Web Site Development (c) Copyright 2001 - 2002 SKS Computer Consulting, Inc., All Rights Reserved http://www.skscci.com/articles.html 9/21/2001 Contents 1 Internet Access & Services 2 1.1 ISP – Internet Service Provider 2 1.1.1 Dialup 2 1.1.2 Cable / DSL 2 1.2 Public Access 2 1.3 Services 3 1.4 Security 3 1.4.1 Firewall 3 1.5 Web Host Provider - WHP 3 2 Domain Name 4 3 Web Site Development 5 3.1 Find a Purpose 5 3.2 Worth A Thousand Words 5 3.2.1 Graphics 5 3.2.2 Photos 6 3.3 Sounds 6 3.4 Develop Locally 6 3.5 Publish Globally 6 3.6 Maintenance 7 3.7 The Language of the Web 7 3.7.1 HTML, XML, JavaScript 7 3.7.2 Code Generators 7 3.7.3 Page Builders 8 3.8 Tips 8 3.9 FTP 9 4 Site Tools & Accessories 9 4.1 Free v/s Custom 9 4.2 Hit Counter 9 4.3 Guest Book 10 4.4 eMail Distribution Lists 10 4.5 Discussion Groups, Forums, Message Boards & Chat Rooms 10 4.6 NetMind 10 4.7 Shopping Carts 10 5 Site Services 11 6 Site Promotion 12 6.1 Search Engines 12 6.2 Submission Engines 12 7 25 Steps To A Perfect Web Site 13 1 Internet Access & Services Before you can create an internet web site, you must have access to the Internet. There are several ways to obtain access, each with its own pros and cons. 1.1 ISP – Internet Service Provider Access to the internet is provided via an Internet Service Provider, ISP. An ISP can provide access to the internet in a variety of ways. These include dialup via telephone lines and a modem or direct connect via cable or DSL. 1.1.1 Dialup Modem based dialup connections are probably the most common. If your computer has a modem, you can obtain access to the internet anywhere there is a telephone line. Some cell phones even have internet connection capabilities so that you can connect to the internet anywhere your cell phone works. Dialup is usually the cheapest form of access since there is no special wiring needed, and dialup modems are very cheap. Unfortunately, the quality of phone lines, while significantly improved over the last 20 years, still have speed limitations. 1.1.2 Cable / DSL Cable and DSL are another alternative to accessing the internet. In both cases, a special interface is necessary between your home and the ISP. In the case of cable, you would use a cable modem which would interface to your cable lines in a manner similar to how a dialup modem interfaces to your telephone lines. Due to the nature of cable, you can transfer much more data via this type of connection. In some cases it is up to 100 times faster than a dialup. The downside is that cable is not as widely available as are telephone lines. DSL uses a special DSL modem and the telephone wires in your house. However, once it exits your house, the signals are shifted to a special set of DSL wires that comprise the DSL network. Like cable, it is much faster than a dialup but it is not as widely available as telephone lines, but is more available than some cable access areas. Another downside to both Cable and DSL is that it is ONLY accessible from a SINGLE location, i.e. your home. So if you plan to travel and need internet access across the city, state or country, you may need to find an ISP that provides dialup as well as cable or DSL access to your account. Service providers include: RoadRunner, AOL, Earthlink, AT&T WorldNet, GTE, etc. Many of these services also provide high speed connections such as DSL and cable modems. Sign up for the fastest connection you can afford. 1.2 Public Access If you don't have a computer, or if you cannot afford access to the internet via an ISP, you may wish to consider obtaining public access to the internet. Many libraries across the country provide computers to patrons which allow them to access the internet. Similarly, some schools and universities have public access systems, but in most cases these are available only to registered students. 1.3 Services When deciding upon an ISP, it is important to investigate the services that they provide. Generally speaking you will need access to eMail, disk space on their systems for storage of your web site as well as sufficient bandwidth for users to view your web site. Other services that may be provided by an ISP include hit counters, guest books, etc. If an ISP does not provide many services, they may be obtained by specialty service providers at little or no charge (discussed later). 1.4 Security Generally speaking, a dialup connection is pretty secure. This is because the ISP will dynamically give you an actual internet address (IP Address) each time you dial in. Since it is a non-permanent address and since it changes each time you dial in, it is usually not a great source of intrusion to your system from the internet. Cable and DSL connections are not as secure. Generally speaking you are assigned a permanent IP address. As such, you are more vulnerable to intrusions to your system via the internet. 1.4.1 Firewall You can protect yourself from internet intrusions by something called a Firewall. A firewall is either a hardware device that is connected between your computer and the Cable or DSL modem, or a software program that runs on your computer. The purpose of the firewall is to monitor data flowing between your computer and the internet and determine if the data should be allowed. Software programs are much more flexible because you can specify specific programs that are allowed to access the internet. Two PC based firewall programs are ZoneAlarm (www.zonealarm.com) and Black Ice (www.networkice.com). 