My (small) beef with LL owners recips.

[Stever]

<!-- Begin Stever's Recip Rant -->
<rant>
Hey LL owners, you got to get a standardized size for your recip buttons and tables. I'm picky about things lining up and looking even on my index pages but everyone makes a recip button thats a little different in size to the others. Some are just too big as though they are trying to make theirs more noticable than the others. I often end up having to resize the tables a little or reducing font size a tad just to make it fit, but not too much as to piss off the reviewer.

I hate the look of free site index pages plastered with recips with no coherent design to it. looks like shit. And there are far too many out there that look like that. But you all make it difficult for me to make nice lookin pages.
</rant>
<!-- End Stever's Recip Rant-- >

[Fido]

Originally Posted by Stever

<!-- Begin Stever's Recip Rant -->
<rant>
Hey LL owners, you got to get a standardized size for your recip buttons and tables. I'm picky about things lining up and looking even on my index pages but everyone makes a recip button thats a little different in size to the others. Some are just too big as though they are trying to make theirs more noticable than the others. I often end up having to resize the tables a little or reducing font size a tad just to make it fit, but not too much as to piss off the reviewer.

I hate the look of free site index pages plastered with recips with no coherent design to it. looks like shit. And there are far too many out there that look like that. But you all make it difficult for me to make nice lookin pages.
</rant>
<!-- End Stever's Recip Rant-- >

Should we also standardize anchor titles?

[Lemmy]

If a recip screws up the look of your table try to tweak it a little (if it's a text recip). Most LL owners won't mind (I think ) as long as you don't butcher it completely.

[MadMax]

LL owners are more flexible on recip appearance than we often admit. I'm speaking as a LL owner with text recips here. If someone tweaks the size of my recip a bit to look clean on their page I don't care. I prefer that the colors be left intact, because recips are still a form of branding. Even so, as long as you're not fucking with my recip and leaving everyone else's as-is I'm fairly flexible.

[japamor]

I think most Recips are within reason size wise. There's just a couple that come to mind that hog the limelight too much and I don't think the owners post here.
I certainly 'adjust' LL Recips to make them blend better and I often have to change text colours to avoid text disappearing into the background colour.

[ronnie]

I agree, it's usually not a problem to tweak a recip, even better if it makes the site look better. For me, as long as the the right text is used and it's linked properly, it's good with me.

As japamor mentioned, thats the one big thing I see, the text blending in so you can't read or see it. Maybe one day I'll be smart enough to figure out a recip that does'nt have that problem..

ronnie

[Stever]

Good, that's what i needed to hear. Was not sure if I was steppin on anyones toes by tweakin things a bit.

[JohnnyR]

I wonder if I just made everyone's recip look the same, would you guys mind? I did that a while back for MGP's, and some of those guys (even partners) did mind. I choose not to submit to those sites anymore - from that experience I noticed that it's usually the smaller guys which are sensitive about these things. Why? No clue.

So here's MY rant: I hate is recips totally screwing up the layout. The ones where a </table> is forgotten and stuff like that. Got quite a few of those when I built up my database (I remember having about 7 or 8 indexes out of 40 damaged) but I sort it out eventually. Thumbs up to Dreamweaver Validator for that. I'm sorry now that I didn't write down which exactly those LL were which had bad/incomplete recips, but I'm planning of adding another niche to my db and i'll be writing them down then. It's my belief that the owners of those LL didn't know the recip was bad, maybe if they see it they will fix it so other folks don't have to spend hours trying to figure out which recip is faulty.

About the blending thing ronnie, if I might say (I'm sure you allready know what I'm gonna say -doh- but allow me to think out lod): I think there are two ways to go: either draw yourself a table with a nice border, and leave the background's and link's colour The same with the index's. I'm sure the webmaster will choose the right colours for his textlinks not to mix in with the background. I'm not that knowledgeable about coding in html tho - barely know how to use dreamweaver properly - and I'm not sure if you can have the coulour of one table the same as the background's (can you?) but if not then there's the way I noticed most of you guys are using for your recips: give it custom colours.

I don't like the tables that have some custom specified colour and then the links have the default colour of the index's links. Sooner or later they won't be readable. Of course sooner or later they're gonna mix in with the background. The same with the text links (w/o tables) which have a custom specified colour. Personally I consider it a waist of time to go through all the pages and check if and which recip isn't properly noticeable and the change all of those. I'd rather take the risk of not getting listed. Which actually happened to me twice with a site (one time it kinda was visible, one time it was the exact same colour as the background) and then I made a black table with their screaming-colour link on top, so they'd see it in the future.

And although I haven't submited from multiple domains yet, I know that I will one day reach a point where I will have to go through all those <textlink over image> recips. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna grow to REALLY hate those. Are they REALLY necesary?

