Greetings fellow CoffeeCup forum members. I bought the large software bundle and downloaded it all yesterday. I have been creating and maintaining my Painting companies web site for several years now with an old windows 95 era front page express program. The site is http://www.workhorsepainting.com I guess that I will remake the site with the coffee cup software. Please give suggestions on which program to use and possible improvements in the site thank you

My opinion:

I would
- create all the pages with the same fixed width.
- use css for the styles and pull them out of the html files for easier maintenance
- lift the navigation to a position on the pages that does not need scrolling to find it
- have the navigation on every page, in the same position
- reduce the size of the images in the slide shows, they seem very pixelated as they are now
- get rid of the flash thingies, they don't work on the i-gadgets from Apple (ipad, iphone and such)
- have some 'real' text on the pages, not incorporated in flash or images, better for SEO
- make that blinking phone number stand still!

If you are html and css savvy, or are intending to learn it, I'd go for the html Editor. If not, use the drag-and-drop Visual Site Designer.

The site has only the home pg all of the others are just links to the swf files
Thank you for the suggestions I will try to implement them
I used to have a pg for each swf file with music on it and a link map and it was allot of work to change things had to change the link map on every pg and it was easier to do it this way just have to go back after viewing an swf file

I've been making the swf files with the open office . org impress

guess I have set it to fill the pg whatever size the pg is on the computer viewing it I like to utilize all of the space and have the largest images possible yes the images are very pixilated guess you cannot have both large images and small file size

I also noticed that your index page has no doctype declaration (FP Express is older than the doctypes, so they didn't use it)
And also, remove the doublets from your keywords. Googlebots don't like that, and that will affect your ranking.

If I were you, I would have one page for each slideshow, and I would remove the first and last image of the slideshow (or any others with text) and put the text in plain on the page. That way the googlebots and all the rest of the 'bots' will find more 'meat' to pick up on. And when creating the pages, give them file names that consist of just one word (not 'city garage.html' but something like city_garage or citygarage. The same applies to any file names of images.
I would not have music to start on loading of a page. If you want music, let it be optional. A lot of people don't like having music that they can't turn off.
As for the navigation, you could make it simple by using either an iframe, or use php includes. Then you would have just one set of navigation that will show on every page, and it will be just one place to update/edit it.

If you are unfamiliar with any of this, just holler There are enough people in here who will come to your assistance.

Greg - keep your potential customers in mind. If I were looking through several pages of Google results to find a painter, I'm going to be clicking through a lot of sites. You need to have what I want on that home page to make me stop and consider your services. Don't show me a picture of a paint sprayer - show me a really nice painting project! And no blinking, moving text/numbers. As Inger says; more meat, too. You might check out some other painting/residential service sites to see what information they have on the home page. I'd also use some sort of Lightbox or slideshow (non-Flash) for displaying the images. - And better quality images

Have a look through the templates in the Coffee Cup store (HTML Editor and Visual Site Designer) to get some inspiration and a feel for what contemporary web designs look like. When you purchase either of the programs, you'll get some templates included with them.

MUSIC Think about people browsing at public locations or at work. If music plays when your site opens, they'll hit the back button so fast it'll make your head spin! Even at home I don't like it because I either have my own music or the TV on, so I just move right on past sites that have music on them - so annoying!

I would follow what Inger & paintbrush have said.

So the programs I would use would be:

Visual Site Designer - to start a nice easy website either with a template, or you can use your own

Flash Menu Builder - so you can build a nice menu to all of your pages, making it easier for you to hyperlink your pages

Photo Gallery - so you can put those nice photos to good use, in a nice orderly fashion

Web Image Studio - try and make one nice logo for the top of your site. You sort of have 3 or 4 there, so I would choose one, and use the other two or three images on your Home Page as links to another service you provide (like the Powerwashing) and hopefully you can clean them up in this program too

Web Form Builder - to make a nice quotation form, and contact page.

Everything is a work in progress, so those would be the top priorities for me. Good luck!

OK Greg B. checking in... I have loaded the Visual site designer into my computer and started using it. I bought the largest bundle so have the 29 programs to work with, so far I have just downloaded them all and have only loaded the VSD one so far. I have been working with ancient copy of psp and front page express and in the past few years the open office . org stuff So I am having to get used to the different workings of this software. One of my main concerns is getting the search engine info going correctly I believe that that has never been proper on the site for the 4 or five years of its existence.
I started the home pg with the cloud background and the header image and then tried to do some of the shockwave flash files and it does not seem to want to accept the swf. files so I am going to have to probably remake the files with the firestarter or whatever the name of that app is. So now I will load a few more of the applications and start to learn how to operate them.
Thank you for the feedback I am reading and trying to implement all of the suggestions. I took all of the sound off of the site about a year and a half ago. I am of the opinion that showing actual jobs of mine is best. I will try to get up some positive references from satisfied customers. Before and after shots with dramatic differences between before and after I believe that having the description text frames in the flash show is orderly you read what is coming and then you see it etc
Being as all of my business is completely local I am only interested in having local response...
I put my phone # and Webb address on my van and I advertise my business and webb address in a local news paper classified add. but it would be nice to get customers directed to my site by search engines and by links on other webb pgs too
I would like to set up a pg where the customers could upload an image and then manipulate different colors into it to show me or help them to decide their color choices such as an interior room or the outside of their house to kind of graphically manipulate in the color change on the image

Greg, if your bundle includes the HTML Editor, I would suggest that you use the built-in menu creator instead of the Flash menu builder. The reason for that is that the use of ipads is increasing, and people using that will not be able to see your flash menu (due to an issue between Adobe and Apple). The same goes for users of iphone, not sure if android phones and gadgets will be affected, somebody else surely will chime in and say something about that.

You will be able to import the menu created with the HTML Editor into VSD, just ask if you encounter problems.