1.5 Web Host Provider - WHP While an ISP gives you access to the internet, they may not give you enough to be able to develop your web site. One thing that you need to do is determine the amount of disk space that you will need for your web site. If your web site will contain a lot of pictures and graphics, you will need to ensure that your ISP will be able and willing to provide you with the necessary amount of disk space. If they cannot, then you may wish to find a Web Host Provider (WHP) on which to host your web site, rather than the ISP. Before you begin to build your Web site, you need to make sure that your Web Hosting account is prepared. Make sure you have enough storage space to contain the Web site you plan to build. Make sure you have enough bandwidth to handle the amount of traffic you expect to receive. Set up any email addresses that you will need to communicate with the people that will be visiting your site. Obtain any additional services that you will require, such as an e-commerce (shopping cart) package, etc. These may be free or fee based. Disk space on a WHP is referred to as 'server' space, since their computers are serving your needs. Obtain at least 10 megabytes of server disk space. Different WHP's offer different amounts of service depending on price, so shop around. C/NET (www.cnet.com) is a great place to track down providers and compare their prices, products and services. Another thing to look at is 'bandwidth'. Bandwidth is basically the amount of data that can be transferred during a specified period of time, i.e. monthly. Some ISP's and WHP's base the costs of their services on how much bandwidth you use. This makes sense because the more people that are using your web site, the more data is being transferred between your web site and the users, the more the provider's computers are being used to service your web site and your users. There are two types of WHP's, Free and Fee providers. The fee provider usually gives you more of everything than does a free provider. A Free WHP depends on advertising to pay for your use of their systems. So, the more users they have, the more they would get from advertising. Thus it is a balance of how much (or how little) they can provide to you for free, and yet still get enough users for the advertising to 'pay' for your use of their systems. Yahoo!.com is an excellent example and probably one of the largest of the Free providers. Their Geocities free web hosting service is quite substantial. Go to www.geocities.com for more information. There are some drawbacks to free space. For instance, some sites require that advertisements for their service appear on your pages. Also, if you are a business you may find out that selling at sites erected on free space is generally prohibited. Especially since it may be that they are giving you the ability to advertise for free on a site when they are trying to charge others for advertising on the site. Find out by checking the provider's terms of service, which is usually prominently flagged on the home page. But, that doesn't necessarily rule out this space for business. You can still erect a cyber billboard that offers plenty of information about products and services in these free spaces. While you think that you may not care about the ads popping up all over the place, it is a consideration. I recently created a web site for a kids group, only to find out (by a distraught parent) that one of the free ads being displayed was for a health care site which was advertising sexually oriented material. 2 Domain Name A domain name is a Web address representing you on the internet. When you own your own domain name, the name remains with you regardless of who you use as an ISP or WHP. In fact, if you move your site to another location, the domain name can travel with you, making your change of location invisible to your users. This is referred to as domain forwarding. For example, our pack web site owns the domain name of: www.bsapack48.org, but it is physically located on my company server at: www.skscci.com/bsapack48, but that is invisible to the user. I could move the site anywhere, i.e. Geocities, but as long as the user types in www.bsapack48.org, it doesn't matter where it is. Prices have dropped in the past couple of years as the number of domain name registrars has increased. Check out www.buydomains.com. This company will register your domain and allow you to 'forward' the domain to where it is actually located either at your ISP or WHP at no extra charge. When you use a domain registrar that offers domain name forwarding, you increase your options. For example, you could register your own domain such as stevesplace.com, and use domain forwarding to redirect the users to www.somefreehost.com/freeusers/stevesplace. As far as the users know, they are just going to stevesplace.com. And if in the future you choose to move to a different web host, all you need do is go to the domain registrar, change the domain forwarding, and that's it. The users will never know the difference. 3 Web Site Development So now you are connected to the internet via an ISP, and you have a WHP to store your web site on the internet. Now all you have to do is sit down, create the site and put it on the internet. There are many ways to go about creating your web site, and there are lots of tools available for your use. Web site development is due in large part to free and cheap software. Everything from HTML editors to animation builders are available for trial and usually cost less than $50 to register. You may need one or two commercial products as well, but they don't have to clean out your wallet. Many manufacturers have less expensive versions of high-end hardware and software aimed at amateur Web designers. Many software manufacturers also offer free beta or demo versions of their programs, so you can try them before buying the commercial package. Budget-minded