Hi Everyone, I'm in the progress of building a new website for our Katahdin sheep, hoping in a few years I can make some money off of them via the net.

I would appreciate suggestions and ideas, after all I'm sure many of you have researched and purchased some of your livestock over the net.

Anything I should add, change, ideas in general?

http://www.katahdins.net

Thanks! CJ

-- CJ - Missouri Ozarks (sheep@katahdins.net), February 11, 2002

Answers

Nice looking web site, loads fairly quickly, good color choices and nice pics. You mention that all sheep need to be KHSI inspected but don’t state that your sheep are or if you are members of KHSI.

Your site does not show up when searching with major search engines, I realize that takes time and there are some specific tricks to get this accomplished in a minimum amount of time. A couple of web sites they may interest you are: http://www.devwebpro.com/, http://www.webpronews.com/, and http://www.techtutorials.com/.

-- BC (desertdweller44@yahoo.com), February 11, 2002.

Thanks....LOL of course it doesn't show up yet, I just built it 2 days ago.

I'm not concerned about placing in the search engines, that's something I know, understand and do quite well. I was looking more for what a buyer, or homesteader interested in sheep might be looking for in a website.

We just started with the Katahdins, our membership with KHSI is being processed now, along with the transfer of ownership of the stock we purchased.

As soon as we are officially members, I will ad that info, good catch!

-- CJ (sheep@katahdins.net), February 11, 2002.

Hi CJ,

The home page did load very quickly. I'm wondering how you optimized the graphics? The jpeg on the "tinkle" page loaded much more slowly so you might want to look at that.

Designwise you might want to consider, on at least the homepage, not having to scroll. You have a nice cut off place after the first paragraph of text. There is some debate amoung the web designer I have talked to around here about scrolling. Some designers think it is on the way out, everything will be contained to one screen, and others think that as the web audience matures they are learning to take in and look for more text and are willing to scroll. Who knows, just an idea.

The only thing off-putting to me, as a potential sheep buyer, is the pic of you and your husband. To me, it does not look like folks who spend their time mucking around with the animals. Just my opinion, please understand but just plain farm folks where I come from couldn't look that good no matter how hard we tried.

Good luck!

-- EBethH in northern PA (ehiggins@pct.edu), February 11, 2002.

Hehehehehe....okay well the picture is 3 years old, it's the only one I have of hubby and I together! Another visitor made the suggestion that a picture of us would be nice, so that's why it's there.

Scrolling....It's hard to optimize for everyone's different size browser's and screen resolutions. I myself use a 19" monitor, so no scrolling here. I know that's not the case on a smaller monitor or say a resolution of 800x600 on the desktop.

I optimize my graphics in Paint Shop Pro, it works nicely for that. Thanks everyone for the suggestions, any content that anyone thinks we should add?

-- CJ (sheep@katahdins.net), February 11, 2002.