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LRG

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Awesome, thank you. I have some experience with brackets. Using the HTML code makes sense now. I'm trying to take, for example, the navbar from the HTML file in foundry and put it into a new project, do I have to style my own css around it? Where do I find the css for the HTML? I can't seem to find it within Foundry. I just don't know what the process is for making a website using it. I've googled it but can't seem to find anything. I'm a complete noob to the process, my apologies haha.

Foundry has all the files and much more you need for your project. use the builder to create a template with your desired header, and save it to HTML. Your saved html will be you index.html (rename it) which tells you the location of your CSS file/find it in the html head section/. usually its better to edit custom.css, and don't change anything in the theme's own CSS file.
 
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jmusic

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Download 2601 Free Website Templates - CSS & HTML | Free CSS

I found this helpful site for free templates. Instead of building from the ground up, you can grab a free template.

Eew. I saw "Powered by Wix" and was immediately turned off. I've seen Karlie Kloss too many times on Youtube...

EDIT: I saw after I wrote the post that the Wix stuff was ad content. My apologies for this rant...

There are some nice looking themes there, but I checked the license agreement:

IPR
---
Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) belong to and stay with OS Templates and the their owner(s).

TERMS OF USE
------------

This template can be used for private and commercial websites under the following terms:

* You must attribute the work in the manner specified by OS Templates (author and licensor - see Attribution section below).

* If you use our work for your clients or friends website(s), you have to inform them of the licence that comes with the template(s)

* You can not claim intellectual property rights or exclusive ownership to any of our templates, modified or unmodified. All templates are the property of OS Templates.

* You are not permitted to place any of our templates either modified or unmodified, on a diskette, CD, website or any other medium for distribution or re-distribution, rent, lease, sale or resale.

* You can not offer our templates for distribution / re-distribution of any kind without prior written consent from us.

* You are not permitted to port / convert any of our templates for a CMS, Blog system or any other form of dynamically managed content system for distribution / re-distribution on a diskette, CD, website or any other medium or for rent, lease, sale or resale.

You can only port / convert a template for your personal use and if a client asks you to port a template for them for one project / website only.

* You can not rent, lease, sell or offer our templates for sale. This also includes offering our templates as part of a product package. You can sell your services but not our templates.



ATTRIBUTION
-----------

All templates that can be found within this site have copyright information and credit links, that can be found in the templates footer and in the various CSS files.

Credit link(s) and copyright information must stay unmodified in all web pages that use our template(s).

The default credit link that can be found in the (source code) template footer is: <p class="fl_right">Template by <a href="OS Templates | Download 573 Website Templates - Premium and Free Website Templates, Responsive, HTML5, PSD Templates and Much More" title="Free Website Templates">OS Templates</a></p>

The default footer link may be changed to:

Code by OS Templates
<p class="fl_right">Code by <a href="OS Templates | Download 573 Website Templates - Premium and Free Website Templates, Responsive, HTML5, PSD Templates and Much More" title="Free Website Templates">OS Templates</a></p>

Design by OS Templates
<p class="fl_right">Design by <a href="OS Templates | Download 573 Website Templates - Premium and Free Website Templates, Responsive, HTML5, PSD Templates and Much More" title="Free Website Templates">OS Templates</a></p>

Thanks to OS Templates
<p class="fl_right">Thanks to <a href="OS Templates | Download 573 Website Templates - Premium and Free Website Templates, Responsive, HTML5, PSD Templates and Much More" title="Free Website Templates">OS Templates</a></p>

For companies or individuals that wish to add their information to the template footer please feel free to modify the link as such:

Website by YOURDETAILS & OS Templates
<p class="fl_right">Website by <a href="YOURURL">YOURDETAILS</a> & <a href="OS Templates | Download 573 Website Templates - Premium and Free Website Templates, Responsive, HTML5, PSD Templates and Much More" title="Free Website Templates">OS Templates</a></p>


COPYRIGHT INFO & CREDIT LINKS
-----------------------------

YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO REMOVE CREDIT LINKS AND/OR COPYRIGHT INFORMATION FROM THE TEMPLATE FOOTER OR ACCOMPANYING CSS OR JAVASCRIPT FILES

OS Templates DOES NOT offer paid link removals or paid copyright removals.

