New Site - comment please

[sham]

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I've been doing ppc affiliate stuff for the past 12 months with some success in a niche field. However my technical skills where zero.... I have just created a site http://www.far-flung.co.uk and would really appreicate comments from all you gurus out there.
My current plan is to get the site listed in the search engines and hopefully achieve good rankings (I have read lots stuff on the net got very confused and this is my interpretation)... and then add some affiliate adverts or search results from overture or espotting and maybe some direct paid for advertising.

I have a couple of questions:

1. Is there a content management system as free wear that would make it easier to edit/change content? This would be really useful going forward as my friend who rights the stuff is even less technical than me and it would save me lots of time re-keying the stuff.

2. Is it possible to call elements into each page e.g. left had nav bar, as when I add new content (which should happen weekly) I have to update each page.

3. Any good travel directories I should try and be listed in

Thanks for your time in reading this post and all answer would be most welcome

Sham

[Aelf]

What you're looking for is an opensource cms system I beleive. Take a look at mamboserver.com, I haven't used it myself but heard it's quite good. There's quite a few out there and I think one site that compares them all.

Good luck

[pistol101]

Hi Sham,

When your ready to start adding affiliate adverts let me know as we have some great programmes such as Virgin Atlantic who fly to those destination as well as My Travel.

One bit of advice is that you've missed of Harbour Lights from your Barbados pages. This the greatest nightclub in the world.

Cheers

Pete

[alexwastell]

Originally posted by Aelf
What you're looking for is an opensource cms system I beleive. Take a look at mamboserver.com, I haven't used it myself but heard it's quite good. There's quite a few out there and I think one site that compares them all.

Good luck

You can find this comparison site at http://www.opensourcecms.com. My advice is, that be prepared to spend a lenghty amount of time configuring the CMS to the way you want, and to someextent learning the features of the admin panel. Yes, they can be installed in 10 minutes but that's not the end of the story.

@sham:

I assume you mean by your question, that you want to have the menu bar on all pages automatically update as you add new pages to the site. There are a few ways to do this, i'll explain a couple briefly.

If you are using Dreamweaver to develop your site, you can set up a template. Take a page of your site, remove the content and put a "placeholder" where you want to put the changing content (i.e. in the middle of the page) save as a template, and create your new pages by choosing new page..--->from template.

Another easy method is Server Side Includes (SSI).

Harder but more robust methods include ASP and PHP, but that's pretty out of my depth. Ask in the webmaster section.

One thing I would say is don't be tempted to use frames, as it's an old techology that has been surpassed by other methods, and searhc engines aren't keen on it.

What a rant , sorry

Hope its been of help. PM me or reply if you want more info.

P.S. The site's looking good

[frazer987]

Using php to include the same navigation menu on every page is very easy. First simply change alll your .htm or .html pages to .php

Then create a menu page called eg. 'menu.htm' and put the contents of your menu there.

Then throughout your website (on the pages you have already converted to php) add this code:

<? require 'menu.htm'?>

wherever you want the menu to appear.

Its a great way to save time on your websites and it doesnt hurt you in serps as they read it as what it represents, not just some php wierd code (i think!)

[steveallinson]

<?php include 'menu.htm'; ?>

is the code you will need to add.

I think the code was taken out of frazer987's post!

[smn2]

Hi,

You have a really nice designed site, lovely colours, and
lots of great content. Marvellous!

However,

1) I think the lhs navigation isn't that 'clever' - little bit
confusing, and
2) images missing on this page
http://www.far-flung.co.uk/caribbean...-caribbean.htm

Very nice job - congratulate your web designer
(and I do *not* say that very often! )

Steve

[Paul Wright]

I'm quite experienced when it comes to mambo and simple things like php pages can be easily rewritten as html at the flick of a switch. You can of course set this up server side but it’s nice just to tick a box or type in what ever extension you like and have it “converted”. Mod rewrites and SEF urls are a complete doddle too. Either use M2K’s SEF plugin or pay a measly $20 bur Sakic’s SEF module (one of the developers of mambo). Oodles of open source projects out there and so long as you know PHP or can at lease hack it to pieces you’ll get along just fine.

I think you have a really clean design going on there and would certainly benefit from a CMS to easily build and expand in the future, also it would be very easy to adapt what you have already done to build an identical skin.

I assume you haven’t started on the forums yet? A little logo in the top corner is a long way away from integrating the look and feel into the main site. Worst case scenario is that the two become separated as they don’t work together. phpBB is a well established piece of forum scripting but I can’t recommend vbulletin enough. The former is very open to attacks…

Do a quick search for the very popular hacker search term “powered by phpBB” on google and see what happens.

Other than that, great start, looks very promising, please keep us posted.

[businessguru]

Site looks great though not too sure about your chosen domain name – far-flung.co.uk leaves much room for speculation “The Caribbean Experience” is your page title and thecaribbeanexperience.co.uk is available to purchase.

You may find Chris Blackwell’s website inspirational http://www.islandoutpost.com , Chris is the man who signed Bob Marley and founded Island Records he also owns luxury resorts in the Caribbean.

Good Luck!
Business Guru