Re: new website draft 8: almost giving up

[Mark Polesky]

Graham Percival wrote:

> And even if some of our users *are* the webmasters, it doesn't
> make sense for them to add a big annoucement about lilypond at
> thie moment, does it?
> 
> Besides, asking our users to advertize our site will *also* be
> easier when we have a new site.  I mean, it gives a good excuse to
> motivate people, right?

Oh, maybe I misread your earlier comment. I was thinking
links,
not announcements.


> > I think we could boost our rank significantly by having the exact
> > phrase "free music notation software" in our description field.
> 
> The meta description field, or the "what is lilypond" box? If
> you're talking about the "what is lilypond" box, then please
> supply the exact new text you're proposing.  I'm completely fed up
> with crafting and re-crafting those two (or more) sentences.

>From an SEO perspective, the meta description is worth a lot more
than the "What is LilyPond" box:

<meta name="description" content="LilyPond... free music notation software.">

> > Maybe it lacks the poetic qualities of "...for everyone", but it's
> > worth discussing if you're going for SEO.
> 
> I'm not convinced it's worth going for SEO, but if you want to
> re-open the motto debate, that's fine.

Maybe you could split the difference and have the motto we like in
the <h1> tag, and the search-phrase in the <title>. I'm not going
to fight over this though; these are just some ideas.

> I'm happy to accept a compliment, but I don't understand the
> comment.  If you're suggesting that the general public understands
> "free", then I disagree.  If you're suggesting that the
> "free-aware" fraction of the population outnumbers the
> "non-free-aware" fraction of the population, then I also disagree.

I think you wrote something about the word "free" being a
detractor for certain demographics. And I wasn't referring to
"free-aware" either. All I was suggesting was that I think you'll
attract more customers than you'll detract if you have "free" in
your target phrase. Because we Americans are greedy.


> In any case, I can't believe that "Why do developers work on free
> software", in a special box of its own, would make the website
> harder to navigate.

No, it won't. I think Jan was just saying that there might be a
better place for it. I actually like that section. Maybe it could
go somewhere else, but I don't know. It's pretty small right now.
It doesn't really bother me there. It is a little FAQy; if we had
an on-site FAQ, that would be a better place. But whatever, there
are probably more important things to work on anyway.