. 2) Like some people mentioned, the curly font on the main page should be swapped with a more legible and supported font. Some browsers/OSes will not be able to render this font unfortunately and it is hard to read. 3) Your page has no default layout. Your main page has a 3 section layout (two side bars and a content center) while the sub pages just have floating text in the middle of the screen. Each page should have an identical apperance (with exception of splash pages which shouldn't be used anyway). I would stick with the template of the index page and push that apperance on all sub pages. 4) Similar to #3, your navigation menu changes location. This is a no-no and should never be done. The navigation is the single most improtant section of the web site and it needs to be consistent. Also, the top nav bar on your sub pages changes location and each has a different size. If nothing else, be sure to go through and make sure the nav bar stays put. 5) Get rid of the guestbook. You WILL lose a lot of business for having a guestbook on your page. Especially considering it is a free guestbook with advertisements. Guestbooks and counters make a web site look like a home page and people don't feel safe buying from a homepage. This is a major problem. The goods: 1) I like your nav menu on the main page. I don't care so much for the vertical bar on the mouseover though, but the menu itself looks like. 2) The overal template of the main page looks nice. It'd all look better if your sub pages looked like this page. 3) Your logo is nice though it's too close to the edge where your text meets the side of the browser. Overall the site looks good but there are a few major issues that need some looking into. Good luck.

You can't use anything in emails to arbitrate PayPal payments. There is no way to verify the email is real and since it didn't happen on PayPal, they won't read it or take it into consideration.

In reality, you can get any domain you want. Domains are neither owned nor trademarked. Even if say Google became available and you got it, they can't sue you for having it. (though they'd surely buy you out with millions of pretty pennies!). See if your domain is available then check to see if the words you are looking for are trademarked or owned. If not, the domain is yours. Maybe I misunderstood the question.

Frames are NOT good for search engines. Search engines actually prefer if you don't use them because it can mess up your details. "Your pages use frames. Google supports frames to the extent that we can. Frames tend to cause problems with search engines, bookmarks, emailing links and so on, because frames don't fit the conceptual model of the web (every page corresponds to a single URL). If a user's query matches the page as a whole, Google returns the frame set. If a user's query matches an individual frame on the page, Google returns the URL for that frame. The page is not displayed in a frame because there may be no frame set corresponding to that URL. " - http://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html On a personal note, I do not like framed pages or coding for them. They are a hassel. Use Server Side Inludes (SSI) if you need to. But that's just my opinion.

I have not personally used them with any of my half dozen or so domains but they are supposed to be very fast and very stable servers. However, they said they won't install extra goodies (like scripting modules) if you need them to. So when it comes to that, you are on your own. But if it's a simple site, GoDaddy would work great.

Great I don't mind going back to the original point here. I do disagree that companies use PHP now. In fact, companies are not merging towards PHP at all. It's not faster than it's older brother, Perl (let's face it, that's all PHP is if you read the syntax) and it doesn't offer any more security. There is nothing wrong with Perl, if there was Ebay and the library of congress wouldn't be using it. Perl, ASP and Coldfusion are acceptable for companies. They are all fairly secure if you have a competent programmer. JSP is okay but it's hard to find support for it from web hosts. It's not so much reinventing the wheel if it's a custom script for her. Every script was built custom for some one and then it branched off into a full blown solution. There are a million carts out there, I know, but no one should tell you not to build your own script. And there are TOSes out there for free shopping carts that don't allow you to remove the advertisements. That's how they make their money. There's nothing wrong with making things yourself. There's actually a lot of pride that comes from it. For instance, and old retiree can widdle himself a deer, unicorn or even a chair out of wood if he wanted to. Would you tell him not to reinvent the wheel, too, since you can just get them at the store or find them elsewhere? I don't use other people scripts on my clients or my web site. Unless you really know the company and the code they produce, how much trust can you put in their code? Again, I am not saying I am the world's best programmer but I know how secure my scripts are. I don't need to have any guess work or read through their source code for hours on end just to be able to implement a new update. For those who stayed on topic, thanks. If anyone knows of any shipping calculators, feel free to post them if they're not apart of a cart.

Meta tags are not used like that and that's what I have been stating since the beginning. Meta tags are read to determine relevency throughout a web site (each individual page). They aren't meant to index your pages but to help determine the weight of each. I was mearly stating that meta tags are used on /other/ lesser used search engines. "If you'd like your site to return for particular keywords, include these words on your pages. Our crawler analyzes the content of webpages in our index to determine the search queries for which they're most relevant. If your site clearly and accurately describes your topic and many other websites link to yours, it'll likely return as a search result for your desired keywords. " This is a quote from Google itself that the only way to get listed is using those search terms in your document. This is how you are indexed. You are right though, if the keyword density is too high, you'll get penalized for it. But you wouldn't get penalized for it if that's not what the search engine was looking for in the first place, right? Content drastically improves the chances of a high page rank. There are over 100 different tests they do to rank each site. There's links, content, meta content (meta tags and other head content), title tags, domain names, etc. Content isn't the magical pill for success but it makes success easier to achieve.

