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I used to think websites were a piece of cake until I was introduced to GoLive. I never heard of this program before, the only web-building software I have worked with was Dreamweaver (I think I mentioned this before.) I knew the basics of HTML and some little tricks before taking this course. I used to make websitesfor fun when I had nothing to do in the summer (junior high years). I did learn a lot from GoLive though and I am glad I got to work with such a program. Although it was a struggle, I believe I ended up with a good piece of work in the end.


A lot of people don't want me to take down the website, I honestly don't know what to do with it after school ends. I may put it on a free webhosting site, I don't know if I'll have time to keep it up to date though. I mainly wanted it for amusement/to do something fun for this class. The ways I would perfect it would be 1. adding more images 2. making it more interactive (possibly some message boards, or comment boxes) 3. I would learn more about GoLive so I could make the website look more professional and lastly, I would like to learn more tricks with the program...not just dealing with HTML.

I enjoyed this course as much as I thought I would, even if it was frustrating at times. Also, let's face, is sitting in class for two hours isn't really my cup of tea, but I feel like I've gained more knowledge of the web that will help me later on in the future. I'm still learning about aesthetics, we all know I'm not an artist, but I think I've gotten better at it throughout my years here and taking Professor Katz's classes.

Competitive websites

There are many Anti-Bush websites around. It's hard to filter out which ones are the best. I found two that were pretty good.

The first one is: http://www.bushflash.com/

This website is pretty hilarious in terms of content. It definitely gives mine a run for its money. The similar things to mine is it has a blog, sounds waves and music. Not only is it about George W., but the blog part discusses other political news. I DO like the various flash content of the website, including the videos. I DON'T like the layout of the page, it looks really tacky. I think the blog should be a separate link, not on the main page. Plus, there is so much going on along the sidelines that it's distraction. It's like a regurgitation of Bush content. It could use some more aesthetic organization. In the meta tag source code all it says is "Content-Type" and "content=text/html". So I'm guessing it doesn't have any keywords. When I typed in the search for Google, I searched for "Anti-Bush" so any text on the page that was against Bush showed up without the help of meta tags.

The second competitor website: http://www.topplebush.com/

The layout of this website is also very poor. The red buttons on the navigation bar clash with the other colors on the page and it's a little hard to focus on. The thing I like about the website is it provides links to other pages such as The Cost of War site and VoteToImpeach.org. It also includes humor, which is what my website does not provide. But similar to mine and the first competitor website, it offers music. In the meta tag source it states the description for content "topplebush.com combines humor with well written articles and cool products specifically targeted at defeating Bush on Nov. 2, 2004". Under keywords it says "George Bush resume, topplebush, topple bush, bumper stickers, bumperstickers, t-shirts, tee shirts, liberal, progressive, bush bashing, 2004 presidential election, Dubya, Bush articles, cartoons, jokes, photos." I used one of the keywords which was "liberal".

I think layout-wise, my website overrules both of these competitor sites.

GoLive Forums

I spent a really long time going through most of the GoLive forums on the Adobe website. As I was browsing through the forums I was learning a lot about particular subjects such as trying to make blogs or forums in GoLive. I have a blog for my website so I wanted to see if there was any way to make it more formal. I actually like the blog format that I have on my page though. There was also a question about MP3's playing automatically on pages. I plan on putting .wav files in the "Quotes" section of my website, I haven't even begun tackling that obstacle yet, but the forum suggestions help me even before I begin doing it.

The set up of my website is pretty simple, but I know I will have some issues once I get into the more difficult things of what I want to do. The website is due in only a few weeks, I know I need to get these major things out of the way so I don't run into any big problems at the last minute.

Search Engine Relationship Chart

I love the layout of the legend, but it could cause problems for people who are on dial-up. For dial-up users the page will take awhile to load and some of the images may not even load. In terms of navigation, it gives a useful layout and relationship of whatever search engine I want to use. It's also interesting to see what search engines are directly connected to Google and what powers them.

Facts

Google: The web crawler used by Google only views the visible text on webpages. The Meta description and keywords don't have much influence on Google's rankings and to be listed in Google's directory you have to submit your website to the Open Directory.

I thought Google thrived on keywords, which is the main way for people to navigate and find websites so this is news to me. I think only viewing the visible text on webpages is helpful because if one doesn't put keywords to be searched then the webpages will show up anyway just with the text on the page. I have a lot of text on my webpages so it makes things easier for me if I forget to put in keywords to be searched.

Yahoo!: Yahoo! is the leader in traffic, advertising, household and business user reach. Yahoo! has both a human-edited directory and a spider based index. Sites are evaluated by Yahoo! editors, who visit and evaluate user suggestions and decide where the sites belong.

I honestly don't think these facts will optimize my website, the human interaction and editing might actually stop websites from showing up in search results. I'm not saying technology is flawless and doesn't have glitches, but humans make more mistakes than a computer would. Human interaction could definitely intervene with website displays.

Ask.com: Previously known as AskJeeves.com. It is a question based search engine, instead of searching for just words or phrases, which is unique. It's powered by Teoma.com which measures the authority as well as the popularity of websites. It states that it's a no free Add page URL, but it crawls the web so if links are pointing to your website then the website will come up automatically.

I think the automatic URL find is very helpful, this also makes things easier without putting in keywords.

My Home Page Update

As I said before it's a struggle with GoLive, but I'm happy to say that I have my main "enter the site" page ready with the flipbook image of George Bush. The only thing I'm really getting frustrated about is that when I link 'Enter Cutting Down Bush' and then I preview it and click on it, it doesn't open in the 'mainpage.html' document that I created, which is the website I linked it to. It actually opens up into another 'index.html' document. So, I don't know how to fix that. I still have many links and pages to go. It's SO frustrating. Also, I put a background image on my Cutting Down Bush Home page. I'm also having trouble with frames. I wanted them on my Main Page, but it said something about certain document types not being compatible.

Using GoLive CS2

As I said on the forum post, GoLive is so much harder than I thought it would be. It's easy when my hand is being held during the GoLive training DVD, but trying to remember and learning it on my own is like being a fish out of water. I'm all over the place with this software. It's going to be a lot of work, but I have so many ideas for this Anti-Bush website, I would love to see all of them come to life.

My boyfriend actually gave me this flipbook image of George Bush turning into a clown that he made in ImageReady which I'm going to use as the main image on my website before people enter the homepage. I wanted the image to be there and then have a link saying "Click to enter" or something to that nature. Anyway, I also came up with a name for my website which is "Cutting Down Bush", it seems appropriate and I like the play on words.

I don't know Photoshop or Illustrator that well, I guess that's a disadvantage of not being an artist. I know people who are proficient in those programs though so they can help me out with whatever I need.

Progress is slow and challenging, but I hope to whip out a decent homepage before Spring Break.

Gliffy

I'm new to Gliffy. I never heard of that website before taking this class. I thought it was very easy to use, it slightly reminded me of Microsoft Word/Paint. Not so much to make maps, but it was a familiar type of interface.

If some other assignment comes about where I have to make a floor plan or map of any other sort, instead of using Paint, I'll use Gliffy. It gives a lot more options and room to move around.

The only complaint I have about Gliffy is it doesn't give a big space to work with and is boxed in. Maybe it's just me or I didn't see where to expand it, but when I started adding more branches to my site map I wanted to view the document as a whole and I couldn't do that.