Web site designers can also "stand on the shoulders" of other Web developers. By modifying premade Web programming gadgets, buttons, backgrounds and multimedia doodads, you can deliver cutting- edge quality without having to do it all yourself. You can create an excellent site simply by finding the best place(s) to borrow from. 3.1 Find a Purpose The starting point for putting up a Web site is knowing its PURPOSE. What do you want it to do? Do you just want to provide information to users, or is it to be a communications forum between users? Or both? Or neither? Until you know the purpose of your web site, you cannot create it. Just as an architect must draw a picture of a house before it can be built, you need to 'draw a picture' of your web site before you can build it. This is perhaps the most important step in creating your site. Before you begin building the actual site, you should always have a clear idea of what goals you are trying to achieve. 3.2 Worth A Thousand Words The Web is a graphical medium - words matter, but images are at least as important in attracting and keeping users. 3.2.1 Graphics Graphics can be used in place of words to facilitate understanding by the users. Many Web development software packages come bundled with collections of free art buttons, page backgrounds, arrows and other visual elements to help readers navigate a site. A well-balanced Web site consists of strong content, easy navigation, logical flow and appealing graphics that download quickly. Note: Before copying any images to your site, read the fine print on the artist's page. Some prohibit use on commercial sites. If in doubt, ask permission, which will protect you against future complications. If you plan to use a lot of graphics, you'll need a good graphics design program. This software will generate everything from colored backgrounds and buttons, to animated images and logos. There are many software titles available, but for the money, Paint Shop Pro by Jacs Software is excellent and highly recommended. It also comes with Animation Shop, so you can create attractive and eye-catching material. 3.2.2 Photos If you want to put images (such as graphics or photographs) on your site, you will need to either create them or copy them. For those of you who wish to put a photograph or several on your site, you must first put the photograph into digital form. This can be accomplished in several ways. Some people use a digital camera to directly create a digital image, but it is also possible to have traditional negatives digitized and put onto a CD at many film development services. Many people use a scanner to make a digital copy of an existing photo. Another alternative is to download images for a fee or free of charge from various stock photography Web sites. Though more costly, you could also hire a professional to photograph your products and prepare the images for the Web. 3.3 Sounds Like text and graphics, you can add sound to your web site. As a users enters your site, or goes from page to page you can automatically play music or some other sound effect. Be careful in the use of sounds. Some people don't care for their computer to be blasting your school fight song or the latest rap music. 3.4 Develop Locally Before you present your web site to the public, you need to build a local copy of your site on your own PC. Create a test copy of your Web site on your computer. This test site should look exactly as it will appear when you publish it on the Web, understanding that some elements may not function as they will once installed on your Web server. Using your computer as a development area allows you to experiment without your trials and errors appearing live on the Internet. It also gives you the opportunity to test it against the various browser programs and determine that it works the same regardless of software. Also, bear in mind that unlike you, not everyone may have a 20 inch monitor or high speed connection. Change your screen resolutions, sizes, colors, etc. to see how your web site will appear to people using different screen sizes and color resolutions. Finally, test ALL of your links to make sure that they are all active. 3.5 Publish Globally Once you've finished creating your test Web site on your computer, it's time to go live! You do this by uploading your local files to the server of your ISP or WHP. This is accomplished using something called "ftp" (file transfer protocol). This is the protocol that allows files to transfer between computers. Most WYSIWYG programs will have a function to "ftp" your files to the server. The process is very simple and quick. Normally you just select the file or files you want to upload to the server, and just click the upload button from the WYSIWYG program. If your HTML editor doesn't allow you to publish or upload your site to the Web, you can upload your files to your Web Hosting account using an FTP client such as WS_FTP for Windows or Fetch for Macintosh. Most ISP's and WHP's have tutorials and recommendations for using FTP software with their systems. After publishing your site to the Web, make sure that it looks and works like you want it to. Make sure that it performs as well via your ISP or WHP as it does when it is local. Thoroughly test your Web site using as many popular Web browsers as possible. Check for broken links and broken images, read the text as a last check for typos, and make sure any advanced features, like a bulletin board or search engine, are working correctly. Also, bear in mind that not everyone has a high speed connection to the internet. If possible, use a dialup line to test how your site will perform via slow connection. There are also web sites that provide tools to evaluate your web sites performance, such as NetMechanic which is discussed in a later section. 