One of the people I work with has been putting a site together for a client of hers, and asking me for advice. I'm posting this cause I know some people can use a laugh.

She bought about 15 domain names for her client so his site will be more visible. She was asking about how to tie them all together, because she's had a ticket open with the web hosting company for three days and tired of waiting. So I said 301 redirects, and pointed to some examples. But the address bar changing is unacceptable. I explained about how 15 links to one site are better than 15 links to 15 sites, she said she'd think about it.

Now someone told her Google punishes duplicate content. Redirects were back on the table for a moment, until she figured out you can make a frame fill the page. She was telling me how that will get around the dupe problem, and let her client rank under all kinds of domains for different terms. Of course all Google will see is an empty page with a frame source, but she did meta keywords and meta descriptions. It gets better in a minute when I explain why redirect is no good.

The lady isn't a SEO, and never claimed to be. It sounds like she got herself caught in scope creek. But she's using ASP.NET version 2.0 because the pay is too low to work on a common layout and then apply it to all the pages in notepad. She's using master pages to do that. So her client is limited to only the newest Microsoft web servers with the newest patches and runtimes installed. There's no server side programming, the only thing the server does besides serve is combine the master page with the content pages.

Page won't resize because the top half is one table and the bottom half is another, and they're set up different. Yep, that's right, tables. A machine that's set up for remoting, XML web services, and distributed computing, spitting out table layouts. Okay. There's navigation across the top of the page, and a second level of navigation along the right edge. It's a clone of adsense. Same fonts, same text sizes, same color scheme, only with a blue background to match the site. They don't carry adsense, so it's not a scummy way to get people to click ads. It's just a really dumb idea, using the wrong convention. I tried to explain how no one will click on any pages if they think it'll take them to ebay, but what do I know?

I think I'm just gonna stay out of this one. I'm really tempted to post the link here, so we can all have a good laugh, and for a text book case of how not to build a web site. But that would be rude, and besides, the client with his brand new, shiny web site would get a bunch of traffic from this forum and see us all laughing at him. Then I'd wind up loosing this woman her job, if the guy has any sense, and I just don't want to take on that kind of karma. But I think we can all learn about some mistakes people can make.

(1) Hire a web designer on the cheap cause they know all the tags, and then demand all kinds of stuff you didn't pay for.

(2) Be a web designer or developer, and take work you weren't paid for or trained for.

(3) Ask sarcastic people for advice, and then shoot down all the good ideas. (Vasity?)

I feel pity for someone who is going to learn a lot of lessons the hard way...

How many times do you run into people who are simply too proud to admit they don't know something - and it ends up costing them a fortune in time and money.

John I sooooo want to see that site. I don't blame you for not posting the link though. I think not making it public is the right thing here.

Of course we do have this mighty fine PM system here that will keep the link hidden from public view and I'm even smart enough not to click on the link, but rather copy and paste the URL so the traffic will show as direct. No referrer link from the forum.

I soooooooooo want to see that site.

This can only be bad.

Forget the frames; those died a long, slow, well deserved death. As people navigate through the site, their address bar should change to reflect it. If they want to email the guy about his rates page ... I'm assuming it's some kind of small business between hiring, um, someone who isn't qualified to do the job he's demanding, and having navigation that looks like AdSense, without any ads. Gotta be a doctor, lawyer, accountant, or something like that ... and someone who just has no idea about this thing we call the internet.

Hook into the name servers, and actually point the domain to the hosted site. That's the only way, frames are amateurish. If it's a heart surgeon, I would think if the guy can't hire someone who knows what they're doing to build a site, where else have they cut corners? Will the equipment be old and rusty?

And you absolutely can do 301 redirects with ASPx. I've used them to kick people to https for certain pages, keeping the rest of the URL unchanged. You can easily field baddomain.com/aboutme.aspx to gooddomain.com/aboutme.aspx, ie not loose your place on the site. Just make an almost empty class that inherits System.Web.UI.Page, override the OnLoad event, use the Response object to test what domain you're on and send down a 301 if necessary ... and then all the pages in the site should inherit from this new class.

Originally Posted by vangogh

Of course we do have this mighty fine PM system here that will keep the link hidden from public view and I'm even smart enough not to click on the link, but rather copy and paste the URL so the traffic will show as direct. No referrer link from the forum.

Will do. But don't get your hopes up, she still hasn't figured out how to upload the files out of Frontpage. She mentioned opening a ticket with the hosting folks.

You know, we always hear horror stories about bad hosting, but imagine being a tech at some host company and a customer complaining because the files on their laptop aren't on the internet!

I want to see this too. This sounds like a bad train wreck, and I love bad train wrecks.

Frames are brilliant...they solve all problems! No one gets duplicate content when they use frames! Come on, John, you didn't know that? And the address bar changing...well...you don't want it to change for 15 domains for the same site! If it's fifteen different domains, they're all different!

I don't know what else I can add that hasn't already been said other than to grab a bag of popcorn and watch the show.

John the sad thing is there are people who ask why the files on their local computer aren't showing on the web.