Suzanne — Thu, 24 Apr 2003 16:24:45 +0000

Split thread off re: search engine discussion to: http://www.webmaster-forums.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21113

The Webmistress — Thu, 24 Apr 2003 06:56:48 +0000

I agree with Suzanne, what you are doing is spam! SEs are now getting very sophisticated and putting a spamming list like this will not do you any favours at all.

Suzanne — Wed, 23 Apr 2003 21:21:52 +0000

If you make it white, it's spam. If it's not intended to be read by humans, you shouldn't have it on the page.

If you have a database, what you need to do is have a page that spits out the names only -- a list, human readable, of all the alumni.

Not only would this be a nice resource for the people coming to your site, it would also prevent your site from being banned from the very search engines you're trying to attract.

You can generate this page dynamically, or you can generate it from the database monthly, for instance, and have it a static page.

You need to differentiate between the database (which is not able to be spidered) and the pages that display information FROM the database (which are). Spiders can only get the information you leave links to -- so if you have a page that pulls email addresses and displays them in the browser, it can get that. If you have emails in the database and no display, it can't (there's more to it, obviously, but most spiders/search engines cannot just go get things out of a database).

It's fine to have the search features that will reveal email addresses behind more secure protection coding, of course.

fifeclub — Wed, 23 Apr 2003 21:14:01 +0000

Yeah, my code doesn't validate yet. But since I'm working on revising a new version of the site I'm going to try to tidy all that stuff up and do it right (I hope).

As for why I put that tiny print there... here's my logic: It isn't intended to be read by any humans. In fact I'll soon be making it white so it blends in. I get more than half of my visitors from search engines looking for people who are listed in my database. Now that I'm revising my site, I want to secure the database a little bit with a robots exclude file so that spiders can't farm emails and stuff like that straight out of my directory. But I certainly don't want to cut off the main method people find my site. So I figured to put that ultra-small text at the bottom of just the home page so that search spiders can find and index those names, but point towards the home page rather than directly into the database section. (I'll then use some sort of human check like 'digits-on-an-image' to keep spiders out of the directory). Does this make sense? It may not be the most sophisticated solution but I think it will help me. If you can think of another solution that's easy enough even for me to implament, let me know what you had in mind.

Thanks again everyone.

fifeclub — Wed, 23 Apr 2003 21:03:28 +0000

Awesome. It worked. Thanks! I'm surprised but hey, whatever it takes to make it work. I learn new stuff all the time here.

Suzanne — Wed, 23 Apr 2003 20:59:28 +0000

Daymn, that fine print is mighty fine! What's the point!?

Definitely get those HTML bits out of the CSS file, though -- those should only be on an HTML page, not in an external (global) css file.

Also, you might want to take the advice given repeatedly and validate your code...

The fonts shouldn't be smaller than 10px, please. Smaller is illegible. I had to zoom up to 675% to get that fine print showing -- that's just ridiculous. If you need those names on the page, put them in properly, don't make them spam.

N7 seems to be showing the 9px stuff for me.

For links:

a.classname:pseudo-class-value
NOT
a:pseudo-class-value.classname

element.class:pseudo-class
element#id:pseudo-class

***

Instead of making classes called what they are specifically made up of, you should call them by their purpose.

Instead of .nine, you should have .copyright or .disclaimer -- then you have better control over the page and the stylesheet and also know what will be affected when you change things.

disaster-master — Wed, 23 Apr 2003 17:56:59 +0000

Remove the following from your style sheet:

leave everything in between

-->

I believe that if you change the following, it will fix that.

body, p, td {color: #000000;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: normal;
text-decoration: none;
font-size: 12px;
font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;}

Suzanne can probably verify.

fifeclub — Wed, 23 Apr 2003 16:44:34 +0000

I'm getting a page from the link. Maybe it was a temporary outage? Are you still not getting a page?

Suzanne — Wed, 23 Apr 2003 16:35:21 +0000

moi aussi

disaster-master — Wed, 23 Apr 2003 15:22:36 +0000

I am getting a "page cannot be displayed" error.