care and feeding of your aspie

Post Reply New Topic

On my suggestion and with Feralucce's agreement, I have removed the distraction of a counterproductive argument from this thread.

Here is the preview of the new site. The index is up, but does NOT have any information in it... yet...

The Warped Lens

Care and Feeding - Index
Here is the index... it's got about a third of the issues in it. Will be doing more later

Nice WordPress sites.
Professional curiosity:
Did you code the js on the blog site yourself?

My constructive criticisms, for whatever they're worth, if you're interested:
---
I noticed that your site description on the blog site is being misplaced & mostly hidden due to the 'bottom' style being set for .site-header h2 on line 54 of 'http://www.savagelightstudios.com/warpedlens/wp-content/themes/byblos/style.css?ver=3.8.1'.
Removing the 'bottom: 40px;' line using the browser debugger appears to fix the issue, so deleting the same line from the above style.css file should do the same.

There doesn't seem to be a link back to the blog site from the photography site, and there's no link back to the main domain site from either as far as I could see, nor links on the main site to the two sub-sites.
The only link between the three sites seems to be the menu link on the blog site to the photography site.
Is any or all of that deliberate, or are they oversights?

Have you considered using sub-domains for the photography & blog sites rather than just sub-directories?
Something like warpedlens.savagelightstudios.com & photography.savagelightstudios.com.
It's usually fairly easy & free to set up if you're on a decent host, it makes it somewhat clearer that they're separate from but related to the main site to the various crawlers & bots & whatnot, and it makes for less confusion for the end-users as people tend to be a little confused when they end up on a completely different site on the same domain.
Just a thought.
---

I'm very familiar with Wordpress & I've done a fair amount of web development using it, including (but not limited to) seo, galleries, and building custom plugins.
I know, from what I've seen of your sites, that you probably can do most, if not all, of what you want yourself and/or you have plenty of help, but in case you want or need any more assistance I'd be willing to pitch in.
Feel free to pm me.

Thanks for building the index!

I don't code... I used to, but that special interest faded and head trauma pushed the coding i KNEW out of my head.

I am not sure that subdomains are necessary, really... When you think about the reasons for them - it is to make it easy to remember the URL and the subdirectories are simple enough that it should not complicate it overly...

I am looking for a menu widget that allows the links to be opened in new windows or tabs... The link back, in this case, is not really necessary if I can get the menu to do that. While it may be confusing to people coming at it from the blog.... The circle of people who are coming in from my Film making and the circle of people who are coming into my photography are... less open minded, professionally speaking, and I noticed a correlation and loss of business when the two tracked back to the blog... So... I guess the short answer is that it is intentional

Well, not exactly, but here's the thing:
All that's needed to get a link to open in a new tab is for 'target="_blank"' to be added to the html <a> tag.
Apparently, it's possibly to set a link target which opens a new window/tab in the WordPress admin Menus area by going there, clicking on screen options on the upper right hand of the page, then checking the box under 'Show Advanced Menu Properties' labeled 'Link Target'.
Then each of your menu items will have a form field (checkbox/dropdown) allowing you to have the item open in a new window/tab if so desired.
Not plugin necessary.
Interesting question, glad you asked.
Here's the article I found about it with pictures.
It's out of date but fairly accurate if you feel the need for a visual reference.
Hope than helps.

Links: Ok, sure, I understand not having the business stuff linked to the blog, but shouldn't they be linked to each other at a minimum, and what's the downside of linking the blog to the main site given it's already linked to the photography site?