All of the templates and digital work that can be found on OS Templates | Download 573 Website Templates - Premium and Free Website Templates, Responsive, HTML5, PSD Templates and Much More have been filed globally with various Copyright Offices. If you misuse our digital work we will seek damages and you will be prosecuted.

If credit links and/or copyright information are/is intentionally removed from our digital work, legal action will be taken against those doing so.

Please respect our work, a lot of time has been invested in the work that can be found in the site.

Removing credit links from templates can and will result in legal action. It isn't hard to find out where our templates are being used and who is using them.

Worst of all is this little gem:

"All templates that can be found within this site have copyright information and credit links, that can be found in the templates footer and in the various CSS files.

Credit link(s) and copyright information must stay unmodified in all web pages that use our template(s)."

Means we either risk copyright infringement (for us and/or the business owner) or the business who just paid $$$$$ now knows we used a free theme and gets to have it displayed on their website too.

I prefer Bootstrap themes available at startbootstrap.com, which use the much more permissive MIT license.
 
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BD64

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Trying to get some free/cheap sites done for the portfolio and to get some experience.
Just had my first morning of cold calls, oh boy that was fun! Just called ~15 companies, mostly got stuck with gatekeepers who took took my name/# and offered to forward it to a decision maker or gave me an email to reach out to. Got a couple people who may have been decision makers but my sales muscles are pretty weak, I had trouble getting traction. Definitely had my nerves flare up and finding it tough to explain why they should up their website game.

Planning on reaching out to at least 50 companies this week and emailing some back, hopefully will be able to hook something.
 
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jmusic

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Trying to get some free/cheap sites done for the portfolio and to get some experience.
Just had my first morning of cold calls, oh boy that was fun! Just called ~15 companies, mostly got stuck with gatekeepers who took took my name/# and offered to forward it to a decision maker or gave me an email to reach out to. Got a couple people who may have been decision makers but my sales muscles are pretty weak, I had trouble getting traction. Definitely had my nerves flare up and finding it tough to explain why they should up their website game.

Planning on reaching out to at least 50 companies this week and emailing some back, hopefully will be able to hook something.

Action taking!!! Woohoo!!!

@Vilox may be able to give you some pointers.
 

• nikita •

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Eew. I saw "Powered by Wix" and was immediately turned off. I've seen Karlie Kloss too many times on Youtube...

EDIT: I saw after I wrote the post that the Wix stuff was ad content. My apologies for this rant...

Lmao. I can't stand that Kode with Kloss BS. If you're gonna make a whole movement out of it, at least learn how to do more than change directories 10 times.
KE6QNYV.png
 

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Eew. I saw "Powered by Wix" and was immediately turned off. I've seen Karlie Kloss too many times on Youtube...

EDIT: I saw after I wrote the post that the Wix stuff was ad content. My apologies for this rant...

There are some nice looking themes there, but I checked the license agreement:



Worst of all is this little gem:

"All templates that can be found within this site have copyright information and credit links, that can be found in the templates footer and in the various CSS files.

Credit link(s) and copyright information must stay unmodified in all web pages that use our template(s)."

Means we either risk copyright infringement (for us and/or the business owner) or the business who just paid $$$$$ now knows we used a free theme and gets to have it displayed on their website too.

I prefer Bootstrap themes available at startbootstrap.com, which use the much more permissive MIT license.

Thanks for pointing that out!! I guess there are no shortcuts
 

Daniyal Anjum

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Do you guys do Google Adwords or SEO?

If you guys do SEO, how do you build your links?
I made two websites for my clients and refunded both. I couldn't get the results on time. These domains were new and didn't have any sites on them.
But I still want to help market their services anyway.

How can I do that?
 
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BD64

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Seems like the general consensus here would be that you can keep SEO pretty basic and have good results. Include relevant keywords in the code such as meta descriptions, alt tags for images, throughout the content such as in the copy. From my understanding SEO is also determinant based on user interaction with the site, how long did they stay? did that site satisfy their needs or did they look elsewhere?
There are a lot of other stuff such as back-links which play a role as well. I'm no expert but I wouldn't put too much focus on the SEO, cover your basis and use relevant paid channels to the heavy lifting of your marketing, FB, Insta, Adwords, etc.
I'm no expert so take my advice with a grain of salt and go test things out for yourself, see what works.
 