Oh, and don't even get me started on the sites saying "I just want a good link back. Make it text. Or pick an image. But if I come to think about it, I'd rather have text. Just make sure it doesn't get burried somewhere between the other links. And you'd better make it look good if u want some better-then-shit listings." Sometimes even "Oh yeah, and go browse the site and find the right category to point it to while you're at it, or you won't get listed at all.". Come on, I mean no offence what so ever to anyone, but this is too much. I understand targeted traffic. We all benefit from it, so okay. Then I'll have to keep different databases for each niche, but that's fine too. I understand that. I understand having to modify each individual database each time one of you guys makes a modification to his site. Okay, out of respect I'll do that too, it's your site, your traffic, i'll comply. But I honestly don't like having to make some 50 different recips for each database for each niche when one set of recips can be easily made and put up for us to grab is so easy. And still, I'm doing it. Responsabily too, I try to make it look best, I try to make it look "different", I try to please the owner. And some of them won't even review. That's something, heh?

So, to sumarise my rant on this paragraph, pretty please GIVE US RECIPS. I know I would, if I owned a link list, and I know most of you guys do it allready, but some don't. I guess that my foolishness was, that in my greed, I didn't stick to the list posted on gg&j resource pages and ventured out trying to get as many link lists as possbile in my database. I now have some 400 ll's, with some 350 i'm submitting too. And then I don't hear from them or I check their page and I'm not listed or worse they haven't even updated it in a good while and then I'm sad and think they're just happy to get a recip and some SE hits, and honest to God, I actually think they're leeching other ppl's traffic with that recip (including yours). Oooook, now I'm mad. Tomorrow I'm so gonna take that recommended list posted here somewhere and give all you guys uber-weights in my AS databases, and then only submit to the other ones once in a while when I really feel like it.

Overall, I tend to approve stever. It would be great if y'all LL owners would agree on a size for your recips. IMO it would be better for everybody. Surely will for us submitters, and I think surfers would like it way better too. and you will most likely be able to keep your "branding" through colours, table layout, fonts, and such. And from what I've been reading around the forum for the last couple of days, if there's a place where something like this can be done, HERE is the place. If anywhere something like this can be imposed to ranting LL owners, it's still here.

I want to appologise in advance to anyone that might feel offended by my post. I mean no harm and I'm not trying to be mean either. I know YOU are feeding me traffic and I appreciate all you guys listing me, thanks alot btw, but last I checked this was still a symbiotic relationship. It's just that these are my thoughs on the matter (granted, semi-druk noobish thougts @ 2 AM in a sunday morning - so they might worth shit and I won't mind if you proved me wrong; I always try to learn from mistakes) and what kind of man would I be if I didn't speak them out loud. If I'm to make enemies here in my first day, so be it.

[Stever]

Wooooh Johnny!!! Now thats a rant.

[sheepish]

Originally Posted by JohnnyR

<snippety snip> It's just that these are my thoughs on the matter (granted, semi-druk noobish thougts @ 2 AM in a sunday morning - so they might worth shit and I won't mind if you proved me wrong; I always try to learn from mistakes)<snipety snip>

Time of the month?

[Fido]

No, no guys. Anything "standardized" isn't solution for your problem. Do you think that all of link list owners (or 90% of them, 70%, 50%, ...) will follow your appeal? No, no way. And if they will, what would be that ideal size of the recip? 150x100? 120x60? 125x125? What if the other submitters will not like that size? What if they will demand to make it smaller?

As a LL owner I have no problem with submitters resizing my recips. Work with them, make them to fit your design, why not? A LOT of submitters do this and it looks like they do not have any problems even with other LLs. Try it, resize the recips and you will see the response. I bet that most of them will accpets such a sites.

[Fido]

Btw, Stever, I do not think you need standardized recip size, your recip table at http://www.steverslinks.com/Naugty-L...el/1/index.htm looks perfect even withou it

[Lemmy]

Part of the function of an original recip is branding. If everything is standardized you lose that element. Personally I always use whatever recip the LL owner provides. Sometimes I have to tweak it a little or correct a coding mistake. Big deal, I do it once and I'm done.

Let's face it, we aren't making art here. Most of us try to knock out one site/day. If a was entering a design contest I might put some more effort into it, but as long as the table looks reasonably balanced I'm happy.

It's also very easy to make a recip that never clashes/gets lost in the page's colors. Just hardcode the font/size/color as well as the table background and you're good to go.

If you come across a LL owner who demands a 250x150 poorly coded recip and doesn't allow any changes whatsoever, just drop him. There's plenty others out there.

[natalie]

I think those recips that screw up your page by having the </td></tr></table> removed are webmasters who use dreamweaver to build the recip page. When you have all the textboxes with those closing tags the page goes whacko in layout mode. So I think they take them out to be able to see what they are doing.
I had that happen the first time I did mine so I wrote it all code because I knew how frustraing that is.

[Mefo]

I always edit my recip pages so they look nice and smooth, so far I haven't had anyone decline me so far for changing the size and look... I obviously keep the colours and text the same though