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Turners
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I have to say I dont like the attitude Iceni has on this subject (not read any other of their posts), seem very rude, its not for this person to say what goes on this site, I guess you dont like competition or feel threatened by it. I was glad to escape the UK to get away from this kind of attitude people have.

I can recommend someone if anyone wants a website doing and very reasonable prices.

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Please note that any unsolicited advertising will be removed from this forum

I did not write this - the forum admin did on every single LF page because before your time this forum almost died due to it being used as a vehicle for others businesses. I have not mentioned my business - the on-line directory is a FREE site for workers to be listed for clients to find them - the members mostly have a different skill-set than me so I don't tend to get much (read almost any) work directly via it BUT it is something I believe in. I don't think I have ever mentioned the URL on LF. As you don't have any idea what my business is or how I get my work how can you make comments about my feelings on competition. I don't think it is my attitude that is a problem, it is those who see every rule as something to break as quickly as possible - something I left the UK to get away from.

I will not hang my head in shame for obeying rules and regulations when they are there for a reason and are sensible. Third party recommendations are allowed so no problem Scoobydo.

I am allowed to have my sig line after my name - another LF rule. No-one has to click through to it - do they?

I will not be browbeaten or apologise for those that either cannot read or can't be bothered to understand what LF is or why they put their money into things like this (and I had to laugh when someone said it does not cost much - ask James about the amount of time he has to spend dealing with this large forum and all the others they run and the server upgrades etc that have gone on). As I said, if you don't like the rules, do the other thing. I have no affiliation with LF and have never bought a magazine, I am just grateful that this site is here and very grateful for all the good advice we have received over many years and the wonderful people we have met in person or virtually - far too grateful to be so rude as to disobey the very few regulations they ask as to abide by.

I am not even a moderator - just a poor member who has the temerity to be grateful to the LF forum and everything it stands for. I don't like everything about the site but as far as I can see it sure beats the competition hands down.

I suppose when people come along to something that has been established for a long time and works - they always think that they can do it better - why not start your own forum/directory and give it a go. You might just see that it is not as simple as you think.

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With both hats on - as an individual and a mod I am always amazed that people would consider giving business to people who can not understand the notice at the top of the page.

How hard can it be ? Genuine third party recommendations are allowed, private messages are allowed, links but NOT tags are allowed as a sig. NO DIRECT ADVERTISING

Please, these rules are there to allow the smooth running of the forum, its in everyones interests to read the terms and conditions and abide by them.
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[quote]please abide by the rules NO DIRECT ADVERTISING :- DAVE`S MINI DIGGER FOR HIRE IN 79 contact me for details http://www.iceni-it.co.uk/ Whats the difference seems if you are a guru on this forum ...[/quote]

Dave,

We have been through all this a thousand times before.

It was a very long and drawn out discussion some time back and the decision from the LF bods ended in favour that members can have in his/her signature, their URL but should not keep saying look at my website (some still do but.....).

Fair enough result and one that I and others, certainly pushed for. It was a 50/50 type result and to my mind it has worked pretty well.

One of the reasons for me wanting members to be allowed a URL in their sig, was that many of them, who were told to hide it, were among those that helped most newbies and others, with enormous help in answering questions that only those with some experience here, would know about. These folk are absolutely invaluable to many and I thought the least they should have in return, was their URL to be shown in their signature.

Before and of course since, there were people just coming on the forum to "shout out" for their company or whatever, making it pretty much a "market" place and you can imagine how the paying advertisers were feeling, paying high charges to advertise in the LF magazine and watching people trying all the time for blatant freebie advertising on the LF forum.

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Yes I do know that Miki but

           It seems lately on this forum that there is a lot of green eye jumping in, it`s not the French people who bother me in france it`s the brits there that I worry about ..... the french take you for what you are the brits are jelous if you are makeing a living or have more than them, nimby`s I hate em .

