New

[bc4u]

Hi all,

I am new around here...

What does everyone think of my portal site? Any suggestions are appreciated

best casinos 4u (dot com)

Also, I added my URL to Google and Yahoo (amongst others), but how long does it take to be listed on there because Yahoo only lists an old page I had on my site saying 'coming soon'...

My Meta tags are like this:

meta name="Robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW"
meta name="Revisit-after" content="1 Day"

And my robots.txt is this:


User-agent: *Disallow: Disallow: /cgi-bin/</PRE>That's fine, yeah?

Thanking you all and nice to be here!

[Fortune Palace]

The site's nice enough, well laid out and easy to navigate. The colours are interesting(!) but I'd think about changing the black on brown for the main content. It's very hard to read in low contrast situations. Try squinting at the screen and you'll see what I mean!

[MrKay]

Hi bc4u !

I really like your beginners guides as they detail many of the most important things players should look for when choosing a casino.

You just need to carry on adding lots more content now, but I think you are off to a good start.

I think your robots.txt file should read something more like this....

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/

With regards to your meta tags there is really no need to have the INDEX,FOLLOW line in as its a default setting anyway

And with your revisit after tag - this command is used to limit search engines coming back before the specified period as opposed to requesting them to come back sooner. If you leave this command out they will return as often as possible. All you are asking them to do with this line is not return more than once in a day.

Next you should look at adding sitemaps and registering with google webmaster tools, this will give you a better indication of how google is crawling through your site.

I hope this helps a little !

[dubidu]

Looks good, I like the clean-cut appearance. Would change the brown though, maybe to a different shade even... But that's just an opinion. Over all it looks really good.

[bc4u]

Hey,

Thanks for your comments, I appreciate it.

Yes, the colour is a bit of an issue! The way it originally looked on my laptop was quite nice! Then I looked on my work computer and it looked horrible so I made the shades darker, now it's too dark, so shall have to change the colours all together! Just can't decide on which but I'll mess around!

Thanks MrKay, I am learning all the time and have just learnt more from you (I am self-taught)... So shall change those things you advised!

I found the Google Webmaster Tools also which look great... I need to look in to the sitemap thing - time to do some wikipedia searching! lol.

Thanks all and all the best.

[Fortune Palace]

The way it originally looked on my laptop was quite nice! Then I looked on my work computer and it looked horrible

Yeah, same here! It's not so much the colours as the contrast. Bear in mind that people view these sites in all kinds of environments these days - even outdoors in bright sunlight.

There's no concensus as to whether it's better to have dark text on a light background or vice versa - I think it depends on your target audience. Either way, check out your options on a colour wheel or just choose a pre-designed colour scheme.

Colours give the site an initial 'feel', but ultimately, it's more about legibility and keeping visitors on the site as long as possible.

Keep going - we've all been where you are, and your site may well go through three or four design changes before it's finished.

[bc4u]

Thanks Andy,

As you can see, I changed the colours, it was irritating me - But I (hope that I) am finally happy with my choice! There may be some things to change here and there.

What do people think?

Thanks for everyone's input!

[Fortune Palace]

Much better. It's easily scannable and just feels more restful on the eyes.

The only problem now(!) is that your standard blue links at the bottom are very hard to see. If they're links from other webmasters, you may get some complaints. There'd be nothing lost in changing them to the underlined white you use on the left hand menu.

Good work, so far. Just keep reading, asking and learning. And above all - be patient. This industry is a slow burner these days and you'll put a lot of work in initially with very little reward.

But when the cheques start to come you'll realise why you bothered!

[AussieDave]

I found the Google Webmaster Tools also which look great... I need to look in to the sitemap thing

You can use an online xml generator to produce your sitemaps for both google and yahoo.

I use the following have found this site to be the best:
xxxhttp://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
(remove x's)

I'd also advise adding a sitemap.html to your site, normally placed at the footer. This will allow the bots to crawl your site URL easier. (good for those that don't use xml data). It also gives you another page. In addition a page that is just made up of your site links.

However don't make the mistake that some people do by using this page to keyword stuff & so on.

Personally I've never added meta description or keyword data to any sitemap.html page, I only use a title tag.

starttitletag Your Site Name - Site Map endtitletag

NB - This page is only to provide bots a fast way to access your site links (so they can crawl them). On larger sites it gives people a page that provides an easy navigation menu.



Cheers



Dave

[bc4u]

Thanks Fortune Palace - The links are white now so are visible lol.

Dave - I actually added a sitemap.txt using Google Webmaster tools - Is this enough, or should I add a html page also?

Leaning something new everyday! Thanks for the advice

[AussieDave]

added a sitemap.txt

Actually you don't have a sitemap.txt you do have a sitemap.xml though.

Ok a tad pedantic, maybe, but really just a friendly heads up

In so far as the sitemap.html that's a good step in the right direction.

However reiterating if it was me...I'd be taking Google's lead and following what they do on their sitemap.html Keep it simple.

xxxhttp://www.google.com/sitemap.html

As you can see it only has topic headings for each url group.

By adding your page titles and descriptions to your sitemap.html, your in affect adding duplicate content. Keep it simple. The last thing you want is to push the envelope when your trying to get indexed.




Cheers



Dave

[bc4u]

Hopefully, I've got it all set up right now...

I have an .html sitemap page which is a new link and a new page! I've also set up an .xml sitemap which I added to Google Webmaster Tools and that I hope is good for all search engines... I am guessing so!

Thanks for your input, things are moving along nicely...

All the best.