Can you please help me?

[joy]

Hi, I am new at this and need some help please!

1. My site was built by a web designer, it was a cgi site, I was advised to move all my files except the cgi checkout to the local site, which I had a designer do, as I was not sure how to do it. But my pages like policy, returns, links are not showing up on my local side. So I can't acess them to edit. shouldn't they be showing up on the local site?

2. Since the product pages were cgi, do they have to stay on the secure site? If they do, then how will the search engines pick those up? These pages aren't on my local site now, But thought they were sopose to be. Where should they be now?

3. Before I had the site split, I had made some product pages, with the different products listed on thse product pages. Will the search engines pick these up, and index them?

4. When I was submitting to google, a screen came up and said my index.html was not complete, and may not be listing. Can anyone look at my sorce code and see what's misssing?

5. I was also told to link my pages to the site map. I do not know how to do this, and my site map doesn't have the product pages in there. Can someone share with me how to do this?

Thanks for any help you can give, I'm really needing some help! Joy

[cyanide]

H Joy,

2 things:
How about supplying a link to your site ?
What exactly do you mean by 'local site' ?

[joy]

My site is www.cubbyholecreations.com
My local site is the ste that is hosted locally, it is the part of the site that is not cgi.

[paulhiles]

Something's certainly amiss here.. I just clicked to "Buy" and I got the following error:

cubbyholecreations.com is the accepted referrer.
is not a valid referrer
Refering Site Authentication Failed!

You mentioned "before the site split" what exactly do you mean by this? Do you mean that one half is the ecommerce cgi stuff? Looks to me like a linking problem.. but difficult to tell remotely.

Paul

[cyanide]

HI Joy,

okay, sometimes local site is referred to a copy of a website that's sitting on the desktop, that's why I was asking. You could also refer to it as root.

Well, I'm a little confused as to some of your questions, but I'll give it a shot here

1. My site was built by a web designer, it was a cgi site, I was advised to move all my files except the cgi checkout to the local site, which I had a designer do, as I was not sure how to do it.

Most of your files are still inside the cgi-bin directory, such as product page because it's part of the cart you are using

But my pages like policy, returns, links are not showing up on my local side. So I can't acess them to edit. shouldn't they be showing up on the local site?

They are showing up in your root directory. I see them

2. Since the product pages were cgi, do they have to stay on the secure site? If they do, then how will the search engines pick those up? These pages aren't on my local site now, But thought they were sopose to be. Where should they be now?

Well, from what I can see, none of your product pages are under SSL, there are a few static pages that are (free patterns, links, policy)
Generally speaking, product page don't have to be secured. Things , such as information passing from page to page do need to be secured, such as check out pages.

3. Before I had the site split, I had made some product pages, with the different products listed on thse product pages. Will the search engines pick these up, and index them?

Sure they will. As long as you have links to those page

4. When I was submitting to google, a screen came up and said my index.html was not complete, and may not be listing. Can anyone look at my sorce code and see what's misssing?

Your site is in google's index, no need to-resubmit

5. I was also told to link my pages to the site map. I do not know how to do this, and my site map doesn't have the product pages in there. Can someone share with me how to do this?

In order to edit your pages, you'll need access to the server. Do you have that? and is your sitemap page designed. I didn't see it

[joy]

Hi, I had the cgi site split, I was advised to put everything but the cgi check out on the local site, so the search engines will be able to acess the pages for indexing. I will have the company who did the site split to check out the error message, on Monday. Thanks for letting me know! If anyone can help with the other questions, I'd appriciate it! Joy

[joy]

Well, what I am calling my local site, is the part of my site hosted at Computer Associates in Casper, Wy. Then my cgi check out is on a secure site, so my site is in two places. The local site is supose to contain everything but the cgi checkout.

On my product tags I made and put on my index.html page, are these going to pull up on the search engines?

I do not have those pages showing up in my site map, how do I do that? And how can I link those product tags to the actual product pages? Joy

[cyanide]

Joy, you haven't answered or even acknowledged any of my responses. It's difficult to proceed and help you.

