When I first decided to create a website, I had to options: Flash website and HTML website. I decided to go with flash website. Why? Because flash websites
offer fancy looking graphics and they can have music running in the background of your slideshow.
I wanted my website to that had professional look and feel and I wanted my logo to be on a specific section of the site. Also, I wanted to make easy for my clients to navigate through my website. I spent several weeks looking a template that had everything I was looking for. Unfortunately, I didn't find one. So, I decided to learn how to create a flash website that had everything I wanted. I went to the library and picked up few books about creating flash websites.
I learned that flash websites work the same way a dvd movie works. Let's suppose I wanted to watch a dvd movie call "Iron Man". First thing I do is take the movie out of the case and put it in the dvd player. Next, I would wait for the movie to load up. Then I would press the main menu because I want to start the movie. Lastly, I would press play and the movie starts. Ten minutes into the movie, someone is at my door. So I would pause the movie, and go see who is at the door. It turns out that they have the wrong house. I would close the door and go back to my seat and press play and continue watching my movie.
While reading the books I learned that, like dvd movie that are stored on a dvd; flash websites are stored (embedded) on a file call "swf". This swf file can be program to do whatever I want it to do. For example, if I wanted to my flash movie to pause for few second to emphasize a point and then start playing again, I could program it to do so. Also, I learned to program the flash movie to have my logo (on a specific section of my site), and have the professional look and feel to it, and have dropdown menu, and have slide show gallery with music. The best part was that everything was stored in one "swf" file. That swf file was embedded in to one html file. Life was good and my site was looking good too!!!
I asked my friends (who knew more abut websites) to take a look at my site and tell me what they thought. They told me I have BIG PROBLEMS!!! One - I only have an html file which means that my site will only show under one search result because of the meta tags (title, description, keywords). Two – if someone saved my gallery section of my site under their favorites, it start from home page instead of gallery. Meaning it would start the flash movie from the beginning. Three – my site is not seo friendly. Because everything was stored into one file instead of multiply files (one for home page, one wedding gallery, one for portrait gallery, and etc). I asked them what I can do to fix it. They told to create an html website. That way my site would have different pages for everything and all those pages would have their own meta tags. More meta tags means people would have more chances to find my site.
I didn't want to completely throw way my site because I really liked my slideshow gallery music. And I worked really hard at it!! So I decided to do the unthinkable. I combined the flash website with html website. This way I could have the best of both worlds!!!
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