Indexing of pages in Puppylinux.org

What features/apps/bugfixes needed in a future Puppy
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raffy
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Indexing of pages in Puppylinux.org

#1 Post by raffy »

The task of indexing pages in the new website seems pointed to me, so let
me propose a solution, perhaps one that is out of the ordinary :oops:

The goals will be:

1. allow/harvest as many pages as possible from different sites,
from different authors;

2. keep the index simple, and ensure ease of maintaining it.

Input needed: A short but descriptive name of the page (with additional
description in parentheses, including author's name) http://and.the.link.too -
all these info on a single line; many pages means many lines

The page names and links will be placed in a left frame. Pages will open in
another frame (at the right). The left frame will be kept as a simple box, so
it does not compete with colors in the right frame.

The left frame will be searchable - take note that descriptions are embedded
with the page names and links. However, categories will be added, too,
and the most relevant links under it.

See diagram below using 250 pixels wide of the left frame - this can be
fixed, the right frame may be larger depending on the screen width.

Edit: Here is the live example.

Your comments are welcome :)
Last edited by raffy on Fri 28 Oct 2005, 18:23, edited 2 times in total.

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BarryK
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#2 Post by BarryK »

There were one or two people awhile back that expressed an interest in designing the Puppy pages -- I don't recall who -- maybe Lobster knows?
Or would you be interested yourself, Lobster?
A little group needs to get together and work on it.

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#3 Post by Lobster »

BarryK wrote:There were one or two people awhile back that expressed an interest in designing the Puppy pages -- I don't recall who -- maybe Lobster knows?
Or would you be interested yourself, Lobster?
A little group needs to get together and work on it.
Yes that is true but I do not remember who.
Something similar to Raffys idea is being done by Puppian
http://www.goosee.com/puppy/wikka/about
Raffys ideas are also practical
GuestToo has introduced the ideas of categories.
HTML pages in a wiki are (in my opinion overdesign) However some people like this method and Barrys existing HTML pages can be placed between "" and "" and then later when updated placed straight into the offline Puppy Help - or a link to the latest version of each page can lead to the wiki

I would want to see more people using and creating web pages - perhaps with a form or other simple input method triggered by javascript. I would also like to see people adopting pages and I recently released a lot of mine and will make more available to those who wish to keep an eye on specific pages and update them. Practically any page can be updated by anyone incidentally BUT the HTML pages do require more skill

Puppian was helped and advised by Ian. In the early days of the wiki I was advising all who were interested. A lot of this information is now incorporated into the wiki

One of the strangest and simplest ideas of the wiki is this:
You can change stuff AND you are encouraged to do that. Sometimes people are astonished that someone has changed something. Well you can change it too. The only thing we have had to control and I think we have had a max of 3 instances, which is very little, is wiki spam - and this has been easily countered.

The point is this. Pages exist on how to use the wiki. If someone wants to create more structure they can do this individually or as a group.
I am no wiki expert but it is a great format and very often we can answer a question on the forum by pointing to a wiki page

More ideas and possibilities will emerge I am sure :)
Most of the time it is a question of getting on with it - great fun - very relaxing once you get into it . . .

Hope that makes some sort of sense :)
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#4 Post by Flash »

BarryK wrote:...A little group needs to get together and work on it.
I could make a Usergroup in the forum with raffy as the moderator. Anyone could read what was being posted in the Usergroup but only the members could post.

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#5 Post by puppian »

I think people listed on the top of this page would be interest in designing the Puppy pages :)

I don't use frames very much for a few reasons.
1. Not all browsers support frames
2. Search engines may not be able to properly spider a framed site
3. The page may not look the same in all browsers (Moz, Opera, I.E., etc.) and all screen resolution. Layout can be broken
4. There will be scroll bars both in the middle and to the right of the page. People need to keep switching (clicking) between the two frames to navigate when the page becomes long (a page without frames can be scroll down just by pressing Page Down once; with frames clicking is needed to get the focus); for example
5. Bookmarking a framed page within a website generally won't work
Table would do a better job in controlling the layout. Read more.

