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Known Participant
December 17, 2022
Question

old site not displaying correctly

  • December 17, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 572 views

I want to link to my old site, twinbeaksaviary.com. This site was moved several times, resulting in a plethora of errors, some significant. I have corrected most so far, but I haven't been able to figure out why, or how, to get it to display as it did in the past.  All content displaying side by side, over the background. Pinching to zoom. I’ve been researching and attempting to fix for days and need help, please. tia

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3 replies

Nancy OShea
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 17, 2022

This is what I see from my desktop browser. 

 

1. This is your domain's landing page & the single most important page on your site.   Sadly, a waste of precious real estate that contains no content. IMO, you should delete this as it serves no purpose.

 

 

2. Home Page (what is normally the domain's landing page).  Unfortunately, it's built entirely with image maps and contains no actual content.  It's invisible to search engines, robot language translators and screen readers for whom images hold no meaning.  The home page never mentions your business name, who you are, what services you provide or any other relevant information.   Image based navigation is not user-friendly and does nothing when images are disabled or fail to load for other reasons. 

 

Suffice it say the site is not mobile friendly.  Based on the two front-facing pages alone, this site scores F (fail) for access & usability and Zero for SEO (search engine optimization).

 

If users haven't left by now, it's a miracle.  We eventually find real content on internal site pages, albeit copied & pasted from MS Word with unwanted junk code.  But to make matters worse, the content is not semantically correct (inside h1, h2, h3, p tags...) and it's squished inside an awkwardly small scrolling text box.  The last thing people want or need is an extra scrollbar particularly when there is more than ample empty screen space all around it that's not being utilized.   Also scrolling text boxes pose access issues for people on mobile & and touch screen devices.

 

 

All that said, there's nothing here to salvage. Just let it fade into oblivion while you build a new e-commerce site with Wix, Webflow or WordPress.   Forget about images for now. Pixel-based rasters aren't helping your site, they're hurting it.   Focus on real content instead.  As time permits, eye candy in the form of legible vector graphics icons & images from Font Awesome or Adobe Stock can be added later.  Your new site must be responsive to fit all web devices, that's key.  Vector graphics can be scaled up or down to fit any size screen without any loss in quality.  That's something raster images can't do.  See screenshot.

 

 

Good luck with your new e-commerce site.  I look forward to seeing it when it's done.

 

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert
Known Participant
December 18, 2022

I really value your time and critique, Nancy. Your suggestions will help me to not repeat these errors with my new site, greenbeaks.com. My intent is to redirect twinbeaksaviary.com to greenbeaks.com (under construction), with a link back to twinbeaksaviary.com Greenbeaks will be primarily informative and provide links to our other products and sites. That’s why I’m trying to clean up as many of these errors while focusing my time and attention to the new site.

Nancy OShea
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 19, 2022

I recommend a permanent redirect from site A to site B with .htaccess. 

 

In other words, inbound traffic to site A should be automatically redirected to new site B. Relevent/historical content on site A should be moved to site B so you don't get penalized by Google for duplicate content.  Allow site A to die so it doesn't remain on web searches.

 

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert
Community Expert
December 17, 2022

Can you share what it looked like in the past that you are trying to replicate? There's not a ton of code errors in the validator.  As old and as dated as the site is, the bigger question is whether it makes sense to even keep the design or look to migrate to a new layout. It's showing it's age, not mobile friendly, and not secure to start.  It would probably serve you well to refresh it entirely.

Known Participant
December 17, 2022

Thank ou for your replying and helping me. I'm sorry, I don't have the originals. It was overwritten by GoDaddy so that I 'wouldn't make any mistakes'. I only have the ssi's. I'm designing a new site, but I still hope to link to this old one. Starting over with a new look would require that I create new images, titles, etc. Showing its age, indeed. I was told it couldn't be secured because it's 'too old'.

Community Expert
December 17, 2022

You should always keep local backups of the work you do.

 

SSIs are basically just a way of including an HTML document in another HTML document. The idea was that you wouldn't have to update all pages if you work this way, whereas if they are no longer around, you will now have to update every page the code is on.

 

In order to help you any further you need to clarify about displaying as it did in the past.  We do not know what you are referring to here as not working and need you to be more specific in order to get help. Otherwise, most of us will just see an outdated site that is struggling with modern browsers/phones/etc. What is side-by-side or are you pinching to zoom? What is out of place that you need to fix? What should it do instead? 

Known Participant
December 17, 2022

May be relevant... I used to have a ssi left, ssi right and ssi center. Couldn't ge them to work, so a copied and added the content directly to the pages.