3.6 Maintenance Being a Webmaster is an ongoing process. Set a regular schedule for checking on your site. If you link to another Web site, you will need to occasionally make sure that those links are still active. If you have a bulletin board, you will need to make sure that the discussions occurring there are informative and useful. 3.7 The Language of the Web Web pages are created using one or more "languages". The most common is called HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and a page of HTML is often referred to as 'code'. Others include XML, XHTML, JavaScript, and others. 3.7.1 HTML, XML, JavaScript You can create your code using a plain text editor like Notepad. If you don't want to have to learn an entire language and you want to save a lot of time and effort, you can buy software that will allow you to design your web page and it will write the HTML for you. 3.7.2 Code Generators Software such as Microsoft FrontPage or Symantec Visual Page, are called WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors. You enter words and graphics directly on a page, and it displays the way a browser would read it. So, you don't have to learn everything about HTML. It is usually no more complicated than creating a document with your word processor program. Most web site development programs come bundled with an assortment of templates that need only a little tweaking before you've got your own Web site. Stick with the templates, and completing a Web page in 30 minutes is feasible. These templates provide thorough instructions, and you type in your own information over the template's boilerplate. Some programs demand a more hands-on approach to site development. The templates are more like blueprints than ready-to-use pages, but the result is you'll get a highly customized Web site. You do not need specific Web authoring software to create a Web page. Many programs designed to fill other needs also include basic Web authoring tools. Microsoft Word and Lotus' Word Pro include templates for setting up Web pages. Netscape Communicator also comes with Web authoring software that is extremely easy to use. While it may be easier in the short term to use a program you already know, like Microsoft Word or PowerPoint to create your Web Site by creating the site in one of those programs and "saving as a web page". While this is a viable option, be warned that these programs are not recommended for Web production. You can create web pages using these programs, but you might have serious difficulties trying to edit them once they are converted to HTML, and they will often look differently on-line than as you created them in the program. These are awkward and inelegant options for Web Design. While tools like FrontPage enable you to create Web pages with little or no knowledge of HTML, it's in your best interest to learn the rudimentary features of coding HTML and optimizing graphics. This will enable you to improve the appearance and performance of your web site in a way that these HTML generator tools cannot. To learn HTML you don't need expensive classes and pricey books. Get online and use your favorite search engine to find a couple of good HTML tutorials and basic guides to image optimization. Then dive in. Once you learn the basics and build a few dummy pages to test your skills, any qualms you've felt will vanish. Personally I started my web page building career back in 1994 by buying 'Teach Yourself Web Publishing In 14 Days' by Laura LeMay. 3.7.3 Page Builders Page building software are tools that enable the user who has no html experience, web experience or web development software to build a web site. This can either be from 'canned' pages that need only have user specific modifications made or fully interactive editors that allow the user to create the web page as easily as using Word. Several ISP's and WHP's (both Free and Fee based) provide web page building software free of charge to users. For example, Yahoo! Geocities provides 2 unique tools for quickly developing your web pages. These programs are the PageWizard and the PageBuilder. According to Yahoo!, "Yahoo! PageWizards are designed to help you quickly choose and personalize templates to create a professional-looking web page. Yahoo! PageWizards will take you step by step through the process of adding text and/or images to create your page. PageBuilder is also designed to offer an easy- to-use, point-and-click, free Internet-based home page builder. However you won't be taken through a step- by-step process to create your page. PageBuilder allows more flexibility over your page and which elements you may edit, such as adding background music, adding a guestbook, or changing the layout." 