website

Website Changes

By Scott Richmond

f you're particularly observant, you may have noticed that Westfly's URLs have changed in the last month, starting with the main one. The official URL for the home page is no longer www.westfly.com, but www.west-fly-fishing.com.

Why the change? Because when search engines such as Google rank their results, the URL itself can be very important. So if someone uses a search term that includes "fly fishing," a page that includes "fly fishing" in the URL will improve its ranking. Some other changes to Westfly URLs were made with this goal in mind. BTW, it can take months before these changes begin to affect the search engines in significant ways.

Will these changes affect your bookmarks? They shouldn't (it says here). And if you still type in "www.westfly.com" it should still resolve to the proper page.

However, if you have any problems, please let me know via "Contact Us" as soon as possible.

Other Changes

In addition to the URL change, I have cleaned up a number of broken links on the website. Be thankful that you got to go fishing instead of doing that tedious job! If you find any links that are still broken, please let me know viat "Contact Us."

Other recent changes included:

1. Improved handling of "new" articles."
2. Fixing a problem with the chat room.
3. Repairing some pages that were being displayed wrong.
4. Changes to meta tags, which are something you never see but that fare important to some search engines.
5. Elimination of a long-standing placement problem with pull-down menus on the Bulletin Board.
6. Updated listings for some fly shops and fly clubs
7. The debut of an ongoing series of fiction/humor/instruction/whimsy articles called Pteronarcys Man. These appear in The Fuzzy Chronicles.

Planned Improvements

The next round of website improvements includes an upgraded method of handling advertising, and a spring online auction.

Scott Richmond is Westfly's creator and Executive Director. He is the author of eight books on Oregon fly fishing, including Fishing Oregon's Deschutes River (second edition).

Uploaded 02/23/2010.