Hi All,

I'm not sure that this is the correct place for this post, but I'm sure one of the mods will move it if it isn't.

I have a site at Horse riding holiday in Spain. Horse riding holidays with horse riding on the beach in Andalucia, Spain. The site design is a couple of years old now and is optimized for 800 x 600 pix, expanding for larger screen widths, and uses html with css. I feel that it is now time to update the site and move it on.

I am by no means a professional programmer, however I know a little and hand code my own site. However I also run the business. I am basically IT expert, accountant, groom, guide, host, chief cook and bottle washer!! OK I don't do the cooking, but you get my drift, I don't have that much time to spend on the website.

I have a couple of questions as follows;

I have had some guests on holiday here with me that have been IT experts, they have recommended that I recode the site using ASP.NET rather than HTML. What are your thoughts on this?

Others have said that HTML is dying and is being replaced by XHTML, again any thoughts would be appreciated.

Moving on to the site redesign, should I use a fixed 1024 x 768 pix resolution, or should it be greater. Indeed should it be fixed?

I would appreciate if you guys could browse over the site and let me have your thoughts about any weaknesses or strengths with the site. SEO isn't a problem with the site as I have good organic search results.

Regards

Steve

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http://www.fantasiaadventureholidays.com/

XHTML is all promise and no actual delivery.

HTML is fine. .net will lock you into Microsoft's way of doing things.

You will probably need a few forms and you can use PHP for these.

Personally, I am a fixed resolution guy. 800 to900 px wide. Your main body text width should be 600 px for readability.

I like your site. I would not change a whole lot.
I would try to use higher quality photos.

__________________
Dave Barnes
+1.303.744.9024
http://www.marketingtactics.com
sitting in my basement with my iMac

Technically there is no advantage over using php, html, xhtml or any other extension over the other. They all get indexed and they all get served up by the search engines. You can use html and it will be fine, .html is limited however to what it can do, but unless you need the functionalities that some of the other extensions give you, there is no need to change.

I too like the site and I agree with Dave that the images look pixelated. They need to be a higher resolution. I also like the layout of the site.

Weakness
Directory listings / indexes should not be possible. Some isp's have a button you can check somewhere in your control panel turning off directory indexing. A quick no frills way of doing this is to place a blank index.html in each folder that does not have an index.html. One url tested was Index of /images .

I understand you did not want any comments on SEO as you are performing okay in the rankings, but for what it is worth you may want to update your copywrite and also add a title to your text links to help with accessibility.

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The Sensual Touch Lingerie | High Heels | High Heel Blog

Thanks to both davebarns and amxfan for your kind comments.

I too share davebarns concerns with a move to .net and being stuck with microsofts way. If html and css is going to be around for a number of years I would prefer to stay with html and spend my time on updating copy, tweaking layout, etc.

As davebarns said I do need to develop online request forms and booking forms. Is php the best way to do this? What's the best way to stop spammers using the forms? Do you know of any free or low cost software out there to help design online forms ( I know nothing about php! )?

With regards to images I use low image resolution to decrease load times. I don't have a decent photo editor like photoshop, and I am using microsoft photo editor to reduce the resolution. This editor does tend to pixelate the image as the resolution is reduced. Do you know of any reasonably priced or free software that would do the job better?

According to my site stats 44.5% of visitors use 1024 x 768 screen res, 43.7% use 1280 x 1024, 8.8% use unknown or other, but only 3% use 800 x 600. I feel that a fixed width is better in some respects, but a small resolution site viewed on a large res screen leaves a large white band on the right. However a large res site viewed on a small res screen means that there is a horizontal scroll bar, which I dislike. The alternative is a site that expands and contracts, but this affects site layout. I note that davebarns prefers fixed width, any other views out there?

Thanks amxfan I hadn't realised that my directories are visible. The server has an extensive CP, next time I go on to the server I will sort that out. Also adding titles to the text links is an excellent idea, I'll incorporate that into my update.

Thanks again.

Steve

__________________
http://www.fantasiaadventureholidays.com/

I am not sure if this will work or not, but I know people that have done it in the past. I too have done this for other types of software. Adobe came out with their CS3 version. In doing this, they left a lot of people still stocking Photoshop 9 and even Photoshop 7. Sometimes you can contact the actual manufacturer and ask for an older version or you can search on the internet for people trying to liquidate the older versions "older versions sell for a fraction of the cost". Other than that, since I do use Photoshop, I am not aware of any other program that will let you resize the image and also have control over what resolution.

I did not comment on it last time, but my preference for webpages and blogs is to have it fixed width.

As far as your question regarding the forms, I am unable to help you with this due to most of my sites deal with e-commerce and do not use reservations or booking, so I will be of no help to you in this area.

Sorry I am not much help, but maybe you can find an older version in the price range that you are looking for.

Hi Amxfan,

That's great I hadn't thought of trying to buy outdated versions of software. I just presumed that all outdated versions were dumped in the bin when new versions were released, as you suggest I'll contact Adobe and also do a search on google.

I do agree that one of the problems with my site is the quality of the images. The problem isn't with the originals as they are all high resolution and high quality. For example for one image that I use on the site the original is 2362 x 1772 pixels and 1.26 megabytes in size ( some of the other originals are much larger than that ). The problem is when I reduce the originals down to 300 x 250 pixels and 30k or so in size, they just become so grainy. Am I trying to reduce the size of the image too much, or is it just the software that I am using?