3.8 Tips There are so many tips and tricks to writing web pages that I cannot list them all here. An excellent source for this information is the HTML Writers Guild site at http://www.hwg.org/. Their monthly newsletters are an excellent source of information. http://www.hwg.org/opcenter/newsletters/ For a list of tips, check out their tips page at: http://www.hwg.org/opcenter/newsletters/tips/ For a list of the worst mistakes go to: http://www.hwg.org/opcenter/newsletters/tips/feb00a.html Personally I have 2 tips that I always try to keep in mind and both relate to the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) strategy. These are Fonts and Graphics. No matter how much you may like a particular font, just remember that personal taste is subjective and a font that appeals to you may annoy a user. Especially if they don't have the font on their computer and the browser must make a substitution. Try to stick to the standard Windows Fonts. And even if you do just use the standard fonts, don't go overboard with using lots of different fonts. Keep it down to 1 or 2 different fonts at the most, and use size, bold, italics and color to give emphasis. But bear in mind to avoid bad color combinations. You should sharply contrast the text with the background and check it out on different browsers. And don't forget the use of whitespace. Give the users eyes a break by using empty space. Learn browser-safe color-wheel relationships and avoid busy backgrounds. With graphics you should avoid huge images. It doesn't matter how wonderful the 85K graphic you created looks when the visitor, bored, inevitably clicks away and moves on. Sites that have too many graphics take forever to download, which is very annoying, especially if the graphics are used for trivial things. Even worse, there are cases where the graphics don't display as intended (because of cross-platform publishing issues) and the result is really ugly. Finally, another mistake is to replace text with images, burdening a page and making impossible to search engines to understand it. 3.9 FTP File transfer protocol (FTP) is the most common method of transferring Web pages to the server where they'll reside or from a server to your PC. Shareware FTP clients are a dime a dozen on the Web. The most widely used are WS_FTP and CuteFTP for PC and Fetch for Mac. Some Web authoring programs such as Microsoft FrontPage have FTP functions built in. 4 Site Tools & Accessories There are lots of tools and accessories that you can use to make your site more interesting, attractive and useful. These include hit counters, search engines, guest books, chat rooms, etc. You can create your own tools or link to already existing tools on the web. 4.1 Free v/s Custom Decisions, decisions. Should you create a custom tool for your web site, or use one of the free ones available on the market? The upside is that you don't have to take the time or effort to create a tool from scratch. You will be using a tool that probably already has hundreds of man-hours of work in its development, plus it already tested and ready to go. The downside is that most free tools are free because they contain advertising which you may not desire. In some cases, tool providers will provide you with an ad-free version of their tool for a nominal monthly or annual fee. If you find a tool you like, contact the author and talk to them regarding customizations, costs, etc. In some cases I have found tools that you can configure for your audience, i.e. G, PG, etc. 4.2 Hit Counter A hit counter is a tool that keeps track of the number of visitors to your web pages. This is good for getting a rudimentary idea as to how busy your web site is. Your ISP and WHP usually provide this tool and have directions for implementing it on your web pages. Check out the site: http://counter.mycomputer.com/ for a wide selection of customizable hit counters. 4.3 Guest Book Guest books are a way for visitors to your site to 'sign in' and leave comments about your site. It is a good idea to read your guest book on occasion to see what your users are saying about your web site, and get ideas for improving your site. 4.4 eMail Distribution Lists An email distribution list is a list of email addresses that is stored in some sort of database. This list has a unique name associated with it, and when you send an eMail to the list, the message is sent to EVERYONE in the list. Sometimes this is also referred to as a List Server or a Listserv. The advantage of an eMail distribution list is that members of the list can come and go as they please so that others in the list do not have to worry about maintaining who is in the list. Another advantage is that most lists 'hide' who the members of the list are, so you don't have to share your personal eMail address with hundreds of people. If you get tired of the list, simply remove yourself from the list. I particularly like the Yahoo! Groups eGroup eMail distribution list. It is located at: http://groups.yahoo.com/. It is a very robust system that allows you as webmaster to have total control over who are members of the list, how they can subscribe and unsubscribe, how and when they get the messages, etc. For example, a user can receive an eMail as it is posted, or they can configure it so that they only get a single eMail that is a compilation of all of the messages sent during the day, or they can opt for no eMail, and instead go to the eGroup web site and read all messages interactively via their browser. It is a free service, and the ads are pretty minimal and nondescript. 4.5 Discussion Groups, Forums, Message Boards & Chat Rooms Discussion groups, forums and chat rooms are essentially the same thing. They are places on the web where multiple people may go and interactively 'chat' or 'discuss' issues based on the topic of the forum via their keyboard. The difference between this type of forum and a List Server or eGroup is that this is usually interactive. As you are typing, someone is reading and then they reply. In the case of a List Server or eGroup, you must wait until the eMail message has been sent by the person and received by your mail reader. Check out: http://www.beseen.com/chat/ http://www.ezboard.com/ 4.6 NetMind NetMind is a company that provides a particularly useful tool called Mind-It. Mind-It is a service that notifies visitors of relevant changes to your Web site via email and brings them back to view these changes. When a user visits one of your pages that has been registered with NetMind, they merely click on a