by Aldus Marius on Fri Jun 27, 2008 11:29 pm
Salvete, amici Romani!
Noster Timavus supra scripsit:
> ...it seems that there are some fairly simple things that we can do to improve our site's visibility. Some of them, such as including metadata, can be done at the webmaster level...
Dunno about metadata, but I'm good for page titles and "ALT" tags for the images. "Titles" are what you see in the title bar of your browser window. An ALT tag is a short text description of the image that, in some browsers, pops up when you hover the cursor over the image. Text-only browsers and voice-reading software can 'see' them. Search engines can too. The Outpost has 'em; the SVR site did not...until this morning.
Done so far:
- Site Index (the main page)
- Major section indices: FAQ, Chat, Members, Regulae, Contact
- All Member pages
- All Regula pages
The Collegia section is a project unto itself; it and its subpages have by far the most illustrations. They're next.
"Titles and ALT tags, mi Mari? That's it??"
Several months ago I did the Webalyzer analysis on the SVR site, and then (just for kicks and grins) did one on the Outpost too. I was shocked by the results: The SVR site was visible to only 20% of potential visitors and their search engines; the Outpost, 80%.
I could just hear the cries: "You've been holding out on us, Mari!" Mortified, I tore at my hair and rent my garments, and sat in a heap of ashes for several days while meditating upon the following conundrum: What am I doing for the Outpost that I'm not doing for the Societas?? The Outpost is far, far from being a Web-code showcase, unless your HTML museum has a Neolithic wing. But it does have descriptive page titles and alt tags for the pics. I guess that's the difference between inheriting a site and building one up from scratch. So--I'm bringing our humble Pages up to frontier milspec.
See? --I haven't forgotten about ya's. >({|:-)
In fide,
Aldus Marius Peregrinus.