Okay. If it wasn't an attack, I appologize. It's just really odd that a user who created an account today has posted only on threads I participated in and commented only about posts about or to me. That is 6 posts now, all on similar threads. But let's say for instance that optimization doesn't get you higher on search engines. Let's also exclude all paid positions, too. How do web sites get listed in search engines? What would make site A outrank site B? There are inbound links, but that is classified as optimization. Do you think the most visited sites are naturally ranked higher because of popularity? There is some speculation on that theory on many web traffic forums. But generally it's because the sites are ranked high that they get traffic. There's a reason some sites are ranked higher. If it's not optimization or money, what is it? It will all change within 2 years anyway. The current system is broken and people are buying articles to post on their site (Google loves articles). It'll be interesting to see what kind of idea they'll come up with next.

I am sorry if I upset you somehow but you really need to stop attacking me. I have not attacked you but you literally search for my posts and leave negative messages? That's simply uncalled for. I do SEO/SEM for a living, programming is my second job. SpyderScripts ranks high in search engines for my selected search terms. SpyderSubmission is used for freelance clients to store their information and work. I won't sit here and argue with you because you went off topic by trying to start an arguement on a helpful post. http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/SoftwareCoders/showBioInfo.asp?lngAuthorId=176221#CoderRating ranked 99% better than everyone on RentACoder. That is out of over 120,000 programmers, designers and online marketers. Want more samples? www.developingwebs.net www.cyberartlearning.com Both sites have recieved optimization from me. I'm not saying I am the best but I do understand how search engines work. I used to teach online classes on PalTalk once a week, have articles published all over the web, etc. So please.. Get on with your life and stop trying to attack me. I have done nothing to you.

Give X percent off. If you buy three or more, you get 10% off the final order. Or something of the sort

Just wondering, what are the three large negines you're talking about? Google, Yahoo, MSN? Or Google, Yahoo, AskJeeves? Or Google, MSN, AskJeeves? You also can't forget DMOZ which is the heart of the largest search engine on the planet, Google (and some others). There are still meta engines out there which means meta tags can still help. Whether Google uses them (which they do, just in a different way) or not, you shouldn't limit yourself to just the major few engines. A sale is a sale regardless of where it comes from. Why not get more? I disagree entirely with your comment on never getting listed for "candles". Any site can be top 10. It's a fight of who's best at optimizing for search engines. It's not luck. It's not the traffic that the site gets. It's how optimized and relevent it is. Now it won't be easy since "candles" is a huge term, you could go for "soy candle" or "scented candle" or the like. The competition is less AND most people search more than one word. SEO/SEM helps and if done right, will pay off.

Hi! Where is Battle Lake? I'm from Saint Paul and enjoying the snow we just got hit with

Hi. Sorry it took so long for my reply, been really busy. I had time to look over your site and it looks good. There are a number of things that should be addressed. The first being, there are no meta tags on the web site. This makes it harder for meta engines to index your web site. These should be installed on the index and all major pages across the web site. If you need help with designing meta content, let me know and I'll help. Second is, this site is IE-specific. There are many tags in the code that are MS propiertary(sp). Below you will find a few of them. There are 49 errors in total. [LIST=1] [*]<LI class=msg_err>Error [I]Line 9 column 18[/I]: there is no attribute "MARGINWIDTH". <body marginwidth=[B]"[/B]0" marginheight="0" topmargin="0" bottommargin="0" leftmarginYou have used the attribute named above in your document, but the document type you are using does not support that attribute for this element. This error is often caused by incorrect use of the "Strict" document type with a document that uses frames (e.g. you must use the "Transitional" document type to get the "target" attribute), or by using vendor proprietary extensions such as "marginheight" (this is usually fixed by using CSS to achieve the desired effect instead). This error may also result if the element itself is not supported in the document type you are using, as an undefined element will have no supported attributes; in this case, see the element-undefined error message for further information. How to fix: check the spelling and case of the element and attribute, (Remember XHTML is all lower-case) and/or check that they are both allowed in the chosen document type, and/or use CSS instead of this attribute. <LI class=msg_err>Error [I]Line 9 column 35[/I]: there is no attribute "MARGINHEIGHT".<body marginwidth="0" marginheight=[B]"[/B]0" topmargin="0" bottommargin="0" leftmargin <LI class=msg_err>Error [I]Line 9 column 49[/I]: there is no attribute "TOPMARGIN"....width="0" marginheight="0" topmargin=[B]"[/B]0" bottommargin="0" leftmargin="0" righ <LI class=msg_err>Error [I]Line 9 column 66[/I]: there is no attribute "BOTTOMMARGIN"....th="0" marginheight="0" topmargin="0" bottommargin=[B]"[/B]0" leftmargin="0" rightmargin="0"> [*]Error [I]Line 9 column 81[/I]: there is no attribute "LEFTMARGIN"....rgin="0" bottommargin="0" leftmargin=[B]"[/B]0" rightmargin="0">[/LIST] For the site to be more browser friendly, these errors should be fixed. The entire site is a shopping cart which makes the site look great but there is a downfall for that. Search engines like Google read in textual content of a web site to determine which search terms to use when indexing the web site. If you don't have enough text on each page, the page will NOT index properly or won't index at all. This makes it difficult for your site to appear in search engines and to pull in that much needed traffic. If you can, you need to add 2 or more paragraphs of text to each of your item pages. You also need 3 or more paragraphs for your index. Remember, text needs to be keyword dense in order to improve your odds of getting listed. This means, your keywords need to be in your text a number of times. The more they are repeated, the more weight that key term has. Just don't go over 10% density for a search term or engines may see this as keyword spamming and may penalize your site. The only other thing is the ADD TO CART buttons. These kind of give off the wrong impression. The buttons are adding to the cart, they're not buttons that purchase items instantly (like PayPal). I think I would change the buttons to say something along the lines of "Add To Card" or "Add".Your site looks good. All you need is a little behind-the-scenes work.Good luck.