If the index.html is just what Barry mentioned here - "..Regarding the web pages, I think that you guys will prefer the Wiki to be the main thing, with some "normal" pages, index.html can be just mostly links into the Wiki. At least, those were the vibes I picked up." A very simple page(s) will do the job :)

If you want a website that looks more professional and has more features (search for example), some php scripts can be installed later. Or if you want to have them all at one time, and has the capability of collaborative editing, something like THIS can be used.
Username- admin; Password- demo
It is called Drupal. Look for 'admin' in the left pane to get started. Click "administer" to try out more features. Aftering editing, go back to the front page to see the changes made. Feel free to add, create, delete, and manipulate the system as it is automatically deleted and reinstalled every two hours. (don't be surprised if the pages look ugly or weired as the demo is opened to public and anyone can edit it).

Basically CMS like Drupal is very similar to blog and wiki, but has much more useful features and better page layout and organization (actually a wiki called TikiWiki is also categorized as CMS ;)). A lot of professional websites you see are in fact created with CMS. As most CMS is designed for editing by a small group of people, wiki should still be kept (with a link to it in main page for example, like many websites did).

For more demo of CMS (Content Management System), blog, wiki, etc, visit:
http://www.opensourcecms.com
CMS Ratings
As Drupal is a very powerful one (and thus maybe a complex one as well), you may want to try some simple ones which is also availble from the site above ;)
Comparison:
http://www.cmsmatrix.org/
Last edited by puppian on Fri 28 Oct 2005, 06:35, edited 8 times in total.
[url=http://puppylinux.org]Puppylinux.org - Community home page of Puppy Linux[/url] hosted by Barry (creator of Puppy), created and maintained by the [url=http://puppylinux.org/user/readarticle.php?article_id=8]Puppy Linux Foundation[/url] since 2005

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#6 Post by jcagle »

I use phpwcms as a content management system for a few of my web sites. I really like it.

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#7 Post by puppian »

jcagle wrote:I use phpwcms as a content management system for a few of my web sites. I really like it.
8)
Can we have a look at your web sites jcagle?
Last edited by puppian on Fri 28 Oct 2005, 05:00, edited 1 time in total.
[url=http://puppylinux.org]Puppylinux.org - Community home page of Puppy Linux[/url] hosted by Barry (creator of Puppy), created and maintained by the [url=http://puppylinux.org/user/readarticle.php?article_id=8]Puppy Linux Foundation[/url] since 2005

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Example Site

#8 Post by raffy »

Here is the live example (no eye candy yet, suggestions are welcome).

Drupal could be it, although we're doing something like that in the Wiki already (logging in and contributing). As Lobster noted, the design is more about practicality. And may I add, participation - the more sites and pages, the merrier (although we list the most relevant at the top).

Flash, please visit oss-2.com - trial site for what you described. J_rey is the super-admin. Ask him (via PM here, i guess) to give you the highest privilege possible :) Cheers!

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main Puppy services - web site, forum and wiki

#9 Post by Lobster »

Your live example Raffy using frames works fine. 8)

The "about" section is on my FTP site but can easily be put on the new server and ftp or other access be for those willing to work on it or it can remain where it is
The page Barry is working on can be similarly available according to who is currently working on it (Barry in this case)
The forum is hosted by John Murga and is available and working
By also hosting the developers forum and perhaps Puppians forum (not sure what the theme is) we can also spread and specialise the load
The wikka will be up and available on the server

Works for me Raffy - great example - already gives closer integration of the 3 main Puppy services - web site, forum and wiki

8)
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#10 Post by puppian »

I was editing my other post but it generated a new one and can't be deleted ... cookies problem?? :?
[url=http://puppylinux.org]Puppylinux.org - Community home page of Puppy Linux[/url] hosted by Barry (creator of Puppy), created and maintained by the [url=http://puppylinux.org/user/readarticle.php?article_id=8]Puppy Linux Foundation[/url] since 2005

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#11 Post by Flash »

puppian wrote:I was editing my other post but it generated a new one and can't be deleted ... cookies problem?? :?
I'm not sure what you're referring to. If you edit your post after someone replies to it, there is a note added so that everyone knows the post was changed from the original.