The bulk of your pages appear to be under this domain cubbyholecreations.com
compassoc.com appears to be your secured domain, which contain a few pages as mentioned above. Not really sure why you are securing those pages, it's not necessary

[joy]

cyanide, I am sorry I have bee directing all but one of my answers to you, I am sorry I didn't,use your name, I thought as you read, you would know from my answers, that I was trying to answer your questions, again I am sorry, I appriciate your help.

I think the pages listed on compasoc are those cgi checkout pages. I didn't build the site, I had a bad experience with the first web designer, and have since been using the company out of Casper to help. I am trying to learn this myself, I have had a dreamweaver class, but have the questions, I am not sure of, listed above. I want to get the site, cleaned up and working properly where I can handle all the changes needed, as you can see I still have site problems, from the first web designers set up.

[Jurgen]

Maybe I can put a little light to this:

The way I see it:

The site is hosted with 'compasoc' under the domain "cubbyholecreations.com", which Joy calls the 'local site'. The check-out is being redirected to the merchant account, in this case PayPal.

Joy needs to have acess to her domain directory and tell us what is all listed.

And no, I don't see any "sitemap" either.

Joy, I offered help earlier, but all of a sudden the communication stopped.


Jurgen
www.absolutelyfabulousflowers.com

[joy]

Hi, thanks for helping me, comunication stopped because I have been very ill.

Now I am ready to get back at this, I think I will ask for help for one thing at a time. I have a site map, but my pages are not listed individually,

I was told to link my pages to the site map. I do not know how to do this, and my site map doesn't have the product pages in there. Can someone share with me how to do this, please?

[Jurgen]

Originally Posted by joy

I have a site map, but my pages are not listed individually,

I was told to link my pages to the site map. I do not know how to do this, and my site map doesn't have the product pages in there. Can someone share with me how to do this, please?

Sorry you where ill....

Joy, I don't see ANY sitemap on your site. What do you call your sitemap? A sitemap is basically a "sitemap.html" page residing in your root directory were you link ALL your other pages. You can see it also as a "table of content" for your site.

Jurgen
www.absolutelyfabulousflowers.com

[minstrel]

Originally Posted by Jurgen

A sitemap is basically a "sitemap.html" page residing in your root directory were you link ALL your other pages. You can see it also as a "table of content" for your site.

It needn't reside in the root directory but it does need a text link pointing to the page from the home page, and the links on the sitemap page itself should also be text links pointing to the other important pages on the site. Finally, if yours is a large site, as many store sites are, be aware that you may need to create a structure to limit the number of links listed on the sitemap - both from a visitor's point of view and from a search engine's point of view, aim for no more than 100 links (Google's recommended maximum) - if ou have more pages than that on your site, I'd suggest you create categories, have the sitemap link to the category pages, and then have the category pages link to individual product pages.

[ren23]

If each page within a site has some navigation at the bottom of the page leading to other related sites, should all of those links be included in the site map? Will a search engine consider these repetitive links spam?

Thanks,
Ren

[cyanide]

Originally Posted by ren23

If each page within a site has some navigation at the bottom of the page leading to other related sites, should all of those links be included in the site map? Will a search engine consider these repetitive links spam?

Thanks,
Ren

Are you talking about links to other sites?
I wouldn't recommend it, and it defeats the purpose of a sitemap.
A sitemap is merely an overview of the site. Not an overview of other sites. It's important that you also structure a website that's usable for the visitor and not make it so convoluted

[minstrel]

Originally Posted by ren23

If each page within a site has some navigation at the bottom of the page leading to other related sites, should all of those links be included in the site map? Will a search engine consider these repetitive links spam?

Do you mean "navigation at the bottom of the page leading to other related pages"? i.e., other pages on your own site? If so, definitely not spam - that's just intelligent navigation structure.

If you do mean other sites, then as long as it isn't exactly the same list of sites (i.e., it varies from page to page and isn't the same 6 sites over and over) and it isn't a hugely long list (as in a link farm), you should still be okay.

[joy]

Thanks, for the help! Joy