BD64

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Has anyone else had alot of trouble customizing themes? Currently using the foundry theme for the first time and it just seems really inflexible past the variant builder, been trying a bunch of stuff in the custom.css but can't get most of it to work. Was wondering if anyone had any idea whats happening or if this is just a problem more specific to foundry?
 

kwad

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What the Facebook page that's been mentioned?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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Fox

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Has anyone else had alot of trouble customizing themes? Currently using the foundry theme for the first time and it just seems really inflexible past the variant builder, been trying a bunch of stuff in the custom.css but can't get most of it to work. Was wondering if anyone had any idea whats happening or if this is just a problem more specific to foundry?

I find Stack and Pillar to be a but better to work with. But ya you will have to play around with all of these a bit to get something great.

If it is one specific thing don't be afraid to contact the theme suppliers themselves directly - the support is usually very detailed.
 

Fox

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Do you guys do Google Adwords or SEO?

If you guys do SEO, how do you build your links?
I made two websites for my clients and refunded both. I couldn't get the results on time. These domains were new and didn't have any sites on them.
But I still want to help market their services anyway.

How can I do that?

They can't expect sales from a brand new site if they aren't also paying for some form of marketing be it SEO, Adwords, offline, radio, etc.
People don't just open up domains randomly.

The best bet is to target those who are already getting lots of traffic. Here are the top organic results for "concrete paving Miami"...
Screen Shot 2017-09-18 at 6.42.05 AM.png

All of these guys would benefit hugely from a better site. They already have the traffic, the need is already there, and a better website would help them snag a higher % of already interested potential clients. Go meet the need where it is instead of trying to create it. Much easier place to start.

Also these guys would probably have a lot of business right now after the hurricane, hint hint ;)
 
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Fox

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Thanks for the reply Fox. It also sounds like you have to get familiar with copywriting, Google Adwords, and SEO. From my understanding, its not just about building the website but we would also have to find keywords to generate traffic for the person or business that way they can get more business.

See my post above, go build for those who are already getting views. Help them convert more.
 

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Hey @Fox, just wanted to say thanks for this fantastic thread. I'm looking to get started here but caught in a bit of analysis paralysis... The first site I'm thinking of doing is for someone close to me who owns a car dealership. My concern here is that this isn't a particularly static website as they do run promotions and different deals, new cars, etc. I was wondering if maybe WordPress wold work better for them as they will likely need to manage the website on a semi-often basis. Was wondering if anyone had some thoughts on this. thanks!


Not sure if you already went forward with this, but look at any car dealership website. The most important thing for them is to be able to showcase their inventory on their site. There are WP themes that allows users to upload vehicles on the backend of WP. Look for a theme that allows VIN import. This makes it super easy to add vehicle.
Put in a vin, it will pull data from Edmunds, add pics and price.
 
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Not sure if you already went forward with this, but look at any car dealership website. The most important thing for them is to be able to showcase their inventory on their site. There are WP themes that allows users to upload vehicles on the backend of WP. Look for a theme that allows VIN import. This makes it super easy to add vehicle.
Put in a vin, it will pull data from Edmunds, add pics and price.
Been a side project of mine, have been busy with some other stuff but yah. The VIN import advice is great thanks for that
 

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Really sorry if this has already been asked- I couldn't find anything: does the HTML structure of a page affect its Google ranking? What I mean by that is, if I stick to best HTML practices (e.g. using the new nav/section/footer tags etc), will Google put the page higher?
 

• nikita •

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Really sorry if this has already been asked- I couldn't find anything: does the HTML structure of a page affect its Google ranking? What I mean by that is, if I stick to best HTML practices (e.g. using the new nav/section/footer tags etc), will Google put the page higher?

I don't know much about SEO but YES, good HTML structuring helps search engines index your site.
 
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Fox

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Really sorry if this has already been asked- I couldn't find anything: does the HTML structure of a page affect its Google ranking? What I mean by that is, if I stick to best HTML practices (e.g. using the new nav/section/footer tags etc), will Google put the page higher?

General rule of thumb is to make the site as good as possible for the people using it. That's basically what google wants and what their 1000 magically metrics are looking to gauge.

Good for the users* = good for google


*And some very basic code must does that you can easily google.
 

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Loving this thread. Read through everything. Love the practice and learning about it.

