Having a "printable page"

Is it smart or necessary?

[hdpt00]

I have seen some popular sites have printer specific pages that remove the ads and just have their logo for obvious reasons when printing.

Now I am in a pretty niche market, but looking to expand into a major network. Now, does anyone use this technique to help their users? Is this becoming popular or is basically something to add to the site? Do you put the printer pages in a specific folder and robots.txt protect that folder to avoid duplicate content?

And most importantly, do you think it is necessary to have printable pages?

[HelenDev]

do you think it is necessary to have printable pages

Do you think someone might want to print your pages?

I would say it's best to use a print stylesheet for this. That way you don't have to have any duplicate content.

[txbakers]

I make all my reports as printable pages by default - white background, no images, etc. People like that.

[SEOMike]

We use the print style sheet. Works great. Our site is black with white text and it prints like normal. We've gotten a few compliments on it. People like our articles and want to print them... then are plesently surprised. We are a web design firm, and it's actually generated business for us as people see it and want it for their site.

Pretty neat trick if you ask me!

[timchuma]

With a few minor changes to your design you should be able to come up with a site that not only looks the way you want it, but also prints out properly.

Things to look out for include fixed width pages that are wider than the screen (sometimes they don't allow text to wrap so it doesn't print out.)

If you want to print out a test page that includes the background colours and images I recommend generating a PDF of the page so you can check it. This is also a good idea if you want to send out content from the site as a mailout.

Thanks.

[willybfriendly]

OK, so would a pdf be seen as duplicate content?

Have a client that loves print media. Have slowly weaned her away from that type of layout on her site, but now she wants a print flyer to be placed on her site. My idea was to do a nice html page, with a pdf as a print version - and yes, some folks might want to print this one.

I hadn't considered the issue of duplicate content.

WBF

[timchuma]

I usually only generate a PDF of a page if it is needed for a mailout (it is too hard to get a HTML page to print the same on different printers.)

Thanks.

[eurotrash]

OK, so would a pdf be seen as duplicate content?

Good question, but to get round this you generate the pdf on the fly in the format you wish. We have one of our clients doing this on their news site. It is a really good branding piece for the site.

I am not sure if it is reasonable to put the url here to show the action (Mod let me know!) however if you sticky me I will be happy to guide you to the site.

It requires adobe software on the server but works a treat.

[ddent]

There are actually modules to generate PDFs without the use of any adobe stuff. Exists at a minimum for Perl & PHP.

[willybfriendly]

Client has already paid a significant sum to a print graphic firm to develop the document. Doubt she would be thrilled to be billed by me to do the work to generate on the fly what she already has in print and pdf format.

First I had to wean her off NN4. Then I had to convince her that web-work is different that print work. The pdf download seems like the best compromise with the current task. This is a very good client. I am not into creating unnecessary work or excess billing. The document has been sent in hard copy to over 6000 addresses. She wants it also mirrored on the site. As a pdf it is over 1.5Mb. Many of the prospects will be in rural areas on dial-up. Convinced her that I could convert content to html for faster downloads, and yet preserve her print document as pdf for those that wanted to take the time to do a 1.5Mb download.

Unless I hear more about a duplicate content penalty I think that is how I will go. Might even consider banning the pdf to crawls.

WBF