Frontpage question-Shared borders and themes

Can gogglebot figure it out?

[sirlion]

I'm trying to put up a "professional" looking site. I plan to use the buttons provided with a FP theme and put them in a shared border for all pages. However once this is done and I view the HTML I can not see any link evidence in the HTML, although the links to other internal pages work. The question? Will Googlebot be able to follow these links and give me full acknowledgement and PR for the sub pages? Thanks in advance!

[bill]

I'd usually warn against using the FP shared borders in favor of FP's Include Page component. You have much more control over the final product. The Shared Borders use a webbot component that is processed when you publish the site. In order to see the final HTML you'll have to either publish the site or view it on the PWS (Personal Web Server) on your development machine. If you try to look at the HTML view in FP you won't see the links.

To answer your question about Googlebot following links, I'd have to say that I've never heard of any problems. The Shared Borders HTML may not be pretty, but it is spiderable.

[TheDave]

No I don't think google has any problems. 3 or 4 years ago now our site was using FP shared borders and google crawled our entire site. I still use shared borders but avoid the auto navigation buttons.

[sirlion]

I just published the site and the HTML on the shared border navigation is shown as a javascript?
// --></script><script language="JavaScript"><!--
I was under the impression that googlebot cannot/will not follow and index java links. Am I missing something here? Thanks again.

[brotherhood of LAN]

sirloin, are they plain text links, buttons or even images?

Last time I used shared borders with FP the only difference was an extra meta tag in the source code, presumably for the server extensions to include the shared border upon seeing the tag.

something like <meta name="sharedborder" content="tb"> or something to that extent.

More "elaborate" frontpage options will obfuscate what could/should be a plain text link.

[mack]

I have built a few smallish sites using shared borders and google seamed to have no problems indexing the pages. I think the peopel at google have to realise that a lot of sites are built using wysiwyg editors and have designed their crawlers in such a way that they are able to work with these features.

[bill]

FP did have an option in some of its themes to use Java buttons. I can't remember the type of name they used for the buttons, but the end result was buttons that required Java, not JavaScript. If that's what you've ended up with I recall that FP would add a *.class file in your _class folder. If that's the case, then I would strongly suggest you look at another option for your buttons.

[pickman]

Hi There,
This is a great site for info. Are you talking about Front Pages "hover buttons"?

[bill]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld pickman.

Are you talking about Front Pages "hover buttons"?

I think those may be the culprit. All advice I've ever seen since hover buttons were introduced was that they should not be used. There were a bunch of browser comatibility issues involved and I don't know whether spiders will follow links in Java applets.

[TheDave]

Ahh yes the hover buttons.. I used them once, for about a day or 2 until the first "its not working" complaint.

[pickman]

Well I do know that they break-up/ scramble when I scroll to fast. hummm? But your saying that they cause problems for spiders?

[pickman]

Sorry, I read too fast. Got it.

[Swordsman]

<The Shared Borders use a webbot component that is processed when you publish the site. In order to see the final HTML you'll have to either publish the site or view it on the PWS (Personal Web Server) on your development machine. If you try to look at the HTML view in FP you won't see the links.>

Nope, that's not how it works. FP updates the borders every time you save, you just don't see it in "normal" or "html" view. If you use "preview" view and right click and choose "view source" you can see the code that is actually on that page. You don't have to publish the site to see the code. If you were to choose a file in the web with Windows Explorer and open it in Notepad you could see this as well.

[bill]

Hey Swordsman welcome to WebmasterWorld.

FP updates the borders every time you save, you just don't see it in "normal" or "html" view.

That's probably a simpler explanation. I work on the PWS so saving the page is the same as publishing it in the local environment, but I could see how that could be misunderstood.

However, I would suggest that you not rely too heavily on the Preview in FP. It's not really a fully functioning browser and has limitations. In this case you could view the source the way Swordsman suggested and see what the Shared Borders component had made, but depending on other on-page components it is usually recommended that you use the Preview in Browser method of checking the source of what FP has made.

[europeforvisitors]

I use FrontPage shared borders and includes in a site of 3,300+ pages. I've had no problems with Google at all, except for not being #1 for every search term. :-)

One suggestion: If you have a very large site, break it into subwebs. That will have two advantages:

1) It will make it easier to use different borders in different sections of the site if you wish; and...

2) It will save time when saving changes to your shared borders or included content.

BTW, for my side borders, I insert include files. This is more convenient than entering border data directly, since I can have a couple of different borders if I wish and change them just by inserting a new include reference in the shared border.