Okay, not to reply to each post individually, you're just going to have to read this if it applies to one of your comments above.. As for a plant or "as a setup for my business on here", that's okay if you think that. Whether that was the initial intent or not, it is acceptable as we are under the BUSINESS category. But to make it clear, she asked me before she made the post if I knew of a shipping calculator that she could use. There wasn't any shipping calculators available that didn't come attached to a shopping cart system. This is where everything began. She had a paypal shopping cart and she wanted a shipping calculator. She didn't want a new cart just so she could calculate shipping. I told her I'd look into making her a calculator that could be built into her Buy It Now buttons. Really, there is no way to go about doing that as you still need a script to store and relay information. After she posted this, and after some discussion, I said I would design her a very simple shopping cart system that would work in place of hers but would allow her to do the extra things that she needs. After getting most of the pseudo code done, I added more features to it.. and one thing let to another and this is going to turn out to be a fully functional cart. The main intent was not to sell it on Candle Tech. It was going to be sold on SpyderScripts.com with my other web scripts. And since many people here have web sites, it's obvious other people may be interested as well. Maybe not, maybe everyone has a cart they like. But why not add one more cart to the market so people can pick from? No two carts are alike. And yes, a coder can change the code of a premade shopping cart to do whatever you want. There are two problems with that. 1) It is against their TOS if it is a free cart to change the code; especially to remove their advertisements. 2) If you buy it, you can change it. But who wants to buy a cart that they need to reprogram to suit their needs? Why not make one for Smiley that does what she wants (for free) and resell it on my site? This all started because she needed a calculator and I couldn't fit one in her site without a shopping cart. There was no plant here. And it's fine if some of you aren't interested but I didn't even start working on this until a day or so after this was posted. On another note, I am trying to make my name here because this is where Smiley hangs out for her work and it would be nice to be in the same place online. Sara said I couldn't post in the other board because "web design and your services aren't exactly what we need here" which is odd because people are posting just that in those forums. I am helping people out in the web site section by helping with contact forms, setting up scripts, looking over their sites, etc. I didn't ask her to post this and in all honesty, she didn't tell me she did at first. But in closure, if you think otherwise that's totally alright. No harm or foul any which way you look at it. This part of the conversation is dead. If you want to talk more about calculators, carts or the like, I'm definitely up to it. That was the original point of her thread, anyway.

Oh, sorry. In short, you have a script (Perl/CGI, ASP, JSP or cold fusion (NOT PHP) that has the weight of your product in memory already. Then when the user clicks the DISPLAY SHIPPING button, the script relays information over to the USPS web site and fills out the shipping calculator form for you. Then your script turns into a web crawler (also known as web bot or robot) and scrapes (parses) the results page. This means your script is taking all of the HTML from the USPS web site and storing it into your virtual memory. All that's left is applying a few expressions to it to find the numbers you are looking for and that's it. It might sound like a lot, but it's pretty simple. Below is the section from my shopping cart (built in Perl/CGI) that sends information over to the USPS web site. if ($lbs > 70 || $lbs == 70 && $totalounces == 0) { print "pounds: $lbs <br>"; $box_needed = int( $lbs / 70 ) +1; $box_weight = ($lbs /$box_needed) x $box_needed; $box_weight = numfix($box_weight); $mech->submit_form( form_name => "frmMain", fields => { P => "$box_weight", O => "$totalounces", MT => "2", OZ => "$fromzip", DZ => "$zip" }); } else { $mech->submit_form( form_name => "frmMain", fields => { P => "$totalpounds", O => "$totalounces", MT => "2", OZ => "$fromzip", DZ => "$zip" }); } From here, all I need to do is my $html = $mech->content; And I have the HTML of the results page in memory. This is just to show you a sample of it. It's NOT easy for someone who doesn't program or script and the idea might sound a little far fetched, but it really is a basic process that takes a few seconds to accomplish (depending on your server speed and the speed of USPS).