Who Built Your Web Page?

Waylon Lowery

I have been checking out many of your Plumbing/Heating Web Pages, and I am really impressed with the design, format, and content.

From a design stand point who built your Web Pages? Did you build them in house or did you hire a web-designer to build them? And to those of you who built them in house, What program did you use? Dreamweaver, Front Page, Other?

heatboy

Funny you should ask.

My web guru is in the process of virtually rebuilding my site. www.climatecadvanced.com We have just re-tooled the page "The Climatec Collection" with the new format. It will take a few more weeks (and dollars), but I can't wait to see the updated site.

hb

Click here to see "The Climatec Collection"!

Constantin

I'm not a plumber

...but I do maintain a personal web-site that attracts about 15,000 humans a month.

In my mind, the most important thing that keeps folks coming back is content. Dan's site here is a prime example of that. Besides his own content, the site visitors here leave their own, enhancing the site for everyone. However, discussion boards require time and attention, or spammers will abuse them. Furthermore, do you really want to admin a discussion board or run your business?

Besides content, I also look for sites with easy-to-use menu structures that do not rely on this or that proprietary web-standard. For example, have a look over at the W3C for info on how to implement a standards-compliant site, which will minimize re-work in the long run. Even Microsoft is getting pretty good at shipping browsers that aren't too broken.

As for the actual tools to be used to create the site, I thinks that's a personal choice by whomever who builds the site. I have Dreamweaver, yet prefer BBEdit, as BBEdit and a standards-compliant browser (FireFox, Safari, etc.) give me a better picture of what the site will look like than the bloatware shipped by Macromedia. However, their current implementation (MX2004) is allegedly better, perhaps even fully CSS-aware, in stark contrast to the painfully slow and buggy MX 2003.

I dislike Frontpage for all the gunk it inserts into web pages. Not that I would use it a lot, since I mainly run my computer life on Apple Macs. And don't even think about "saving as HTML" in Word... the HORROR! At the end of the day though, I would really look for a solution that YOU can maintain. That will require you to learn the basics of (D)HTML, regardless of what package you use to maintain the site.

Were I to launch a commercial site, I would use a professional to set up a CSS-templated site with an easy menu structure and as much visual information as I could cram in there for clients to look at. Different installations by heating type, etc. give the customer a good idea of what you are capable of. Lastly, be sure to make life difficult for miscreants by making your e-mail hard to scrape or you'll be flooded by Spam.

Get your own domain with a good web-hosting company like Enigma-hosting that allows secure content updates and e-mail flexibility. Owning your own domain is a wonderful thing but a terrible time-sink. Cheers!

heatboy

Funny you should ask.

We, mostly my web guru, plugmein.net, are in the process of virtually rebuilding my site, climatecadvanced.com We have updated "The Climatec Collection" page last week. The entire site will take quite a few weeks (and quite a few dollars) to finish. We want to emphasize the asthetic part of our work more.

hb

Click here to see "The Climatec Collection"!

Waylon Lowery

Wow...

you lost me at the first Acronym.

Seriously, what is WC3, BBEdit, and CSS?

I've played a little with Dreamweaver and Front Page and Have been blown away with the amount of re-work simple menu changes take. It seems like there has got to be a better way?

Waylon Lowery

I checked out your web page...

once before and I was impressed the first time...but thought that you needed more pics.

With your improved Photo Gallery...you have an awesome site...perhaps the best I've seen.

Kudos to you and your employees on the clean installation of those Orange Boilers. By the way have you ever wondered why the Vitodens is White?

Mad Dog

We came up with all the concepts, colors, et cetera

and EVERYCONTRACTOR built it. They also, are a contractor referral service. Our web site is brand "spanky" new and will be upgraded with pictures from special upcoming projects. Mad Dog

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Mad Dog

I concur,,,,,,,,absolutely excellent

site. Mad Dog

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doug_16

Looking at your pictures can be hazzardous

to one's health. They make me want to completely redesign and repipe my boiler room!

Constantin

Sorry!

Please accept my apologies, I shall attempt to describe each acronym in detail.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is a group dedicated to develop "interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. W3C is a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding." In other words, these guys try to create standards for the whole web to follow.

Way back when Netscape and Microsoft battled it out for web supremacy, it was a HUGE headache for web masters to create web sites that would render correctly on both Netscape and MS Internet Explorer because neither was completely compatible with each other. In part, this was due to the fast-evolving nature of the web at the time. Today, the W3C is trying to instill a degree of standards-compliant sanity so that every browser will show the same picture when a page renders. Thus, web masters can focus on creating one web-site not, two or three (i.e. one for each type of browser) as in yesteryear.

One of the long-coming, exciting web-standards are Cascading Style sheets (CSS). They are a GREAT tool to ensure that your web-site has a consistent look from page to page. Basically, a stylesheet allows you to establish a "look" for the web-page. The actual web-pages can then focus primarily on content, not a whole lot of commands on how to make them look fancy. And this is the key. In order for web-searching engines, etc. to find your site easily, index it properly, etc. it is best to minimize the amount of HTML gibberish inside each page to the greatest extent possible and focus on content instead.

HTML, by the way stands for Hypertext Markup Language, a "language" that appears to have been derived from emacs and other UNIX editors. HTML is the de-facto language that powers the world wide web. To get an idea of how it works, check out any of the intro to HTML sites or hit "Show Source" in one of your browser menus to see what a multitude of commands is necessary to create a web-page. However, what you will notice with CSS-heavy versus traditional sites is that the content pages on CSS pages are much more readable, even in source form, because they're not overflowing with renddering information.

