H1 tags

[Michael@PT]

I have been running my site through WebCEO and one of the things that it has highlighted is that i do not have any H1 headings.

What are these are where do i find them. Every field that actinic provides on their software has been filled in but these is no mention of h1 tags.

ive done all the title, meta and so on but have not come across these before.

Im sure many would think it a stupid question and i have searched on the forum using the expression "h1" to no avail.

Many thanks for your help
__________________

[leehack]

It's not a stupid question Michael, actinic uses the h1 tag very little. I think this is mainly because it doesn't quite know where to use them. To get a h1 tag on each page is quite difficult because of how things are structured to work. You could always put the h1 tag at the top of the main content in the outer layout and fill it in with the page title variable. However you then need to be careful with brochure pages etc.

[NormanRouxel]

What are these are where do i find them.

H1 tags are a bit like the biggest headline you see in a newspaper. H2, 3, etc would correlate with the various sub-heading, each being a bit smaller than the previous.

Just like newspaper where your eyes are drawn to the headlines, search engines tend to give more emphasis to content within these tags.

So it may be a good idea to arrange for some of your content to be put within these tags.

[pinbrook]

if you have one product per section it is a good tactic to enclose your product name within h1 tags.

[Duncan Rounding]

The section name above the breadcrumbs is normally in h1 tags.

[Michael@PT]

Thanks for the info and taking the time to reply,

Will look into what you suggest and see what i can come up with.

Once again thanks for everyone on this forum. Before purchasing Actinic V7 last year i knew absolutely nothing about websites/webdesign/dreamweaver/anything computery and it has been a massive learning curve for me. www.purethoughts.co.uk was my very first website (now in its in its 3rd or 4th redesign) - now i'm trying to get my head around SEs and all that they do in an effort to encourage sales. Anyway back to my main point its a great forum with great members that actually take their time to help you out. Couldnt have got this far without your help.

Cheers

[i-sounds]

It's not a stupid question Michael, actinic uses the h1 tag very little. I think this is mainly because it doesn't quite know where to use them. To get a h1 tag on each page is quite difficult because of how things are structured to work. You could always put the h1 tag at the top of the main content in the outer layout and fill it in with the page title variable. However you then need to be careful with brochure pages etc.

Ok, but how do you actually create a place where you can fill in h1 tags on each product in Actinic? Can you provide simple step-by-step instructions for a newbie? Please...

[leehack]

If you want it on every product and you have more than one product per page, then you will get as many warnings about too many H1 tags as you will when having none.

so:

If you have one product per page, you could change the product name to be be H1 instead of H2.

or:

You could use the standard actinic section layout which includes the section name at the the top already enclosed in a h1 tag.

or:

Create a variable defined at section level, call it WebCEOToldMeTo.

You would then put this in your layout

<h1><Actinic:Variable Name="WebCEOToldMeTo"/></h1>

which when completed (had text added to it) at section level would put the text in between the <h1> tags for you.

Read the help guide on creating variables so you understand them, i would only be explaining what that tells you.

If you need step-by-step instructions, i would just use the standard actinic offering, you need to know what you are doing here, otherwise you can do more harm than good.

External theme? actinic theme? example url? - all things you'd need to provide for further help.

[i-sounds]

Dear Lee,

Thanks for your reply. I appreciate you taking the time to help with this. We had a site designed by an Actinic specialist, so it is a customized theme and we have one product per page. Here is an example of an existing product:

http://www.inspirationsounds.co.uk/a...and-piano.html

In an ideal world I would like the H1 tag to be the text just above the price (which is in CAPS LOCL) which is the product title in Actinic.

I would then like to specify the corresponding section title (which is in Title Case) as the h2 Tag. You can see this just below "Click to Enlarge". I am currently having to type this into every description manually.

Is any of this possible? Thanks again for your advice. Look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards.

Jan (i-Sounds)

P.S. I note that the Actinic CSS style sheet does specify H1, H2, H3, H4, etc... However, these are not appearing on any of our pages, so perhaps our designer took them out??

[leehack]

Your current page probably has <b>Product Title</b> currently in the product layout, you can change that to:

<h1>Product Title</h1> in the product layout, it will then put all product names across the site into a h1 tag for you (30 second job).

Your sub headings below should then be <h2> - <h6>, depending on the page and how you have it set up. These can easily be converted to heading tags by just embedding the html into actinic, look towards the bottom of the page on my fragment tutorial to see how embedding html is achieved.

