Robots.txt file: The good, the bad, The Whitehouse

February 25th, 2009

After being in web design for so long it still amazes us that there are web-savvy developers (and designers) who don’t realise the importance of a robots.txt file.  Whilst it isn’t the be all and end all of a web design strategy, a clean, correctly-formatted robots file can help search engine robots, affectionately known as bots to weed through the information on your site quicker; and more importantly, not weed through the places you don’t want them looking – for example, your ‘/cgi-bin’ folder or that folder where you store all your secret CIA-level documentation; ‘/c14-files’, naturally : )

In essence, the gist behind a robots.txt file is simple: Also known as the Robots Exclusion Protocol, or robots.txt protocol, the file is a standard, nothing-special text file which has a certain format to it and is used to prevent (willing) web spiders and other web robots from accessing all or part of a website which would otherwise be open to the general public. Continue reading »

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Your website design sucks because… users can’t find crap!

January 30th, 2009

I know ayh! A great title to start of another year of C2.0 Web Design Blog! : -)

To kick off the new year in Web Design, I thought it would be best to go through a couple of my tell-tale signs that can help you gauge if and when your website’s design sucks. Obviously, “Website design” in this concept does not only include the graphical elements of the page, but of course the Information architecture, usability, accessibility, etc. So without further ado– Let’s get going with round one of “Your website design sucks because…” with Your website design sucks because users can’t find crap! Continue reading »

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