CSS is a very powerful idea because it allows you to change the look of an entire site by changing a very small number of files. Different backgrounds, effects, text styles, etc. are easily achievable via a few CSS file changes while leaving the rest of your site alone. Thus, the content you painstakenly created earlier will still render beautifully, regardless of any changes to the "look" of your web-site.

BBEdit is a hard-core editing program on the Macintosh that happens to cater primarily to the web-master crowd that prefers to do most of its work by hand. Why do things by hand? Because more often than not, the code will be tighter, will render quicker, and thus be more attractive to users. However, there are a number of packages out there that allow you to see a rendered version of your web page and the code that creates it at the same time. Dreamweaver is one of those programs.

My first piece of advice is to create a sub-directory for each web page...otherwise, it may be hard to keep track of which image file goes with which page, etc.

Make sure that your site can be easily indexed by spiders such as Google, etc. and that you have a robots.txt file to tell the robots what they may and may not look at.

I prefer Linux-powered servers because they tend to run Apache web servers. If Apache is used, be sure to ask if you can install, modify .htaccess files, a great way to block out bad robots, etc. However, DO NOT mess with the .htaccess file until you fully understand how it works. Otherwise, your site will go down and stay down with 500-series server errors.

Jason at Story Equipment

For ease of use, Microsoft's Publisher is very user-friendly; we've been using that to keep our website maintained, as it's required very little in the way of learning programming skills. Granted, we don't have the fancy Flash animations or information like that, but most of the wholesalers we deal with don't have computers, so we have exactly what we need on there. If you want to see what an end result looks like, check out www.storyequipment.com.

Waylon Lowery

How do you

use Publisher to edit and create Web Pages?

I thought Publisher was more for Newsletters, Pamphlets, and Such.

heatboy

Thank you..............

for the kind words, Waylon! A lot of time and energy goes into this. It is my largest marketing effort I do. A full 30% of my work comes directly from the website. I predict 50% of the work will be from the site within two years. I'm as amazed as anyone. Radiantec isn't the only presence on the Internet. Unbelievably, climatecadvanced.com averages 1,500 visitors a week. Not bad for a, currently, two man operation.

The Vitodens is white so it has an appliance appeal. In Europe, a lot of these are in the living areas.

Thanks again and check back every now and then.

hb

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Jason at Story Equipment_2

Publisher...

I use Publisher XP; they offer several different web page templates there. They also link several different pages of your own together; I'll see if I can find a link for a tutorial, if you'd like!

Older versions of Publisher may not have this feature, though, so you may want check your version.

Mad Dog

Yeah, it really exceptional heatboy.........................

how many years have you been installing the "V"? Mad Dog

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heatboy

I lost my.....

Viessmann virginity in 1994 with my first oil-fired Vitola. As much as I love the Vitodens, the Vitola is as close to the perfect all around boiler I have used to date. The Vitola is absolutely bulletproof. We have them in every conceivable application from radiant with no mixing valves to hydro-air with all three fuels, oil, gas and propane and I have no service issues with any of them. Aside from my occasional dimness, that is (g).

Thanks for the nice words, Matt!

hb

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John Mills_3

I do my own

> I have been checking out many of your

> Plumbing/Heating Web Pages, and I am really

> impressed with the design, format, and content.

> From a design stand point who built your Web

> Pages? Did you build them in house or did you

> hire a web-designer to build them? And to those

> of you who built them in house, What program did

> you use? Dreamweaver, Front Page, Other?



Nothing very fancy but lots of content. Been working to upgrade both mine & the company's. Just went to a 500 meg site vs 50 meg on mine and will try to make it easier to navigate.

www.johnmills.net
www.appelheat.com

Waylon Lowery

Sure enough...

I opened up Publisher and it prompted me with a design wizard asking if I wanted to make a Web Page.....

It looks pretty usable. I will have to check that out.

Thanks for the info.

Constantin

(oops, please ignore)

Constantin

...continued

Another neat resource on the web is Webmasterworld, a site dedicated to running a site, similarly to this one dedicated to heating systems. A great resource, full of sage advice re: how to market your site, search engine optimization, etc.

However, I cannot think of a better way to push traffic to your site than to advertise here. Dan has created a great resource for homeowners and professionals alike. The culture at this site is condusive to getting homeowners excited about the contractors who regularly post and hence advertise here. Cheers!

heatboy

Thanks, Dawg!

I lost my Viessmann virginity back in 1994. It was an oil-fired Vitola in an apartment building where the tenents left the windows open or left the window AC units in the winter. I put the Vitola on full reset and you should have heard the tenents howl because they were cold. The owner of the building told them to shut windows/remove AC units. Full reset is the only way you can control heating in buildings like that.

As much as I like the Vitodens, I belive the Vitola is the closet thing to the perfect all around boiler made. I have them in both oil and gas fired in applications from radiant floor with no mixing valves to baseboard to hydro-air systems. It is virtually bulletproof and I haven't had any service issues other than the ones I caused due to dimness on my part (g).

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Mad Dog

They look like nuclear computers

for Christ's sake. Do you install ANY other brands or are you monogamous? Mad Dog

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heatboy

Crown!

I carry Crown boilers as a compliment to the Viessmann line. I know most of the guys down there at the factory and the equipment is very good. Here are a couple of pics based around Crown boilers and indirects.

hb

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