That would setup with a standard hierarchy for you then, but select the heading tags wisely, only one H1 and then use the others as sub heading, just like you'd see in normal written material.

PS - your designer may well have changed things or just used a structure that wasn't to WebCEO's liking. You'd need to clarify with him/her on that.

[i-sounds]

Hi Lee,

Thanks for getting back. I have looked at the page in our web editor and in place of where the <b>Product Title</b> is we have this instead:

<div align="center"><span class="actxsmall">NETQUOTEVAR:HEADERTEXT</span></div>
NETQUOTEVAR:BULK

Any idea how I can tweak this? Thanks again for your help!

Best wishes,

Jan (i-Sounds)

[leehack]

<div align="center"><span class="actxsmall">NETQUOTEVAR:HEADERTEXT</span></div>
NETQUOTEVAR:BULK

That code is nothing to do with what you want to change, you need to open up your product layout, you will see it in there then.

[i-sounds]

Dear Lee,

Sorry, I have never really done anything like this before. Ok... So, I have been into Design>Options>Layouts, and the product layout is Act_ProductLine_text apparently

I have opened this file and this is what it looks like:

<!-- ProductLine HTML begin -->
<!-- Insert HTML for the top of the individual product -->
<style type="text/css">
<!--
.style1 {
font-family: verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
color: #000000;
text-decoration: underline;
}
.style2 {color: #0000ff}
-->
</style>

NETQUOTEVAR:ENDSEPARATOR
NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTFORMBEGIN
<tr>
<td align="center" valign="TOP" width="100"> NETQUOTEVAR:TEMPLATEBEGINXML NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTIMAGE </td>
<td align="LEFT" valign="TOP"><p><strong><span class="actxxsmallblue">NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTNAME</span><br>
<br>
</strong><strong>NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTPRICE<Actinic:ACTIONS></Actinic:ACTIONS></strong><Actinic:ACTIONS><br><br>
NETQUOTEVAR:ADDTOCARTBUTTON</Actinic:ACTIONS><br>
NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTDESCRIPTION&nbsp;
NETQUOTEVAR:EXTINFOLINK</span>NETQUOTEVAR:EXTINFOBUTTON <br><br><br>
<span class="actxsmall">NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTBEGINLINKNETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTLINKTEXTNETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTENDLINK
NETQUOTEVAR:PRICEEXPLANATION </span>
<span class="actxsmall">NETQUOTEVARISCOUNTINFO </span> <span class="actxsmall">NETQUOTEVAR:OTHERINFOPROMPT
</span> <span class="actxsmall">NETQUOTEVARATEPROMPT </span>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="LEFT" colspan="2" height="0"><span class="actxsmall">
NETQUOTEVAR:CARTERRORXMLNETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTQUANTITY
<Actinic:ACTIONS></Actinic:ACTIONS></span>NETQUOTEVAR:TEMPLATEENDXML
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" valign="top"><br>NETQUOTEVAR:INFOTEXT</td>
</tr>


NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTFORMEND
NETQUOTEVAR:NEXT
<!-- Insert HTML for the bottom of the individual product -->
<!-- ProductLine HTML end -->

Where do I put the h1 tags on this page? Thanks again for your help Lee. I really appreciate it. Look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,

Jan (i-Sounds)

[leehack]

DOH - crappy V7 not V8, sorry bad info previously.

From memory it will be this line:

<span class="actxxsmallblue">NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTNAME</span>

Before you try anything, check out what that class is doing in the stylesheet. I'd random a guess at you need to change the above line to be:

<h1>NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTNAME</h1>

Removing the span class, but that's just a guess, so backup the layout before you do anything.

If you have had a designer design your site, why don't you contact him to do it for you? Knowing your site and being able to have it in front of him, he will do it in about 2 minutes flat.

A little cheat to see if you are in the right area is to add your name into the code and see where it appears, you know you're in the right place then.

[i-sounds]

Hi Lee,

My designer has scarpered! Haven't got a clue where he is, which is a shame as our site is pretty cool. But then again, it is good to learn, so I will try and sort this h1 thing out myself, but obviously will back everything up before any changes are made.

To be honest, it's quite a lot of fun doing it myself, it is amazing what you learn from cool people such as yourself who are willing to point you in the right direction! I will let you know how it goes, but right now, we have some dispatching to do, will hopefully get back before close of play. Thanks again for your help,

Best wishes,

Jan (i-Sounds)