RESOLVED

(If this is a dup - sorry ... didn't seem to work first time I posted.)

Not sure if this is the right forum (suspect it's OK for the 1st question at leas) ... if not right, let me know & *I'll post to another.


I am in the process of redesigning our website (for new content and new
functions). The original website is www.dvmvac.com (a not for profit site).

Not wanting 'visitors' to the current website to get confused by the new website
in progress, I created a new folder at the hosting site and put the redesigned
files there. So the new 'stuff' is www.dvmvac.com/REDESIGNnew.

IS THAT THE RIGHT WAY TO SET UP MY HOST FOLDER/FILE
STRUCTURE FOR A REDESIGN?

Now, the DVM I'm working with would like to add a search facility.

I tried what the hosting people had but it didn't work at all. They suggeste
d the Google Custom Search Engine.

I've implemented it and it works ... SORT OF.

By that I mean when a search is done, it 'looks' at the original site for 'h
its' - NOT in the new files.

Maybe the problem is that the 'new stuff' is not indexed ... the 'old stuff
' is.

Also, when I set up a page for the search to put the results in, Google
wouldn't use the 'new site' - tried again using 'old site' and it worked.

Any suggestions?

Sorry to be so verbose - just the facts!?!

There's nothing wrong with the way your developing the site. You have to put it somewhere and it's best not to disrupt the current site until the redesign is done.

I'll usually develop as much as I can local on my computer before moving to the server, but I'll usually do the same thing you are. Depending on how you're coding the links you may need to change them once the redesign is fine.

You're exactly right about why Google's custom search engine isn't finding pages on the redesign. It actually searches it's own index like you guessed and so can't find the pages until they've been indexed.

I wouldn't worry about the custom search until you take the redesign live, but it will take a little time to index all the new pages and it's possible that some pages won't be indexed at all.

Thank you Steven
Good to know my 'redesign logic' is OK.

Originally Posted by vangogh

You're exactly right about why Google's custom search engine isn't finding pages on the redesign. It actually searches it's own index like you guessed and so can't find the pages until they've been indexed.

I was afraid of this since it takes so long to get indexed by Google and have been searching thru the web to find ways of getting indexed as fast as possible.

Don't quite understand this though:

Originally Posted by vangogh

I wouldn't worry about the custom search until you take the redesign live, but it will take a little time to ind♠t all.

Does it mean to 'code and test' position of search box, 'look' of result's page, etc ... then comment it out when go live - until Google gets around to indexing?

Again, thank you for verifying my sanity (at least for redesiging websites).

I just meant not to worry about the results being what you want since you'll have to wait for the pages to be indexed.

It's not that hard to get indexed. You want to have at least one (more is better) sites that get spidered frequently to link to you. A popular forum is perfect for this. When the redesign is ready add a link to the site in your forum signature here and any other forums where you post. Then make some posts. Google will find your link on the forum and visit your site.

You also want to make sure your site is search friendly and can easily be crawled by the spider. At the very least add a sitemap page where the links are pure html. Make sure there's a link to the sitemap on your home page and even better somewhere on every page of the site like your footer. And make sure the link to the sitemap is also pure html.

Thank you again, Steven

I did create a sitemap, but linking to it from the pages of my website is new - and good info.

The original website is indexed (it's 2 years old) ... but some of the page names in the new one have changed, so I'll just wait for them to be indexed after I go live.

Don't know how to mark this as RESOLVED ... but IT IS

If your URLs have changed you should use 301 redirects to point the old URLs to the new ones. If you do search engines will see the new pages as having permanently replaced the old. They'll keep any PR and link love the old URLs have

Thank You for the tip --- I've 'salted' it away for when website is 'released'.