DJ Website Designer Todd Donald
Specializing in SEO DJ Websites and SEO DJ Web Design.
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Flash Websites, Videos and Music
Think Before Building a Flash website, or adding Videos & Music
Flash Sites... All Show and No Go. SEO Suicide. The Red Elephant of marketing campaigns. Java elements, snazzy but they are not visible to some... BUT WAIT - Can't I have a site that's cool and shows up on searches? Many folks know by now, not to own a full Flash Website because they cannot be "seen" or indexed by search engines, (so they don't show up in searches). It takes a deep wallet to promote a Flash site.
Typically speaking, Flash sites are promoted via external marketing, like print ads, radio spots, TV commercials and Pay Per Click Ads. We've all seen those cool sites though... One of my personal favorites is the old Flash site for the Jessica Simpson Version of Dukes of Hazard, (sadly not all of its features are still working). In order to promote this site during it's time, WB tried plastering the domain name all over and linking to it from static html landing pages at different URLS which helped, but the Flash site itself never performed well on search engines.
If you want a Flash Site (and I certainly don't blame you if you do), I have a ton of Flash DJ Website Templates to choose from. No doubt, Flash sites look cool. However you must also have a Plan B... A backup site (html), running under a separate URL to get some action on search engines. The Flash site can be linked to and then you would promote the Flash version of the site on your business cards, brochures, in Pay Per Click Ads, etc. If you don't have the advertising bucks to build and promote two sites simultaneously (Flash & HTML), you can still have a plain old static HTML site that has some neat elements. For example you can have an HTML site that plays a song or video automatically when that page loads, (or it's supposed to).
Interested to know how sites make music play automatically or show video, or cool Flash animations?
- HOW MUSIC OR FLASH VIDEO WORKS: The media files that make up the Flash movie or video are stored on the web host and downloaded to the end-users computer, when the web gives their computer a command to run a program to view/hear these files. That program must be on the end-user's computer and the command works very much the same way as physically clicking an icon to make a program run. Since security is such an issue, (especially with new browsers and operating systems), many people have PCs and MACs that are set by default NOT to not allow websites the authority to run applications automatically on your machine. Therefore the Flash, Videos or Music will not be seen and may cause problems for your website visitor when the page loads.
- IMPORTANT INFO RE: ANTI-PIRACY: While physically it is possible to use other music sources and other copyrighted material like Music, Sound Clips, Flash Animations, Animated GIFs, Videos, Etc it's not legal. This includes music you have paid for to listen to, (like at Itunes, etc), but which the license is limited to you as the end listener - not others, because you are paying to listen to the music, but not reproducing it in such a way that others can hear it. I'm not a legal expert, but I believe this concept extends to the mobile entertainment industry as well and is one of the reasons why professional music subscriptions like bmpcd and ergmusic are so important, because they probably include a public play license. (I THINK)... So, if someone could gain profit from an artist's music, they need to have the license to do so. Since your site is owned by you / registered to you, I would recommend playing it safe and trying to find some royalty free music to use. I found Royalty Free Music which is a site that sells downloadable royalty free .wav and Flash. Another source I found is Royalty Free Midi Music (which has midi music files), and there are many places to get totally Free MIDI Music.
- INFO ABOUT MUSIC FORMATS: Another thing to consider is that video and music files embedded into templates play Flash, (which will only play automatically if the end-user has Flash Plug-In installed and their browser is set to accept Flash - Java - ActiveX scripting and commands). I won't argue that it does not look cool or make an impression, because I love the way Flash sites look and work... BUT if the end-user does not have Flash installed they will not see or hear it. If the end-user does not have the latest version of Flash, or ActiveX or Java, it may prompt them to upgrade their version in order to see the animated graphics, video or hear the music. YOUR END-USER (website visitor) MIGHT GET FRUSTRATED *** EXAMPLE: While writing this article, I surfed to royalty free music sites and tried to listen to the samples. A big splash page would automatically pop up, (from my computer - not the website), telling me that I needed to install Windows Media Player 9.0 update in order to hear the music. Finally at one of the sites, I decided to just install this stupid update and get on with it... I clicked okay and it said my computer's original Windows Media Player was corrupt and it needed to remove and then reinstall Windows Media Player 11... So I click Next, or Okay - Then it downloads a 25MB file, (I had to select where it downloads to). Then I opened it, clicked through a couple of screens, had to "validate" my copy of Windows and finally after all that, it tells me that before the software can install, I need to shut-down all running programs and reboot computer when I am done. SO - After several minutes of messing around clicking and downloading (I'm on High Speed - a modem or DSL modem could take much longer), I had to leave the website that had the music I wanted to hear anyway. Chances of me returning to that site are non-existent obviously. © 2008 Todd Donald
