Adult Site Owners

In response to a reader's request that I look at their website and critique it, I am going to write about a number of do's and don'ts with respect to webpage design. These tips will apply to any website, no matter what its content is. In no particular order - here they are.....

1) The <title> tag -

For starters, the one thing where most webmasters screw up, even the experienced ones, is in putting the wrong content into the <title> tag area. DO NOT use meta tag keywords in the title. I will say this again... DO NOT use meta tag keywords in the title. Number one, get real, you aren't going to get listed any higher in some search engine as a result so just get this fantasy out of your head. The reality here is that there are millions of porn websites on the net so having the unrealistic expectation that you are going to have people find your site because of a better search engine ranking as a result of having certain keywords in your page, be it the title, meta tags, or content, is just plain ludicrous. Go to alta vista and type in "hot teens" and you will get 169,734 results. With 10 results for each page, you gotta be smoking crack to believe that someone is gonna find your page via a search engine and surf right on in! You have a better chance of winning the big lottery than get traffic this way.

So what is the proper thing to put into the <title> tag? If the title is for your home page, create it as if you were going to title a book. In other words make it so that anyone looking at it will automatically associate it with your site and not someone else's. What you want is no more than 2 - 4 words max, ones that succinctly describe your site. (For the less educated among you this means keep it short, sweet, and straight to the point!) If the page is a specific content page within your site and not your home page, then title it appropriately. For example, if you have a gallery of a girl called "Amber" in a website called "Fantastic Teens" title the page "Fantastic Teens - Amber". There is a very good reason for this, one that most people either overlook or are unaware of. The reason you want your title to be short and concise is that, should the unimaginable happen, and your visitor actually does decide to bookmark your page, guess what happens as a result? The title tag information is what most browsers will use as the default name for your bookmark on their PC. So if you are insistent on using a long string of keywords or super huge titles in your <title> tags, then you will be looking rather foolish and unprofessional when your page is indeed bookmarked on someone's desktop or favorites folder.

2) The <center> tag -

One sure sign of amateurish page design is the use of center tags to create a vertical column of the page's content. Now, I'm not talking about using this tag for keeping table contents and other well organized content positioned. I am talking about having a vertical stream of text and links, all stacked one atop the other. If you are having trouble organizing your page's content in a creative fashion, simply try going to a number of sites that have similar requirements in terms of menu and content and emulate their look and feel. This is not a crime, just so long as you don't copy the page exactly down to the last graphic. It really is an acceptable way of doing things. I am a programmer and I have zero imagination in so far as page design is concerned and I am not above this practice when it comes to making pages for my customers in this manner. One key point here is to definitely learn how to use tables to present your content. Tables nested within tables is the way to go. I would avoid using <div> tags to position content as the results can be very unpredictable and even embarrassing depending on the browser that your visitor is using. This is one of the major faults with using FrontPage as a web page editor as it uses <div> tags every chance it gets and obviously is not concerned with a compatible look in browsers that compete with IE.

3) Lists of links -

If you are running a TGP site and you have a list of links on your page, please put them into decent columns, bulleted if you like, and do not just jam them into a scrolling paragraph w/o regard to organization. You are wasting your time thinking that people will take the time to read thru this jumbled mess. Sure there is a deranged minority that will comb thru your links, but the vast majority will just pan them over and move on to another site that presents their stuff in a better organized manner. I am not sure of what TGP posting "add a link" scripts are out there as I code all my own shit by hand but I am sure that much of this disorganized link jamming crud is a result of HTML that is automatically generated by some poorly designed script that was found for free on "Matt's Script Archive". If this is the case, pony up the $59 or so and at least get a decent script that will do a better job with this task. Better yet, take some time to code your own scripts and make a nice custom one that might better suit your visitors than the competition's. This is exactly what I have done with thumbspy.com and I am sure that once others see what it is that I have done, there will be lots of wanna be imitators pop up left and right. Fear not (hehe) I am a web coding maggot and I have tons of more cool features in the pipeline that I plan on creating as I am not one to leave well enough alone.

4) The <p> tag -

Very simple one here. Use the following anywhere you are going to have a paragraph of content appearing on your site and you will never look back. <p align=justify> This will equally justify your paragraph's content on both sides, left and right, and give your pages a really clean look and feel to them.

5) Mouseover effects on text -

DO NOT use mouseover effects that change a link to bold in the middle of a line of text. This is one of the most annoying things you can do in your webpage. It is an example of scripting just because you can. Don't! Stay away! The resulting page flashing around and the text realigning itself will really piss off your visitors and absolutely guarantee that your site will not be visited again. If you have an isolated string of text on it's own line, then this is okay but make sure that you really need to be doing this or are you just practicing webmasturbation!

Okay - this is enough stuff for now. I will be bringing to you more tips on webpage coding and also expect more from me in the areas of JavaScripting and Perl. I have tons and tons of really useful stuff that you can do with these two scripting languages.
Later -

Albert Dewey
ThumbSpy.com

ThumbSpy - The internet's first search engine/directory listing service completely dedicated to bringing you high quality adult entertainment w/o all the bullshit. Our system has been designed from the ground up to be the most user-friendly solution to finding quality porn available on the net. Unlike other TGP sites, we actually preview each and every site that is posted here to weed out blind links, pages with annoying pop ups, banner farms, and sites that promise hot young teen sweeties but deliver chicks with dicks instead!

*Webmasters* -- Don’t forget to submit your galleries to thumbspy! www.thumbspy.com

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