We looked at how layers can be used in dreamweaver to then be converted into tables. This is a less confusing way to do it, tables can get confusing with the different settings and changing each size individually. If you put everything into layers and then convert them to tables it can be much easier.
We looked at making a website using frames in dreamweaver.
This is a quick, easy and nice looking way to make a site, it's only downfall is that search engines don't recognize them as easily because it uses multiple documents to make up the website rather than one.
We looked at the Virgin website and went over bad points of it. The website is not well made for people with visual impairments due to it's colouration.
Also because it is all in Flash it brings up other potential problems with viewers and search engines as the only information available would be the name of the flash file rather than all of the information within it. Though, due to Virgin being so well known they do not need to ensure on SEO because if someone searches for Virgin they will find virgin. Sites made completely in Flash are more made to look good rather than to be optimized for search engines, this makes it a good possible choice for a larger brand company but for an independant business, a not so good one.
Today we looked a bit at SEO, it is pretty interesting as it makes a huge difference when trying to advertise your site. If your site is not optimized, it won't be found.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the main way to drive traffic to your website, generating yourself more revenue etc.
This can be done in many ways, but the main ways are using words that direct the Google engine to your website. This works by adding Keywords, Headings, Description. These features, along with many other things help optimize your website for search engines. This is because when someone searches a word, such as Monkey, if a website has the word Monkey in it's keyword, description and title it will push it up the table because Google attempts to return the most relevant pages to the user.
Today we looked at an interesting video about Google. It describes how you Google works, how it grew and how it makes so much money today. Also towards the end it started questioning Google's morals, that they are like a "big brother" monitoring everyones activity that uses Google and using it to change things, and sometimes sharing it with the US government.
The video was really interesting and it showed what Google's future will be and what people think of what Google are doing etc.
Today I compared good and bad websites and good and bad myspace pages. I compared and wrote about the basic design features of my 4 chosen links and then said why i thought they were good/bad and how they compared to the other one. I also included screen grabs of main features of the website and how I think they work well. We also set up this blogger account for use as a reflective journal.
