Greetings fellow Forum-ers, I installed some hit counters on the site today a couple on the home pg and a few on a few of the other pgs. Am using VSD did a Google search for web site hit counters html code and adopted a couple of the free ones. On the Home pg the upper one advances with each load or refresh of the pg and the one below it advances for each different individuals visit of the site. The several others I installed on a few pgs seem to be all advancing together andI wanted individual visit counting for the pgs so I guess I will have to delete a couple of them and load them again individually and separate so that their counting is not tied together as it seems to be now.
Please visit the site and some of the pgs so that I can see the hit counters doing their job...

www.workhorsepainting.com

Also made changes to the site map and added the bid example pg that links off of the two header label images (Free Estimates, Competitive Bids) Added another link to the garage floor epoxy pg from a small jpg image of the job with a label added to it. The added image link is on the residential interior jobs pg. I may put some links to contracts of the jobs on the respective large font names of the jobs at the top of the respective pgs such as the Garage Floor Epoxy label at the top of that pg would be a link to the contract for that job Guess that that would be a third level link. First level the main heading of interior jobs Second level the specific interior job Third level a link to the contract.
Is this linking arrangement too confusing? I can flo chart diagram it accurately on the site map

OK the bottom hit counter on the home pg jumped from 3 to 5 so a couple of people must have visited the pg since I sent out the forum thread a few minutes ago thank you

Here is another counter: http://statcounter.com/ It can be set to be very inobtrusive, even invisible, and you have a back end where you can see a lot of details. It can be set to exclude your own visits, only to count one and the same visitor just once (in a period of time), and it is free for up to 500 visits, then the oldest ones disappear, but the total count remains.

I'm sorry I didn't quite follow you linking levels...

But the idea of having the links to various sub pages, such as the epoxy floor, set up as an image looks much nicer than the list on the grey background.

As Inger suggested, use something that's invisible to your visitors. Besides giving your site a very dated look, until you have a lot of visits racked up, it makes it look like your site isn't very popular

As for your links, on a small site, don't over-complicate things. Make things as obvious as possible. It's also good to include text links at the bottom of your site.

One suggestion – I would try a background color (white) for your webpages so everything isn't floating in the clouds it would help give the site some structure.

Think I will stick to the clouds backgrounds because my contract pgs are white and I would rather have the contracts floating in the clouds rather than floating in the matching white
I am moving the counters to the bottom of the pgs the pgs are 2200 pixels long so I doublt that anyone will scroll through all of that dead space to the bottom The only links that will be going to the bottom of the pgs will be links that the customers will not be using or needing to use.
But, thank you for the suggestions I did consider all of them seriously . Decided to move the counters out of sight the counters are providing me with valuable information. I like the counters and think that the customers will pay them no mind. I did discover that the free black and green counter does link off site so I will probably be removing those for sure

Hiya Greg,

I would have to also agree with the others that although you may like the idea of the clouds, it's not a "repeatable" background. Basically that means it doesn't line up with each end to continue flawlessly and instead makes an very very distinct end of graphic line across the page by your counter at the moment. This makes websites look very amateurish which I am sure you don't want for a business site. Having clouds is nice, and can be very well done, but you need to find an image that flows from end to end without showing that edge. Hopefully you know what I am trying to say, it's early and my brain isn't finding all the right words lol. There are lots of graphics out there that are setup to be repeatable, I'm sure if you google it you will find lots of them. Good luck on it

...And even if the counter is "hidden" at the bottom of a very long page, people will still see the scroll bar and wonder what's down there. That's a lot of blank space for no good reason.

From the Killersites.com website:

Some things you should do and not do in your web pages:

1. No page counters: Page counters do nothing except make you look like an amateur, mess with your design, and tell people information about your site you probably don’t want them to know! If you want to know how many people are hitting your site, just ask your host for server stats. Any host worth it’s salt should be able to provide you with detailed stats that make page counters look stupid.

Jo Ann (or anyone else) – wouldn't something like Google Analytics provide the number of visitors and a whole lot more info?

I get vertigo when the text drops off into that never-ending sky

I altered the background image so that it can be seamlessly vertically repeated

http://s260.photobucket.com/albums/ii13 … p;newest=1

www.workhorsepainting.com

I decided to make all of the pgs the same height some of them will be full from top to bottom others will not I have empty space on the home pg to put in adds and other things that I may want to temporarily add in the future. I do not see a problem with people viewing lots of empty space.
After the first time they will probably know if sensible that empty space means thats all that is on the pg The pgs that have lots of content do not have big stretches of empty space
I may use the black space in the future to put in a coupon promotional campaign orsome other sort of ad...
If the links work if the things that are there are relevant and important if the customer is gaining all of the info they want and need I do not see a problem with some blank space on the pgs

I must confess I love the clouds I have been using clouds as my desktop background images for a long time now. Windows 95 and 98 made extensive use of clouds I think people like the nice big cumuli nimbus emblem of good weather and good weather to come clouds their large their puffy they are lite hearted

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii13 … 8/DTGB.jpg

That definitely looks better Greg,

As for the counter, do you have access to a cPanel for your site? If so then you should have access to a lot of different ways to get information about your visitors right at your fingertips. If not, then Google Analytics would most likely be a good idea too instead of the counter. I personally don't have an issue with counters, but paintbrush does have a valid point about how people see them. If the numbers are too low then it looks like you don't have enough traffic and most counters let you alter that number to be whatever you want to start at, which of course is a distorted appearance to your visitors of how much traffic you really get (if you change it that is).

Anyways, the counter is something some people like to use and some don't. I guess it all depends on how much traffic you expect to be turned into cash customers. If you feel many of them will be then you probably should not include it. If you feel it's only informational and that the visitors will not become customers all that often then it probably doesn't matter. Up to you on that, but Paintbrush's point is very valid on how professional it will look in the end.