I currently have a flash based site for my photography side business(jmcelvoyphotography.com). I'm not getting many hits and I read that flash based sites aren't "searchable" by search engines and that I need to switch to a Search Engine Optimized site. My background is technical, with no programming, scripting, design, etc. I purchased a template for the flash site. I have access to Photoshop CS4 and Dreamweaver CS4 and have read this can be done using those two programs. I'm semi familiar with Photoshop, but have never worked in Dreamweaver. I want my site to have the same look(colors, borders, backgrounds) as my current site, with a Proofs area for my clients to sign in to review and order their prints. I also want the images to remain in flash or make it where you can't right click the images and download them. Where should I begin? Are there template I can purchase/download, or is this a manual process? I contacted a local web design company and was quoted nearly $2400 for what I want. That's out of my range right now. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

I read that flash based sites aren't "searchable" by search engines and that I need to switch to a Search Engine Optimized site.

Well, that's not really correct any more since Adobe made details available to Google and the others that allows REAL TEXT inside a Flash file to be read. Images inside a flash file, including text as images, still can't be read. Even so, an all-flash site is just not a good idea, still.

I'm semi familiar with Photoshop, but have never worked in Dreamweaver.

You don't need Dreamweaver. It's a nice tool, but it can and will still produce crappy code.

Do you have the original files used to produce the flash, did the template you purchased include the PSD files ? If so, then what you've got there wouldn't be all that hard to reproduce. There are many options for slide shows and shopping cart solutions. Leaving the images in flash wouldn't be a huge problem, but that's still no guarantee of protection for your images there are flash decompilers that would make your images available if someone really wanted to steal them. Watermarking your images, even to go into flash, is something you should do regardless.

I contacted a local web design company and was quoted nearly $2400 for what I want.

That's actually very reasonable given what you want, I would have expected the cost to be higher.

For some reason my post wouldnt apply so i'll try again.
Have you considered open source?

something such as wordpress with nextgen gallery and shopping cart installed would work well enough for your needs and best of all its free.

You can then link blog posts directly to the images in the cart, and link the gallery pics to cart photos etc for sales.

Originally Posted by LadynRed

You don't need Dreamweaver. It's a nice tool, but it can and will still produce crappy code.

Yeah, I really don't recommend using Dreamweaver, as I've found the results rather shoddy compared to what I can write from scratch. Now, in terms of SEO, I agree, sites largely built around Flash are difficult to make rank well. Search engines read text in order to define where a site ranks, and having a flash heavy template makes that far more difficult.

Is it same the case with site based on Java Scripting & AJAX?

I've handed SEO campaign on a Website with I think 90% flash. We rank well and even made it to the top one, and also was having a hard time doing meta on it cause it was joomla. I think flash can now be crawled by google , depends on how you do SEO I think.

Very easy test to see if you should use Flash if you care about search engine traffic. Try some searches and see how many Flash sites come up in the results. If you see any study what they did to get there.

At the moment and probably for the foreseeable future I wouldn't recommend creating an all Flash site if you care about search traffic. I don't buy that search engines can read the text all that well yet. And I don't believe they'll recognize the different pages within the application. Maybe someday, but I don't think it's happening now.

That's not to say you can't use Flash. Just understand the pros and cons of using it.

flash is search able LOL. Work in a stable coding app. There's a lot out there for some codes produce and dream weaver have some crap on it

hi

when you create site you don't use lot of java script and flash because use JavaScript all site pages very fast than Google boot you site most pages can;t see.that is the reason.not lot use java script

I do agree that Java is not the main to use in completing your website due to google preferences.

Hi jmcelvoy
i think there is no need of spending $2400 on redesigning of your flash based u just need seo service and in near future u will find ur site in top ranking.....

And the first thing your SEO is going to suggest is redeveloping your Flash based site in html.

Hello.


Flash can be readable, granted the text is't saved as binary data- ie a jpeg.

As a rule of thumb, design and seo optimization are on two opposite sides of a-- shall I say?-- scale. There is a better way than using flash for your text content.