Three Levels of Frames

Implications for Indexing

[rogerd]

I've just taken on the project of getting some traffic for a site that has one of the more unusual designs I've seen. It's actually not bad looking or even difficult to use, but under the covers it's a different story. The original designer has created layered framesets - the first frameset has three vertical frames, one of which loads a new frameset of three horizontal frames. One of those loads yet another frameset, which includes two more frames - one of which actually contains content!

I don't have the time or budget for a full redesign, which would be my first choice - the client is in "economy" mode. My plan is to add some noframes content as appropriate, create some simple linkage directly to the content pages (to add to the problem, the site currently uses scripted links that SEs won't follow).

Of course, if I'm successful in getting the content pages indexed, I now have the problem of restoring the massive frameset structure if the user loads just the content page. I'm thinking that I'll use javascript to test the content page and if it's not in the frameset to load it; that frameset will have to have a similar test, to load the biggest frameset.

Oh, did I mention the cool Flash intro page? ;) Thank goodness we got the OK to bypass that...

Does anyone have any comments on working in this kind of layered frame environment? (Other than, "Just say no!"? :) Any SE pitfalls to avoid?

[tedster]

Wow! My sympathies to all involved.

I have one suggestion in addition to what you already plan. It sounds like the content pages may be essentially dead ends in terms of links back to the site. If that's the case, I'd get some links on those pages to help circulate PR around the site, and otherwise keep all the spiders fed.

[oilman]

Since I have such flair for stating the obvious: You'll likely need some js redirects to load up the frameset's properly but it get kinda confusing if the page you load reloads the frameset with page with redirect and so on. I had a small problem like this once and used an onload function to load the other frames. Worked out fairly well.

[rogerd]

the content pages may be essentially dead ends

That's correct... I was planning on adding a few links on these pages just so that if someone managed to load one by itself they wouldn't be marooned.