What do you guys do if a client wants to be able to update the site often/semi-often? I'm assuming you'd use a wordpress template rather than an HTML template. Do you offer to do it for them at an hourly price? What would you do if they said they wanted to do it themselves?
 

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I'm seeing some websites that are around 4 or 5 years old with keyword stuffing. At the top or bottom of the page they have dozens of keywords, obviously trying to get ranked in Google for different locations or services.

It looks to me like they are just wasting space and visitor attention.

Is Google punishing them for this? If so this would help pitch them a new site.
 
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I'm seeing some websites that are around 4 or 5 years old with keyword stuffing. At the top or bottom of the page they have dozens of keywords, obviously trying to get ranked in Google for different locations or services.

It looks to me like they are just wasting space and visitor attention.

Is Google punishing them for this? If so this would help pitch them a new site.

Yes, modern ranking algorithms tend to punish sites for stuffing - if the algorithm calculates that it affects the user experience negatively. What you're describing probably qualifies.

you can check out the free ranking tool on moz to see what's up with any given site.

FWIW, I wouldn't pitch design using SEO talk. It confuses the customer. Are you selling a new website, or an SEO package? The benefit of the new website is that it guides the visitor to a buying decision. It answers the following questions:

Does this business provide what I need?

Can I trust this business?

How do I get in touch with them to get started?

Good design addresses all these elements and gets the visitor from top to bottom. From cold lead to phone call ( or email ).

SEO considerations are secondary, and will be addressed by dealing with the three points above. I would toss in a basic SEO package for them as a bonus. Stuff like making sure they have a google directory listing, making sure their social media links to their main page, making sure their YouTube videos link to their page. These factors will boost SEO significantly, usually enough to get on page 2 ( depending on competition in their area ). Page 1 is often dominated by the directory sites (for blue collar businesses) and the largest players in town, so a page 1 ranking requires a dedicated SEO campaign.

TL;DR - Pitch using the benefit of good design - getting people to take the desired action as quickly as possible. SEO basics can be tossed in as a bonus to sweeten the deal and make it more likely you get a referral.
 

lowtek

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I'm seeing some websites that are around 4 or 5 years old with keyword stuffing. At the top or bottom of the page they have dozens of keywords, obviously trying to get ranked in Google for different locations or services.

It looks to me like they are just wasting space and visitor attention.

Is Google punishing them for this? If so this would help pitch them a new site.

OH, and something that really needs to be said. When you're doing a redesign, if you change URLs for the content make sure you set up 303 redirects for their old pages.

This is something that is easy to overlook, but can seriously hurt the business. If they're bottom of page 2 and you don't set up the redirects, they can get sucked into the memory hole. If they're on page 10 the damage is mitigated, but you should always do it correctly as a matter of procedure. If they get an SEO company to come along later to do a campaign, they'll spot the lack of redirects and spend the day shit talking your work to the owner.
 

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I also see lots of dated websites but they're not necessarily "bad".

For example: Plumbers in Dundee | Watsons Plumbers

It's fairly obvious what they do and the phone number is quite prominent. The content is a bit crammed for my tastes but other than that it seems okay. Is it worth pitching this type of client and try to sell them on the idea of a fresh look? Or is it better to move on and find the genuine terribly websites.
 
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lowtek

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I also see lots of dated websites but they're not necessarily "bad".

For example: Plumbers in Dundee | Watsons Plumbers

It's fairly obvious what they do and the phone number is quite prominent. The content is a bit crammed for my tastes but other than that it seems okay. Is it worth pitching this type of client and try to sell them on the idea of a fresh look? Or is it better to move on and find the genuine terribly websites.

I would call them borderline, but some others may disagree. They have a separate mobile page with a tap to call button that's functional - that's one major thing I look for. Most of their traffic is going to be mobile.

The text is hard to read, the contrast is poor, it's not visually appealing and it doesn't quite guide me from point A to point B.

The copy isn't very good. It's just informative without being sales oriented. Most people that own homes have no clue about plumbing or heating. A little bit of scare tactics couldn't hurt.

Not the worst I've seen, but is obviously about 5 - 7 years old.
 

Skyizlimit1

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Forgive me if this has been talked about already, but @Fox or anyone, when developing on your HTML template, how do you show your client what it looks like? I used to develop on Wordpress through a sub domain and my client could easily see the site as I create it. What do you do to keep your client updated on the design?
 

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