           Lee and Michelle are good friends of mine met them when we stopped in there gite when buying our property in france at

http://www.chezshells.com/ and he is also doing a web site for me for £99 at

http://www.chezshells.com/website/

hope it will be a bit cheaper for me he has got my mini digger in his barn untill we we come back in may,

recomendations are allowed your rules not mine

any way you took my reply about Chelsea the wrong way blue is the colour foot ball is the game our kid an avid supporter but must have been before your time if you cannot rember the song .

did you have any winners at Chester yesterday forgot the races were on the only thing I won was a 2 hour wait in the traffic on the way to see my sister

      dave

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When recommendations are in context, Dave, we welcome them.

Yes, Iceni has on this occasion mentioned that she runs a forum but it was in the context of her reply and IMHO in no way breaches the T & C.

As Miki says the topic of urls as sigs was a long debate and I can honestly say that the mods really 'went into bat' on that topic, thats why we are protective of that facility, it was hard won and we don't want to lose it !

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Im sure it will make iceni-it feel a lot better and more important and you never know she may even become a mod on here

Dave&Olive

I am also having a site put together by www.chezshells.com but didnt feel they would like a mention on what has been a poor thread, started ok then got ruined by silly minded people.

I think this thread should be edited and only decent content stay in place.

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[quote]We are looking for recommendations for website designers, we have three gites so far. I went on a fantastic website for gites with a section on the renovation of their gites in the Limousin (I thin...[/quote]

Try www.contourcomputers.co.uk

Gill and Tony Pearson. A hardworking husband and wife team running their business from within deep Wales!

Does it matter that they are based in UK?... In these days of international world wide web and supa-dupa technology... Isn't that the whole point?... I am sure they will enjoy a break in France if they need to go out to you for consultation.

Best of luck.
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To those who are grumbling about the rules here,

Living France pays for this forum, they provide it and they decide the rules. You don't like it? So p*** off and play somewhere else.

Better still, create your own forum, where you can make any rules YOU like and apply them any way that pleases you.

In the meantime, just read what LF says in their intro, and what they say at the top of every page. Is it all too hard to understand?

Jeepers, I have some sympathy for the irritation my Oz friends feel sometimes. "Bl**ding whingeing poms".

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[quote]To those who are grumbling about the rules here,Living France pays for this forum, they provide it and they decide the rules. You don't like it? So p*** off and play somewhere else.Better still, creat...[/quote]

Calm down dear boy, it's only an advert.......

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  • 3 weeks later...

Blimey, all that over a simple question about someone who does web sites.

To try and bring things back on track, and keep with the forum rules, I'll tell you about a site done for a gite place with a fishing lake on it. I know about it because I've been there on my hols.

The web 'site' used to be just one page, but the owner has had a makeover, and I think it looks great!

It's simple, gets to the point and gives all the info I need when I want to book. The site is now at www.loirefishing.com if you want to have a look at the layout. I couldn't find any name of the designer on there, but I'm sure the owner would tell you if you mail him. That is, if you like the look of it.

I hope this helps and hasn't broken any of the rules on advertising.

 

Cheers

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  • 3 weeks later...

Most of the time, the "no advert" policy is very much appreciated by everyone I suspect. However, in some cases such as this thread it's clear that people are, in effect, specifically looking for advertising which is where the difficulties arise.

I wonder if the moderators could point out that PMs/emails direct to the people concerned are OK rather than just deleting the offending advertisements? Some people realise that this is OK but I'm sure that not everyone does.

 

On the original question, simple is definitely best. If you get some design software like Frontpage (£160, simpler to use than some others as it's quite like Word) they give you a lot of templates to start you off and it's really not that difficult to do. Paolo had a nice little thread going on www.laymyhat.com a while ago about the DIY route which I thought was very useful. Some providers will give you this software free (eg 1and1.co.uk; this requires a UK address).

If that sounds like it will too complicated and you still want to pay someone to do it for you, one thing to emphasise at the start is that you hope to maintain the website yourself after they've finished and that therefore you don't want them to do anything too complicated. People I worked with used to pay to get the initial design done but then kept it up to date themselves afterwards and that worked very well. You need to keep it updated as that helps your ranking on the search engines.

