scrolling news question

[pagetta]

at present we have a vertical scrolling news ticker made in flash on our home page. The problem is that this is the only content on our home page that regularly updates, but obviously can't be read by spiders so is useless in SEO terms.

What would be the best way to solve this problem?
idea #1 is to put in a javascript scolling news bar, with the java script in an external file. I already have one external javascript file though, and in my body tag have onLoad="doFlash();" so how do I add another bit to the onload command so that it does the new ticker things too?

idea#2 is to still do it in flash but use php so that the text is inserted from a php file that can be read by spiders - if this is a good idea please could someone tell me how to do it??!!

Any other ideas would be most welcome. There is limited space for this news which is why we would like it to scroll so as can fit as much as possible on there (about 5 story intros which click through to a full page story).

Thanks :-)

[Faglork]

Is there any *real* reason for having animated news?
Why not simply present them as text, giving them more prominence?

--> better usability / accessibility
--> better for the spiders

You said that this is the only area on the homepage that gets regularly updated. And you said it is important (at least you want to put five news items on the front page).

Why not having the newest item with headline and teaser, and the other four just the headlines? Takes not much space, you could even rotate the top news, is yummy to the spiders and easy to use for your visitors.

faglork

[cyanide]

I agree with Faglork,
Why make it scrolling or animated at all.

I would just put the 3 most recent news, then hotlink the title to the full story.

Then as new news arrives, add it and remove the older one

[mikesmith76]

I agree with Faglork,
Why make it scrolling or animated at all.

I would just put the 3 most recent news, then hotlink the title to the full story.

Then as new news arrives, add it and remove the older one

Just to add if your news comes from a database you wont need any manual additions, just pull the latest 3 news articles. Apart from that I agree with the comments already made, javascript news tickers don't look prefessional IMO

[cyanide]

Originally Posted by mikesmith76

Just to add if your news comes from a database you wont need any manual additions, just pull the latest 3 news articles. Apart from that I agree with the comments already made, javascript news tickers don't look prefessional IMO

Good point, just create a statement that pulls the most recent X posts, sorted by date. -|

[Faglork]

... and you could add a random statement for "featured news" to bring up topics which are not up to date but interesting ...