Review for another oldie!

[la vache!]

Me again, I've had a go at the font, can anyone tell me if they think it's an improvement?

[Ju]

I think it is much better.

One other thought. If you are going to leave the menu at the bottom, it may be worth putting a link into the prices and availability page for each gite in its text. Otherwise people have to scroll right down through all the other gites and the guest book to find the menu.

Just a thought.

Ju

[Garri]

Me again, I've had a go at the font, can anyone tell me if they think it's an improvement?

Susan, much much better - easier to read.

I do think you should have the navigation at the top as well as bottom. I know why you've got it at footer because you think that having content before the nav is better for search engines.

I'm not sure about reddevil's assertion that Google re-ranks when any small change is made to websites. That would be quite an undertaking, even for Google and their server-farms.

Reddevil, can you substantiate that claim?

[Garri]

Congratulations on the new arrival Garri!

Cheers Susan!

Is there anywhere you can recommend for CSS templates?

www.csszengarden.com

1 html file, 1 css file. Content is the same for all examples. Just those 2 files have been changed. Powerful stuff and perfect example of what can be achieved

[moose]

Much prefer the new look! Its definately much easier on the eye and somehow seems more balanced.

Now that you've got a left hand margin - you could play with the heading - I think you may have had it on the left before as someone else made a reference to it.

But I think it looks a ton better - sorry, know nothing about the tech stuff so can't comment on that bit.

Phew I hear you say!!!

[reddevil]

I'm not sure about reddevil's assertion that Google re-ranks when any small change is made to websites. That would be quite an undertaking, even for Google and their server-farms.

Reddevil, can you substantiate that claim?

Nope.

I am only quoting from what I have read in different forums during my 2 years self-taught webmastership!

Majority of people say that visible on-page information is one of the important factors in the seach engines rating of a page (as well as other factors such as links etc). Nobody knows what is the ideal Keyword Density for a page but there IS an optimum figure and if Susan has got that just right at the moment, then changing the wording, ot jumbling it up, or bolding, or removing bold, or adding italics, or duplicating the menu at the top, would alter the density and therefore the 'scoring' of that page and therefore (maybe) change her search engine ranking? For the good or for the bad - she won't know for a few weeks until the spiders have crawled and the algo updated?

I was thinking that if bookings are doing OK and people find the site thru the SE's and book from the old site, then it can't be that bad and maybe it would be best to hold off? Difficult choice and one I am debating with myself with my site at the moment.

[reddevil]

Me again, I've had a go at the font, can anyone tell me if they think it's an improvement?

Yes, much better on the eyes.

I only have a couple of small points to make, which you may or may not want to look at:-

1. Try reducing the spacing of the heading a little bit.
2. Maybe remove or move the Good Evening from Brittany - for me it doesn't add anything to your site.
3. Experiment with trying to 'justify' the middle text and maybe increase the 'padding' so that all text is kept an equal distance away from the photos. that will help to keep a clean look.
4. I would think about breaking up the first para into 2 paras just so that the visitor could scan the text instead of having to read it?

The reworded 3 brief descriptions are excellent and SO much more appealing.

I preferred them when they were all on the right side as they counter-balanced the main photo in your content on left.

I second this motion.

Buy hey, the site looks very good at the mo.

[la vache!]

Thanks for all your positive comments - I will sleep more easily tonight!
Reddevil, I will take up some of your suggestions. I wanted to justify the text but wouldn't work out how to do it on Dreamweaver as there was no option for this, just alignment. How do I do this?
I will try the old title again. I haven't re-done the french version yet, so if you want to compare, look at that!
I think I will give it a go putting the menu option at the top, should it go above or below the horizontal rule?

[Garri]

I wanted to justify the text but wouldn't work out how to do it on Dreamweaver as there was no option for this, just alignment. How do I do this?

www.typetester.maratz.com

Choose 'justify' from the 'alignment' drop down and see the results of the example text - or enter your own text to see how it looks in context. Then, choose the 'tools' tab and select 'Get CSS for 1st', a pop-up will appear with the necessary CSS for you to copy & paste.

The code for justifying text is: text-align: justify

I think I will give it a go putting the menu option at the top, should it go above or below the horizontal rule?

You have it above the line in the footer, so be consistent. I'm becoming a big fan of navigation down the right column these days, nearer to the scroll bar and feels better than being on left, or at top.

[la vache!]

I'm becoming a big fan of navigation down the right column these days, nearer to the scroll bar and feels better than being on left, or at top.

I'm defintely not up to changing everything around to incorporate a side menu, but I agree, they are best.
Garri, on my alignment menu I only have 3 options, right, left or centre, there is no justify option. I'm using an old version of Dreamweaver. I will perhaps try altering the code instead.
Edit - tried altering the code and got shut out of DW automatically, doesn't seem to like it. I don't like DW very much either, come to that. Why is there no undo function? Maybe I should invest in a newer version.

[Garri]

Susan, sorry but I can't help you with DW as I can't stand the thing. I have a fairly recent copy which I'll look at to see if there are any clues.

I do know that Macromedia products are notoriously bad with fonts as I found out recently with Fireworks and Freehand.

[la vache!]

I've done the little changes suggested by Reddevil, the menu I can't do, every time I change any code in DW I get kicked out and I'm fed up with it! Ju, thanks for your idea on links to prices in the text - I will incorporated that into the cottages page which is by far the longest. I don't think I can easily get it into the other pages! Anyway, I'm much happier with the site now, thankyou all for your help. Off to change the French version now!

[Garri]

Susan, the text is great - more sophisticated than everything bold and more easily readable by human beings. I'm sure people put everything in bold because they think Google will treat emphasised text with more importance as I can't think of any other reasonsable answer why they do it - but hey, what do I know about SEO?.

If you're confident enough to create a reasonable site like you did using DW then I think you're more ready than you realise to learn how to put a site together by hand coding using style sheets (css). I'm sure that armed with the right books and a copy of Notepad you'd find it no problem. Or better still the excellent Note Tab http://www.notetab.com/

[Ju]

Ju, thanks for your idea on links to prices in the text - I will incorporated that into the cottages page which is by far the longest. I don't think I can easily get it into the other pages!

It was the cottages page I meant Susan.

Pleased to have been of help.

Ju

[Paul Carmel]

Garri,

The text on our site is in bold, for no other reason than we felt it looked better.........If you think it's a dog dinner, then I would like your input