Ask too about what they will do to get you into the search engines. A lot of people pay their £99 (or whatever) and get a reasonably nice website but nobody can find it as the £99 doesn't include submissions to the search engines. To get it properly into the search engines is a task of around four or five hours at, usually, £30 or so per hour ie £120 to £150. Most cheapo places (and in fact most fairly expensive ones) will only do an automated submission for you within their price. Ask if the search engine submission is only automated or is done by hand; it makes a BIG difference to your rankings. It takes around a month for these submissions to start to kick in.

One very important thing to note is that you need as much text on your website as you can manage as that's how you're found. A lot of the flashier websites are mainly graphics and photos and look nice when you get to them but are a total dead loss for you as nobody can find you.

Must add the "we do websites too" link to my signature   Seriously though, we do but not over the summer period as we're too busy.

 

Arnold

 

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Your website looks very nice. However, it is completely invisible to google (and a number of other search engines) as all the text is in graphics. It also takes an age to load even on my ADSL connection; personally I wouldn't have the patience to wait for it on a dialup line.

Yes, I know that the keyword list is excellent, but google doesn't look at it; it looks at the text on the page and you don't have any at all.

 

Arnold

 

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Mike, I was referring to a post immediately before mine which has been deleted as it was advertising webdesign services. It's the first time I've seen a website with absolutely no text at all as every single component on the pages were graphics.

Incidently, I wouldn't mind some friendly criticism of ourinns.org from yourself now. I've redone the whole thing in CSS (apart from the pages with no entries on them) and it looks a lot better than it did some months ago.

 

Arnold

 

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OK, I'm a bit confused by this thread. Someone asks who can help me with my website design and several people reply recommending various other people (friends, brothers, neighbours or just genuine reccomendations - who knows?) Other people reply using commercial sign off names that link directly with their commercial website design services and that's ok but when I posted my reply offering my services my reply was deleted. I'm not that bothered as I'm not a commercial website designer but I think that there is a double standard operating here. I know I'll be subjected to the wrath of the 'Rules is rules and if you don't like it piss off' brigade but I have to say my piece anyway. Maybe I should just get my mate down the road to recommend me and that would be alright then. Or maybe I should set up a commercial website design site, attach that to my member name and reply to every slightly relevant thread on this forum and get loads of cheap advertising. There's an idea!!
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I totally agree with you Macker.  I've never understood this double standard thing of saying you can't offer your own services but you can use a sign-off that advertises them.  Likewise, I could get several friends to join the site and say that they stayed at Coco's wonderful B&B and they'd never stay anywhere else again.  It all seems a bit daft to me.  I think it should be down to discretion, like actual postings.  If someone is clearly abusing the forum and, as you say, responding to even the most obscure posting with an offer of their services, then they need to be warned about advertising.  But third party recommendations are certainly no guarantee that it is not just someone using a dual identity anyway!
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If you remember how it all ended after all advertising of any kind was banned, you might recall that it was decided that it was the best compromise. If you wish to get friends and family to recommend you, then OK but, I don't think it would take too long for that to be sussed, do you ?

The idea of signatures was also to stop people pushing their business all the time, it is if you like, a silent way of getting around what was becoming a "free for all" for anyone who wanted to advertise their business.

Remember that many people advertise at large expense in the magazine, seeing it all being flouted free on the forum would not best please many of them would it.

If one also remembers, it was also a way of "thanking" the members who offer miles of advice on here. It was after a long debate, deemed fair to let them put up their "signature". What was not seen as fair were the ones who came on, said hardly anything and then regularly plugged their business.

Sure it will still not feel fair to some but at that time it was definitely the best thing the Forum admin could have done and personally I still think it is the fairest way.

Again, if one was pretending to be someone else and offer the "other" person as a recommendation, it would not take very long to become obvious.

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I arrived too late to miss what sounds like a massive debate about the advertising.

I agree that allowing unrestricted advertising would make the forums die out as they'd quickly become full of "junk mail" in effect.

As far as allowing the name in the signature goes, I see it as more of a quality thing. It goes a little way to stopping people say things that will damage their business and that in turn helps keep the quality of the replies up a little I think.

Where I think that some revision of the "no advertising" rule needs a bit of revision is in threads similar to this one where recommendations for specific services are clearly being asked for.

 

Arnold

 

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