Forum Moderators: mack
I first used a WYSIWYG program about 2 years ago to make a site on Kentucky hockey history. I no longer remember the name and it won't work with my 1 year old system anyway. I've been using Word for minor edits. But I really think I need to learn html to make my site lean before I think about adding a couple hundred player pages and photos.
After stumbling through trying to get onto a few search engines, I broke down and purchased Addweb. The upside is that I did get on the major engines.
I can tell now that I need to put on hold my plans to find a provider and start using the domain name I purchased. But I'm also conflicted by the fact that one poster in the "beginner" threads said:
"8) Use a domain name - When you set up your site, use a domain name instead of the URL provided by the web host. This way you can move your site without losing your search engine rankings, link exchanges and so forth. "
How worried should I be? Is it possible that when I redo my site, and find a place to park it under my domain name, that I can leave links at my old site for a long period and get automatically updated into the search engines? Additionally, how can I then clean out any portions of search engine databases that will lead back to the old site location?
In case anyone cares to comment on a strictly pedestrian attempt (and I have very thick skin so blast away), my site is in my profile (had the URL here but read in another thread that I misunderstood the user agreement).
and on the off chance...is there anyone in the Louisville area (USA-Kentucky) that might offer a lead on a decent short-course by a good teacher?
...looking for the light...
I completely agree with the fact that you should have your own domain name and not www.yourhost.com/yoursite. I would suggest purchasing the new domain name, and using a redirect (do a search for 301 redirect to see how to do this) to get traffic to the new domain. Perhaps some of the Google or SE experts can shed some light on how much this will affect your rankings.
If you have been using Word for edits, chances are your code is pretty messed up (didn't see your url in your profile, so I couldn't check it out). WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver have a 'Clean up Word HTML' option which will go a long way towards cleaning up your code. I'm sure the other major editors do the same.
You came to the right place for sure, keep hanging out here and you will be a professional webmaster before you know it! Best of luck!
BTW, Dreamweaver is a pretty heft cost. I was hoping to learn html, php, etc. Am I better off using yet another wysiwyg prg?
If you use wysiwyg, it's also good to read the code and start to learn it so you can do some custom mods that the program can't do - as you learn more, you'll start to find limitations within all the wysiwyg editors.
You can see it, but others won't see it until you have like 20 posts. So for now you could put it at the 'occupation' field.
Success with your site.
