http://www.unlimitedperfumes.com

Please comment on the optimization for some of my keyphrases, namely discount perfume, mens cologne, wholesale perfume.

But also please comment on the usability of the site, which, in my eyes, is almost as important, for purposes of keeping customers on the site.

Thanks and, I look forward to reading all your opinions, both good and bad, as I've been a lurker on here for a while and respect all your opinions.

JP

Well my first criticism is this site takes forever for me to load and I have broadband. I would have hit the back button well before the site even showed up. Does anyone have a tool for testing how long it takes a site to load on different connections. I can't seem to find the one I used to use.

I had tested that and, it had come up as loading pretty fast, but, thanks for the critique. You said that was your first criticism. What is your next one?

JP

Is your site finished? I get a lot of images not loading, pages not found etc.

Not, not completely...I expect to go live with it on September 1. I have had some bugs that I've had to fix with the image problems about which you spoke.

What is everyone's recommendation as home page size?

My current home page size is about 85,000 bytes. It's smaller and loads faster than all of my biggest competitors, according to a load time check utility that is out there. According to the utility, it loaded on a 56k modem in just under 15 seconds. Anyone have any thoughts?

JP

You could do the following:

Get rid of the session ids, at least for search bots (unless you have already done that)
Add sitemap
your first keyword in title should be Discounted

I like the A-Z mouseover image effect thing, but please remember that everytime i put the mouseover (did many times for last 10 minutes) it downloads the file over and over again, i think, could use a bit of bandwidth up.

Dan

Ok, did the title thing. I'm not quite sure how to disable the session ids for the robots, though....could you point me in the right direction?

also, what were your thoughts on useability, as opposed to just optimization? Was anything at all even remotely confusing to you? I tried to make everything as dummy-proof as possible.

Thanks for the input. Very valuable.

JP

yeh i don't know how to disable session id's either

So nobody knows how to turn off session ID's ONLY for spiders?
JP

What software are you using and does it have a file called sessions.php or something?

Dan

By software, what do you mean? It's an OSCommerce shopping cart, based on PHP programing language (newbie). As for sessions.php, I found that file in the /includes/functions subdirectories on my root. I've cut and pasted the content of that file. Is that the file I was to be looking for?



<?php
/*
$Id: sessions.php,v 1.19 2003/07/02 22:10:34 hpdl Exp $
osCommerce, Open Source E-Commerce Solutions
http://www.oscommerce.com
Copyright (c) 2003 osCommerce
Released under the GNU General Public License
*/
if (STORE_SESSIONS == 'mysql') {
if (!$SESS_LIFE = get_cfg_var('session.gc_maxlifetime')) {
$SESS_LIFE = 1440;
}
function _sess_open($save_path, $session_name) {
return true;
}
function _sess_close() {
return true;
}
function _sess_read($key) {
$value_query = tep_db_query("select value from " . TABLE_SESSIONS . " where sesskey = '" . tep_db_input($key) . "' and expiry > '" . time() . "'");
$value = tep_db_fetch_array($value_query);
if (isset($value['value'])) {
return $value['value'];
}
return false;
}
function _sess_write($key, $val) {
global $SESS_LIFE;
$expiry = time() + $SESS_LIFE;
$value = $val;
$check_query = tep_db_query("select count(*) as total from " . TABLE_SESSIONS . " where sesskey = '" . tep_db_input($key) . "'");
$check = tep_db_fetch_array($check_query);
if ($check['total'] > 0) {
return tep_db_query("update " . TABLE_SESSIONS . " set expiry = '" . tep_db_input($expiry) . "', value = '" . tep_db_input($value) . "' where sesskey = '" . tep_db_input($key) . "'");
} else {
return tep_db_query("insert into " . TABLE_SESSIONS . " values ('" . tep_db_input($key) . "', '" . tep_db_input($expiry) . "', '" . tep_db_input($value) . "')");
}
}
function _sess_destroy($key) {
return tep_db_query("delete from " . TABLE_SESSIONS . " where sesskey = '" . tep_db_input($key) . "'");
}
function _sess_gc($maxlifetime) {
tep_db_query("delete from " . TABLE_SESSIONS . " where expiry < '" . time() . "'");
return true;
}
session_set_save_handler('_sess_open', '_sess_close', '_sess_read', '_sess_write', '_sess_destroy', '_sess_gc');
}
function tep_session_start() {
return session_start();
}
function tep_session_register($variable) {
global $session_started;
if ($session_started == true) {
return session_register($variable);
} else {
return false;
}
}
function tep_session_is_registered($variable) {
return session_is_registered($variable);
}
function tep_session_unregister($variable) {
return session_unregister($variable);
}
function tep_session_id($sessid = '') {
if (!empty($sessid)) {
return session_id($sessid);
} else {
return session_id();
}
}
function tep_session_name($name = '') {
if (!empty($name)) {
return session_name($name);
} else {
return session_name();
}
}
function tep_session_close() {
if (PHP_VERSION >= '4.0.4') {
return session_write_close();
} elseif (function_exists('session_close')) {
return session_close();
}
}
function tep_session_destroy() {
return session_destroy();
}
function tep_session_save_path($path = '') {
if (!empty($path)) {
return session_save_path($path);
} else {
return session_save_path();
}
}
function tep_session_recreate() {
if (PHP_VERSION >= 4.1) {
$session_backup = $_SESSION;
unset($_COOKIE[tep_session_name()]);
tep_session_destroy();
if (STORE_SESSIONS == 'mysql') {
session_set_save_handler('_sess_open', '_sess_close', '_sess_read', '_sess_write', '_sess_destroy', '_sess_gc');
}
tep_session_start();
$_SESSION = $session_backup;
unset($session_backup);
}
}
?>

Just found another sessions file in the /includes/classes subdirectory. I'm now officially confused.

JP

In Administration panel, just go to My Store, Sessions, then set value to "True" under prevent spider sessions.

that was easy..thanks,

Does anyone else have any suggestions on optimization? usability?

JP