As for the subdomains: no, they're not strictly necessary, I just think it's neater in terms of the structure because you're essentially talking about 3 entirely separate sites, not just sub-areas of the same site as the subdirectory would generally seem to imply, and which Google & all the other search engines will assume.
In terms of seo, that's kind of a problem because the bots and crawlers essentially see all 3 of your sites together as one big, schizo site, and because seo is to a significant extent about consistency of content, relevance across the entire site, and interconnectedness you're shooting yourself in the foot in those respects.
Normally, subdirectories are the way to go for site building & navigation, no question.
So long as it's meant to be a single site and to viewed that way by Google & the others, using subdomains for site navigation would essentially be unnecessary overkill and relatively problematic in various ways.
However, when you're talking about the completely different content & structure of 3 completely different though related sites, subdomains are the seo-smart way to go because they allow you to separate the sites in the eyes of Google & the others, thus allowing you to target your seo (and analytics, if you're into that sort of thing) for each site appropriately without inteference from the other sites' content.
If you're not worried about seo, though, it's not really that big of a deal.
I just got the impression that you were, at least for the main site & photo site.
It's up to you though, of course, I'm just offering a little friendly advice.

THANK YOU... it didn't make sense to me that you would not be able to specify a target for links... THAT has been addressed...

The downside is that my main site is where I take orders, submissions and discuss business... and we noticed a MARKED decline in business when it was linked back and forth... Most people don't want to hire an autistic film maker... and most actresses don't want to work with a fetish photographer... So... there are reasons for it.

You have good points on search engine optimization... I am thinking on it... and I have talked to the guy who manages the server, etc...

You're quite welcome!
I'm glad I was able to be of some small assistance.
You're quite right, it makes sense that they included that bit of functionality in the WP core.

Ah, I see. That makes sense.
Business is literally your bread & butter after all, it must come first.

Cool, let me know if you need any help with that or wish to discuss it further at some point.

If you think of any other issues or bits of functionality, or are just looking for some advice or answers to questions about your sites, feel free to toss me a pm.

Will do... As for Subdomains, I discussed with my server guy (big wordpress programmer) and we're going to stick with what we have... it's easy enough, but SEO is just a tool to drive traffic, and doing it organically is actually working well for us. And, in my opinion, is a more legit way to do it.

I can see you've been working hard, and it's MUCH easier to navigate than before!

I also appreciate the different background; this isn't as pretty as the other, but I find it easier to read.

I've made it thru' #7.

You are very welcome... After the data migration, there was 18 hours of work to configure the site and make it pretty... and then 72 hours total spent on functionality.

The original blog still exists, but all of the care and feeding issues have been moved, and there are track back links and everything...

It's all about content in this instance. I am building a brand, and the content continues a steady climb in traffic. Honestly, if we optimized everything and made it blow up... I would... be overwhelmed. I have a lot on my plate with the editing of my novels, the audio play for the first one, my film making, my photography and helping a couple other writers get their stuff formatted... that I can't always get to the blog... As such... I would feel guilty if it blew up and wold start turning more work for it, but I think the quality would suffer for that pressure.

Well, I mean, that's the thing.
I wasn't suggesting doing that for the blog, just the business sites.
Blogs don't necessarily need heavy seo since they generally attract readship based on merit, word of mouth, and re-postings rather than search engine results.
Frankly, my main concern, seo-wise is for the main site since it's the root domain & will take all the hits for the irrelevence & non-connectedness of the other two sites in terms of its rankings.

The other two sites can't actually be effectively seo'd without literally competing with both each other & the main site since they're all on the same domain & Google associates keyword search rankings based on domain & the relevance of the keyword to the domain as a whole, just as the main site can't be seo'd without competing with them.

Anyhow, if you do ever intend to seo the main site heavily, so long as you didn't care at all about the other two sites' appearing on searches at all, you could simply disallow the subdirectories in your main site's robots.txt file, which would prevent the crawlers & bots from seeing them, thus preventing any interference.
Otherwise, if I were you and that time came I'd seriously consider subdomains or getting them their own domains as the best options for preventing them from interfering with the main site's seo.

One more thing to consider, and then I swear I'm all out of arguments (about this at least ):
Google remembers. That is to say, the longer things are a certain way, if it has a negative effect on your main site's rankings, the longer it will take for that to turn around once you fix it if it ever becomes necessary and/or desirable to do so, plus the more redirects you'll have to do at the time to prevent a massive loss of traffic to the other two sites.

That's it, that's all I've got.
I'm off for the evening.
Sleep well.