From the initial contact at the university, we promised to create a
Frequently Asked Questions page and here it is.
1) Search Engines
The question was asked about how we stood with search
engines and our site and Google was referred.
Our answer was that we had submitted our site to
the most popular engines with the object of getting as near
the top as possible for relevant searches. To do this, particularly
your page title needs to be relevant and to a lesser extent now,
META data. Our Keyword data contained in the HTML for the home
page is currently:-
<meta name="keywords"
content="Gloucestershire, blind, partially sighted, low, vision,
macular
degeneration, GCAB, Gloucestershire County Association for the
Blind, charity, Ronnie,
Rowen, visually, impaired, visual, impairment, glaucoma, Pigmentosa,
retinitis,
VIP, RNIB, GCAB, age related, macular, degeneration, diabetic,
retinopathy,
cataracts, registration, volunteer, volunteers, Cheltenham, guide,
dog, impaired, impairment, Stroud,
Gloucester, England, UK, United Kingdom, Braille, low vision, Albion
Street, Visiting
Service, Hospital Information Service, Prince Michael of Kent,
news">
You can view the HTML code for any page by
clicking on Internet Explorer menu:- View - Source. A search of
Google for GCAB and blind gives
this page. Another point
is that ranking also depends on how old the page is so it pays to
refresh the site about once a month.
2) Target Audiences
Our principle audience is
the general public who form several sub categories including
carers of visually impaired people, the media, staff and
volunteers (including trustees) It is vital that the site is
accessible to visually impaired people who may be using screen
readers or other programmes to increase text size or read the
text.
It is essential that the
use of frames or excessive use of flash is limited.
3) Which Editor
Dreamweaver seems the clear favourite from this Apache
poll.
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Advanced Poll |
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Which Editor do you use to create your Web
site? |
|
Dreamweaver |
38.0% |
|
FrontPage |
20.8% |
|
Text Editor |
18.0% |
|
others |
8.8% |
|
Homesite |
5.9% |
|
GoLive |
5.7% |
|
NetObjects Fusion |
2.8% |
Total votes: 106568 |
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4) Web Hosting
We recently had problems with our
Internet Service Provider (ISP) with updating problems and although
not affecting us directly, loss of data. We have therefore changed
to a new company for web hosting,
cleverdot.com.
This gives us the advantage of being able to publish as a "Frontpage
site", have Common Gateway Interface (cgi) and other facilities
expected from a professional web space provider.
5) Fundraising
We would welcome the chance to use
the website to fundraise. We have a further site at
www.buy.at/gcab
which is not linked and you might find it useful to look at. It
works by clicking on the links and then shopping normally at stores
like Marks and Spencer and Amazon, GCAB then get a small percentage
of the money you spend online - you pay the same.
6) Welcome to GCAB Website.
The following text could form the
basis for a site introduction. This is based on our current
introduction.
Gloucestershire County
Association for the Blind is an independent organisation, but
gladly acknowledge the associated work carried out by the
county's local blind clubs and the national blind charities such
as RNIB.
We are here primarily to support and advise Gloucestershire
people in any way we can who are registered blind or partially
sighted plus people who have a significant sight loss, which
affects their everyday lives.
7) Pictures
Pictures make the site interesting
and they should normally be kept to a maximum file size of about
20-30Kbytes. Exceptions are when you can click the picture for a
link to a higher quality version.
8) Site Usability
Our priority as the client is to have a
site based on the important points we have outlined. Fancy things
like the use of a lot of Flash is generally not VIP friendly or
simple to generate on a day to day basis. There are a number of
applications designed to prevent Flash code running because it is so
much abused and annoying to the user.
In short, we are looking for a VIP
friendly, good looking, easy to navigate, easy to update and easy to
administer site. The present site certainly leaves room for
improvement. We want to be 'wowed' by your ideas and presentation.
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