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#12 Post by puppian »

Flash wrote:If you edit your post after someone replies to it, there is a note added so that everyone knows the post was changed from the original.
I know and I don't mean that :)
I was editing the post I posted yesterday, after I pressed submit, that post wasn't edited but a new post was posted (with the content of the post I intended to edit).
So I edited that 'new' post again, added the line (I was editing my other post.... cookies problem??) you see now (btw the "edit" notes was not added by the system this time, that often happens :))

must have clicked something wrong :oops: nevermind anyway :)

BTW, here is a web site using TYPO3 (another popular CMS):
http://nsis.sourceforge.net/
(it's brought to my attention by G2 8) look at the top few lines in the html source which indicates it's made with TYPO3)
Also, most CMS uses a separate user interface (besides the admin interface) with text fields that has little relation to the designed pages.

This one is simple and nice.
Last edited by puppian on Fri 28 Oct 2005, 14:52, edited 2 times in total.
[url=http://puppylinux.org]Puppylinux.org - Community home page of Puppy Linux[/url] hosted by Barry (creator of Puppy), created and maintained by the [url=http://puppylinux.org/user/readarticle.php?article_id=8]Puppy Linux Foundation[/url] since 2005

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#13 Post by BarryK »

So raffy, will I give the "keys of the car" to you?

...namely, the ftp login details.
...also will make someone a wiki administrator, you guys have to decide who.

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Folder

#14 Post by raffy »

Actually, one folder will be sufficient for me, something like "home" or "main", preferably writable (you can test if a script can create a new file in it). I will PM you with a redirection page for pointing the index.html to that folder. (this is about FTP access, as i understand it :oops: )

Also, pls PM me with the PHP version of the site. Thanks.

Edit: But if the above will be inconvenient for you, yes, i will keep those "spare FTP keys" :)

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#15 Post by puppian »

I still don't think using frames is a good idea . . .

:?
[url=http://puppylinux.org]Puppylinux.org - Community home page of Puppy Linux[/url] hosted by Barry (creator of Puppy), created and maintained by the [url=http://puppylinux.org/user/readarticle.php?article_id=8]Puppy Linux Foundation[/url] since 2005

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#16 Post by puppian »

Frames do offer navigational convenience as the navigation bar (left pane) is always visible. However some of the disadvantages ARE important and need to be taken care of. For example, we are now in the sixth place when people search for "puppy" at Google (and the first when search for puppy linux)
That's partly due to the intelligent design of our current site http://goosee.com/puppy which has long pages with a high density of the keyword "puppy" (other reasons include many sites linking to that page, etc). We won't want to lose that high ranking :)

From: http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters ... hp/2167901
"most search engine spiders will only see the master page. Just like an old browser, they don't understand the instructions on how to produce the frame layout. These are ignored, and only information within the noframes tags are read (information which a frames-capable browser will ignore).

So what do frame-challenged search engines see in our example? This is pretty typical of some frames-based sites:

Sorry! You need a frames-browser to view this site.

Obviously, we need to provide search engines with a much better description of the site than this. There's also another problem. There are no links within the noframes area to pages within the site. That means the search engines won't crawl past our master page. We could have hundreds of information-packed pages inside the site, but this simple mistake essentially makes them invisible to many search engines."

To illustrate the idea better, the cached version of this page is empty because the site uses frames. In short, the search engine knows there's such a page but doesn't know it's content (and therefore doesn't know what keywords it contain). When people search for a keyword which that page does have, the search engine won't return the page (and links are not followed as well).