With regards to fixed or variable resolution for the site. I think that I am going to go with yours and davebarns way of thinking and have a fixed resolution. I'm going to go for 1024 x 768, and have all the body text in a window of 800 pxs wide, and site navigation in a left hand column 224 pxs wide, and also at the bottom of the page within the 800 pxs wide window.

With regards to online forms. A few years ago I did have a guestbook on the site, but it received so much spam that I eventually had to delete it from the site. I was receiving up to 100 spam messages a day added to the guestbook. The majority of these messages were longer than the 'fold' of the page and full of links to every undesirable website on the net! It was a CGI script available from my CP, and eventually even the server gave up on it and removed it from their available scripts! After that experience I am a bit loath to add any more online forms to the site. At the moment I handle the booking form issue by having a button on the site that downloads a MS Word document. For 90% of my clients that works fine. It's for the 10% that don't have the software or know how to open or return the completed form to me that I need to have an online booking form. If anybody out there has any experience on this issue any help would be appreciated.

Thanks again,

Steve

__________________
http://www.fantasiaadventureholidays.com/

The pixelation of the images would have to be due to the software as you are reducing the image size. More than likely it is because the software you are using is not changing the resolution "dpi" proportionally while it is changing the physical size.

I looked at your booking form and was under the assumption that you were trying to do everything online, to where a visitor could see available dates, make reservations, etc, all through your site. What you might be able to do is take your booking.doc, save it as a webpage, and create a webform with a submit button at the bottom. I'm not sure how that would work, but I'm sure you get the idea. Also using a Microsoft Word document, you may have issues with not everyone has Office. Also depending on what version of Office the document was created in, an older version may not be able to open it. I had the software here to convert the Microsoft Word document to a Acrobat Reader .pdf document. Acrobat Reader is a free downloadable program, and it comes installed on any new system. I have emailed you the pdf file to info@ . If you wish to use it, that is great, if not, that is okay as well. I think it is another option you may want to look at.

Photoshop Elements ($80 USD from Amazon) provides about 80% of the capabilities of Photoshop. Highly recommended.

PHP.
1. Make sure that your webhosting provider supports PHP.
2. Surf to PHP Request Info Primer . I wrote it 5 years ago when I was considering using PHP. It is a primer and very simple.

__________________
Dave Barnes
+1.303.744.9024
http://www.marketingtactics.com
sitting in my basement with my iMac

Thanks again amxfan and davebarns for your time on this.

I have received the .pdf version of my booking form, thanks for that amxfan. I will add the pdf version as an option to download for prospective clients. However I have the same concerns as yourself with using downloadable documents like word, pdf, exel, etc. With downloadable forms there may be software compatibility or even software existence problems on prospective clients pc's. For these reasons I want to move to online request and booking forms. However I am hesitant to do this. Firstly due to spam issues with online forms being abused by spammers, and secondly due to a basic lack of knowledge of how to set the forms up and protect them from abuse.

Davebarns, I have had a very quick browse of your tutorial, and it looks excellent and very easy to use. My webhost does support php, so this looks like a very good step forward towards setting up online forms.

However there doesn't seem to be anything in your tutorial about spam protection. Most online forms now seem to use a unique code generated within an image to be keyed in by the user to authorise the form. How do you create these images and codes? Also I have read that this can be an irritant to users, and best avoided. Any thoughts?

I will download Photoshop Elements, it sounds great value for money.

Regards

Steve

__________________
http://www.fantasiaadventureholidays.com/

The technical term is CAPTCHA, see CAPTCHA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Creating a CAPTCHA with PHP

Annoying? Yes, but people are getting used to them.

__________________
Dave Barnes
+1.303.744.9024
http://www.marketingtactics.com
sitting in my basement with my iMac

Is this something of the sort of what you were looking for? Letterhead

Please note that this is a quick and dirty job and I only added the fields and did not change any of the wording at the top or do any tweaking. Dave's way of doing it is best and also more secure, but this may hold you over until you're able create a better one.

Also note that every ISP handles form mail differently and you would have to contact them or read their FAQ on what tags or code you have to add to make the form work and for the content to be emailed to you. You will also have to name the fields so you know what they are when you read the email. Lastly due to the info requested on the form, you may want to put it on a https, but sending personal and bank info through an email is not the best thing to do no matter if it is sent from a https or not.

The best way is the way Dave suggested. That way it could be hooked to a gateway and no personal info for it to send through email, but since they are printing it out and attaching it, this may hold you over until you can go with a more secure way. You do not want people sending an email with an attachment as this can be a quick way to get a virus. Feel free to save that page to your computer if you desire.

Dave your an absolute mine of information, that's a great link on how to set up captcha's. Along with the 'request info tutorial' that's the online forms issue more or less dealt with. I now just need to implement my new found knowledge on the site.

Amxfan thanks again for your time and help on this. Dave has given me enough information to set up forms using php. However untill I have set up the php forms I am going to continue with downloadable doc files along with the pdf file that you sent me. I also agree that sensative information, i.e. bank details, etc, shouldn't be collected unless on a secure server. For the time being I have no intention to move towards online payments, therefore a https would be a waste of money for me. I currently have a POS machine and collect payment details by telephone, this is how I intend to continue. Rest assured that when I do set up online forms I will not ask for information that may compromise respondants bank accounts, etc.

Thanks again to both of you for your time on this.

Regards

Steve

__________________
http://www.fantasiaadventureholidays.com/