How Frames Can Affect Your Promotion And Marketing Efforts ?
By Richard Igoe TheWebsEye.com
The following article outlines the Pros and Cons of using
frames with a deeper look at how they might affect your
promotion and marketing efforts.
When designing a new website, one of your first decisions is
whether or not to use frames. Frames technology allows you
to have more than one web page on your screen at the same
time.
Typically a frames site will include a navigation menu down
the side or across the top, with the main or contents page
filling the rest of the screen, however you can use 3, 4, 5,
or more frames if there is any advantage to your site from
doing so.
ADVANTAGES OF FRAMES
1) Frames can make your site easier to navigate because you
can have a constantly visible navigation menu - and as you
should know, easy navigation is one of the most important
aspects of website design.
2) Frames can make your site faster because you can include
the site theme (images, logo, etc..), and the navigation
menu, in frames that do not have to download each time a
visitor looks at a new page. Only the contents page changes.
3) Using frames can make it easier to design and maintain
your site, especially if you have a large site. If for
example you want to add a new page that is linked from the
other pages on your site, you simply add a link on your
navigation menu; you do not have to add links on each and
every page.
(However the top web design software allows you to create
templates which can give similar results. You create a
template and then create the pages for your site based on
this template. Then whenever you make a change on the
template, the web pages based on this template can be
automatically updated. This is essential if you have a large
site and don't use frames.)
4) Frames can make your site more interesting and can also
allow you to have permanently visible advertising banners.
Take a look at the Word magazine site www.word.com - well
worth a visit and one of the most innovative sites we have
found from a design point of view.
DISADVANTAGES
1) The original argument was that not all browsers support
frames, but this must be a very small percentage now. You
can get around this by including a <NOFRAMES></NOFRAMES>
area below your frameset. In this noframes area you can
include the normal <BODY></BODY> area and in this you can
place information such as a simple navigation menu and a
"Sorry your browser does not support frames" statement, - OR
you can design a complete page for browsers that do not
support frames.
2) Some search engines only index the home.htm or index.htm
page without spidering the rest of the site, so unless you
have good tags your site might not rank very well,
especially since many search engines also take into account
the contents of your pages and frames are treated as
hyperlinks to other pages. You can however get around this
by creating "doorway" pages which redirect visitors to your
index.htm page.
To redirect a visitor from an optimized "doorway" page you
simply put the following script in your
and replace index.htm with the page you want to redirect the
visitor to.
The other aspect here is that for search engines which only
index your home page, you would need to submit each of your
site content pages separately. If one of these content pages
is indexed and found in a search, the visitor will only see
the contents page and will not see the rest of your site,
something you definitely don't want to happen ! This brings
us to the next and maybe the most important disadvantage of
using frames.
3)Frames can make it difficult for you to direct people to a
particular page on your site. This is especially so if you
want to use email to send a visitor to a particular page
that has details of an affiliate program for example. If you
don't send them to your index.htm page they will not be able
to see the rest of your site, only the contents of the page
you have directed them to.
4)Frames within frames can be confusing, so you have to pay
special attention to your hyperlinks when you are designing
your pages. For example if one of the links in your main or
contents frame redirects a visitor back to the index.htm
page, the result will be a mess unless the hyperlink
specifies the target frame as "top" (eg: <A
HREF="http://www.yoursite.com/index.htm TARGET="_top">) to
prevent the index page opening inside the contents page.
Learning how to use frames is easy once you have mastered
the concept that a hyperlink can lead to a page in its own
frame (TARGET="_self") the default option, or in another
frame in the frameset eg:(TARGET="main").
All in all, whether you use frames or not is a personal
decision, but you need to aware of the advantages and
disadvantages before you design your site.
Richard Igoe is the driving force behind TheWebsEye,
a newly launched website which is a complete information
source on what websites need to promote and market
themselves. It is also building up a library of useful
website design articles and a list of website developers. If
you have something to contribute please visit the
http://www.TheWebsEye.com Library to submit your article for
inclusion.