You can find some workarounds from the page above, thou I don't know if they work well and whether our ranking would be affected. Anyway, make sure you've read (and understand) that page if you really want frames.

Read more:
Secret Benefits of Search Engine Optimisation: Increased Usability
How to Make Frames Search Engine Friendly
[url=http://puppylinux.org]Puppylinux.org - Community home page of Puppy Linux[/url] hosted by Barry (creator of Puppy), created and maintained by the [url=http://puppylinux.org/user/readarticle.php?article_id=8]Puppy Linux Foundation[/url] since 2005

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Concerns OK

#17 Post by raffy »

Understand your concern about using frames :) I myself am reluctant to use frames, but the problem at the moment is how to grab pages from different sites and display them without losing (or reproducing with some delay) one's master index. And I mean an index with lots of links to different pages.

As to search engines, I guess it all boils down to uniqueness. If there is only one Puppy Linux Foundation, then the engine will show that (supposedly). BTW, right now oss-2.com (our committees test site) is on top of Yahoo when one searches for Puppy Linux Foundation.

As to benefits from having multiple occurrences of words, the master index will have that feature.

As to having used sites with frames: yes, and they get indexed well by search engines.

In addition, the individual pages should be able to take care of their own search ranking via their content. Going on top of these "member" pages may not be the real issue at hand - there should be diversity. Plus, being on top will not matter to the master index as it knows that in hundreds of other pages, its own self is linked. (But as you said, if many sites are linked to you, you are driven to the top :) )

Lastly, search spiders must have evolved rapidly already. I guess now they're learning not to index sites that do nothing else but show Google ads. I just don't know if these spiders are friendly to lobsters - hey, they seem to be so. :D

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Understand your concern how to grab pages

#18 Post by puppian »

raffy wrote:...the problem at the moment is how to grab pages from different sites and display them without losing (or reproducing with some delay) one's master index. And I mean an index with lots of links to different pages.
Understand that. People can always open the links in a new tab of the browser if they want however :) (cms can keep a huge amount of links in an organized way too)
raffy wrote:As to search engines, I guess it all boils down to uniqueness.
You are partly right. It's important that when people search for "puppy linux" puppylinux.org is one of the first few results shown. However, it is also VERY IMPORTANT that when people search for "linux" (and maybe "puppy" too), puppylinux.org is ranked high. RedHat, Debian, Gentoo, Slackware and Suse is doing a great job and is ranked top ten (DSL is top 50).
raffy wrote:As to having used sites with frames: yes, and they get indexed well by search engines.
Yes, they get indexed, but as I said, the search engine DOESN'T KNOW what's in it.

If I search for the words
"EMINIMA (ICT for Empowerment) Wins Luzon Inventors' Contest"
which are found on your site: http://littlecandle.net/em/
at Google, it returns no results.

If I search for:
"Just letting you know you have saved three old computers at my home ...your Puppy wokeup the unwakeable"
which are found on puppy site, goosee.com/puppy is the first result returned.

Your site get indexed and if I search for the UNIQUE words that you entered in the meta tag of your page

Code: Select all

<meta name="keywords" content="littlecandle, EM, CMS, lampp, server, mini-CD, basic, education, elearning, ecommerce, egovernance, philippines">
<meta name="description" content="littlecandle EM CMS lampp server mini-CD for basic education,  elearning, ecommerce and egovernance, philippines">

For example if I search for "littlecandle, EM, CMS" your page will show up on top. However if I search for "elearning", your page will not be on top anymore. It will be buried in the 10,200,000 results returned. If you want to improve that,
1. the word "elearning" needs to appear many times in your page (high keyword density)
2. the search engine must be able to SEE your page, otherwise it won't help no matter how high the keyword density is

Search engines deside which page goes to the top by counting HOW MANY TIMES the searched keyword appeared in a page. If the search engine can't even see your page, you will never get good ranking.

