Easily implemented improvement?

[Egg Bramhill]

What I'm really trying to say is that a commercial website will grow with time, and there does come a point as mentioned by someone earlier that the code will need to start being looked at. This should not be dismissed by the programs developers.

No. If you're developing a site in XWD the code doesn't need to be looked at. It's not designed to be looked at or altered. It's written on the fly each time you export the website.

The fact that 3rd party developers wants/can't rewrite the underlying code is the whole point regarding XWD. If you want a 3rd party to change/edit your site don't use XWD unless the SEO knows and uses XWD. (Now there's a market opportunity).

[remi]

Hi Stuart,

I agree with you, regarding the opinion that good code and all the other parts (including headers) are important for SEO. But unfortunately nobody knows the algorithms of the search engines in detail and furthermore there are also some entirely different opinions, you can read in our last thread about SEO (please try to ignore the sometimes harsh climate in such discussions).

Would an experienced developer still be able to tidy up the coding behind Xara built sites?

An experencied developer for sure. The exported HTML is easy to read, so you could use Xara Web Designer as a simple website prototyping tool. It's more the question if it's time-consuming (and cost-efficient) to change the generated HTML into a new version. This depends more on the details you would like to optimize and how often you will change the contents of your website.

You should use the demo version of Xara Web Designer for a short test and discuss the generated HTML with your developer.

Regards,
Remi

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Disclaimer 1:
I don't use Xara Web Designer, therefore it could be, that my answer may not consider the current features of Xara Web Designer.

Disclaimer 2 (necessary these days):
I'm not implying anything I haven't said.

[stuart1980]

Thanks, that's given me some more encouragement. Originally the guy I'm using said he had looked at it, and that he could work with it. I think he just rebuilds the site in better code, so yes in a sense I'm working on a prototype for him. All this talk about not being able to manipulate the code just threw me a bit.

Egg, I understand that with a WYSIWYG editor the point is that you don't have to look at the code, this is exactly why I'm using it. But surely, all programmers and SEO people agree that it is always better to have code written 'by hand' than in a WYSIWYG. Anyway, I don't wish to argue with anyone about this so I will leave this here (-:

[steve.ledger]

SEO people agree that it is always better to have code written 'by hand'

Ah but there's a person who hand built the machine that builds machines

[remi]

Ah but there's a person who hand built the machine that builds machines

But each machine requires some design decisions and with that comes also restrictions, so that not each machine is optimized for every task.

Remi

------------------------
Disclaimer 1:
I don't use Xara Web Designer, therefore it could be, that my answer may not consider the current features of Xara Web Designer.

Disclaimer 2 (necessary these days):
I'm not implying anything I haven't said.

[dogbertbh]

It's like we all bought this great new screwdriver and EVERYONE loves it.

Then someone says "But someday I'm gonna need to put in a LOT more screws - can't you turn this into a screw-gun so I can do that later?"

The manufacturer says "We made a screwdriver, you'll have to do them by hand"

But the people who need the screw-gun continue to ask to have it made into one so it fits their needs. When it's recommended they buy an actual screw-gun, they explain that it would be too heavy and they don't really want to use one.

It does the job it was intended to do. No less and certainly more than I ever expected.

But it is what it is. It's a WYSIWYG website development tool.

PLEASE don't water it down trying to make it into things I don't need to make it suit your needs. You can use Dreamweaver or GoLive or any number of Pseudo-WYSIWYG design tools and leave the simple web design to those of us who NEVER EVER EVER want to see the code.

[stuart1980]

Or you could employ someone else to look at the code... (-:

[ss-kalm]

Or you could employ someone else to look at the code... (-:

Why????? - we neither want nor need to look at the code ............

[remi]

@Keith and Bobby: The message is clear: You don't need, don't like and will not look at the HTML code. That's 100% ok, nobody is saying a bad word about this and there is no reason to be concerned from your side. Ok?

The only thing we should try to change after more than three weeks of such discussions is, that you're also trying to accept the standpoint and needs of others the same way as others are accepting your point of view. It's only fair.

Remi

------------------------
Disclaimer 1:
I don't use Xara Web Designer, therefore it could be, that my answer may not consider the current features of Xara Web Designer.

Disclaimer 2 (necessary these days):
I'm not implying anything I haven't said.

[richinri]

Thanks, that's given me some more encouragement. Originally the guy I'm using said he had looked at it, and that he could work with it. I think he just rebuilds the site in better code, so yes in a sense I'm working on a prototype for him. All this talk about not being able to manipulate the code just threw me a bit.

Or you could employ someone else to look at the code... (-:

Stuart, since I am the one that started this thread, I will address your concern. While nothing is written in stone, the things that matter the most to search engines are things like:
page titles, meta-tags, text content, header tags, title and alt tags AND how well they all blend together on your page.
For instance, if they find words in your title that are also in your meta-tags AND found in text in your content and other tags - your ranking is better.
BUT - if you are in a high keyword search category - NOTHING will work like PAYING for ranking. The first several search results are now almost always paid links.
ALL the things I mentioned above can be done with XWD with the exception of, I believe, the title tag. I strongly believe Xara consider addressing the apparent ignoring of the title tag since it is important for SE rankings. You are probably paying these SEO guys to do nothing more than make a few text changes to the things I mentioned above.
CSS is ignored by search engines and anyone that tells you otherwise is fibbing. Just about everything in <> brackets like that are ignored by search engines. The reality is your ranking will improve OVER TIME if you pay attention to the above.