To show how Google see your site, look at the cached version of it, which is empty now.
raffy wrote:In addition, the individual pages should be able to take care of their own search ranking via their content.
Yes, those pages MAY or MAY NOT be showned by the search engines. Pages with similar URL are put in a "Similar pages" link (otherwise when you search for "raffy" it will return ALL the 3XX posts you've posted here ;)). Moreover, people who enter your site through those pages won't see the navigation bar (the left frame) and so they can't navigate to the other pages
raffy wrote:As to benefits from having multiple occurrences of words, the master index will have that feature.
Yes, I think you mean a master index page with a lot of links and serves as the navigation bar (the left pane) and that can do part of the job. Nonetheless I don't think it can have the keyword dencity needed to help puppy site stands out amoung the 481,000,000 search results for the word "linux" (as compared to a content page which has many paragraph) :) Also, people would expect to see a typical homepage when they do a search, rather than a page full of links. A page with links only won't make sense to most people (especially those who visit the site for the first time) and they will probably just close it.

Anyway, as I have mentioned, there are some workaround that may handle that:
http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters ... hp/2167901
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/increased-usability
http://www.isedb.com/db/articles/1021/
Please read them.

[EDIT]It seems that searching for ""EMINIMA (ICT for Empowerment) Wins Luzon Inventors' Contest" (words on your site) returns no result is due to the page cached by Google is not current. If it's current that search should give the 'individual page' in the left pane of your site LIKE THIS (I get it by searching for "Looking for EM partners or volunteering to be one?", which is in the outdated cached version). Adding meta-tag like: <meta name="revisit-after" content="10 days"> can avoid that problem. The arguments above are still valid however, google still can't see your main page.
Last edited by puppian on Fri 28 Oct 2005, 23:19, edited 3 times in total.
[url=http://puppylinux.org]Puppylinux.org - Community home page of Puppy Linux[/url] hosted by Barry (creator of Puppy), created and maintained by the [url=http://puppylinux.org/user/readarticle.php?article_id=8]Puppy Linux Foundation[/url] since 2005

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#19 Post by Pizzasgood »

I like tabs. I probably like tabs too much, as I frequently have more tabs than I have screen space. Frames don't like tabs as much. Say I don't know the page uses frames. I open a link in a tab while I read the main page. Then I close the main-page tab and go to the next one. When I get done, I realize that I can't get back, because it's in another tab, so I can't use back, and the nav-bar is gone. I can still get there through other means, but it's inconvenient.

Another problem with frames (though it doesn't apply in this situation) is that if you have a host that inserts banner adds, the navbar will have a banner in it.

The best bet is to have a single page with the nav-bar, then use php to insert it in all pages. That's what I do in my site. I can add stuff, and I only need to edit the single file. I plan to add a category type deal that only shows categories except the category you're in, where it shows all contents. It will still load from a single variable, but it will have a variable somewhere that keeps track of which page you're in.

I'd suggest that you use my PHnotsoPlacid CMS, but it isn't finished enough for me to trust it. The theming is good, news-posting works (it originated as a simple news engine) and it can manage pages, but it can't edit posts (you can edit the file they are in, though), has issues with permissions, and doesn't have an integrated page-developement system (though you can edit them as straight text, which will be interpreted as html, php, or whatever).

I can donate pieces, or make suggestions/ideas though.

Simple guidelines:
No frames
Keep formatting and content separate (may be possible through xml, I've never tried it. Definately possible through creative php use)
Keep styling separate from content (using CSS)
Keep a single navbar file and include it in all pages (PHP or JavaScript. PHP preffered, as JavaScript can be turned off)
Try to rely on JavaScript as little as possible.
Keep a simple, nice look. Think Google. Nice, clean, and fast.
No ugly tables. If you have to have a table, make it decent looking.
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#20 Post by BarryK »

I don't like frames either.
I hate it when you're on a page with frames and you click on a link to
another site, but it opens inside a frame on the current site.

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