button and enter their eMail address. Whenever you change your web page, Mind-It will send them an eMail to let them know that there is something new on your site. 4.7 Shopping Carts Shopping carts. Most Web hosts offer shopping cart technology as an extra feature to regular hosting plans. Depending on the technology they use, it can be as easy as filling in the options on a Web-based form to create a catalog of products. Or it can involve tinkering with CGI scripts and uploading them to your site, which, if you aren't familiar with Unix file terms, can be a nightmare. If you choose your Web host's shopping cart option, make sure it uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption to protect your customers' information. Accepting payments. You'll need a merchant account to accept payments online. Web hosts can connect you with a bank or payment-processing firm with which you can apply. Offer your customers payment by check or credit card. Provide a form for customers to print and send in with a check. On the form, explain the delay in processing a check order and shipment. Some merchant accounts offer services to process check orders via phone, fax or e-mail. Credit card payments can be made by phone, by e-mail or can be processed via the Internet. Real-time credit card payments via the Internet require a merchant account provider that can process orders using secure encryption technology. 5 Site Services There are web sites on the internet that provide services for maintaining and improving your Web site. Some of these services include: 1. Automate site maintenance checks 2. Optimize your graphics 3. Analyze your traffic 4. Verify that your Web site will display in different browsers and versions 5. Make sure your site is ready to be indexed and submitted to the top search engines and directories 6. Check Load Time - Reports load time from 14.4K to T1 7. Dead Link Check - detect hard to find dead links 8. Link Popularity Check - find out how many sites are linking to you 9. Spell Check - catch misspelled words 10. HTML Check - how does your design compare to the best 11. Decrease your load time quickly and easily by optimizing your graphics And more! Check out these services and more provided by the following sites: www.netmechanic.com http://www.freesitetools.com/ http://www.websitetoolbox.net/ http://websitegarage.netscape.com/ http://www.beseen.com/ www.cnet.com 6 Site Promotion Building a site is only the beginning. You can't build it and assume people will automatically come. You must promote your site otherwise, only accidental tourists will find you. 6.1 Search Engines The first step to drawing visitors is to visit the major search engines – Google (www.google.com), Excite (www.excite.com), AltaVista (www.altavista.com), Yahoo (www.yahoo.com), HotBot (www.hotbot.com) and Lycos (www.lycos.com). All feature simple procedures for adding a URL, the "universal resource locator," that is, your site's address. While there are over 300-plus other search engines on the Web, these are the primary engines used by most people. There are also some web sites that provide a service that will do the submissions for you and find the one that best suits your needs. Just adding a URL to a search engine is still no guarantee of visitors. Get more exposure for your site by enrolling in free link exchange programs that will display your banner on other sites if you make space for third-party banners on yours. Generally, every two "hits" on your site result in one view of your banner on another. Just with search engines, there are many link exchange programs, but the two biggest and reliable are LinkExchange and Smart Clicks. Enrollment is a matter of filling out a simple form and pasting hypertext code - supplied by the link exchange - into pages at your site. Search Engine Watch is an excellent place for tips on how to maximize your visibility via search engines: http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/ The last step, neglected by a shocking number of people is to put your site's address on your letterhead, business cards, fax cover sheets and all other printed material you give out. It's a low-cost way to build awareness of your site. It is also possible to add a search engine to your web site to assist users in locating thing within your site. Check out http://search.freefind.com/ 6.2 Submission Engines Submission engines provide you with a single place to go to get your site added to multiple search engines. Why spend a bunch of time going from search engine to search engine, entering the same data over and over again when a single trip to a single site can get you submitted just as easily to the top search engines? Check out: http://www.addme.com/ http://www.submitcorner.com/Tools/Submit/ http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/ 7 25 Steps To A Perfect Web Site A humorous look at one Web Masters attempt. 1. Download a piece of web authoring software - 20 minutes. 2. Think about what you want to write on your web page - 6 weeks. 3. Download the same piece of web authoring software, because they have released three new versions since the first time you downloaded it - 20 minutes. 4. Decide to just steal some images and awards to put on your site - 1 minute. 5. Visit sites to find images and awards, find five of them that you like - 4 days. 6. Run setup of your web authoring software. After it fails, download it again - 25 minutes. 7. Run setup again, boot the software, click all toolbar buttons to see what they do - 15 minutes. 8. View the source of others' pages, steal some, change a few words here and there - 4 hours. 9. Preview your web page using the web authoring software - 1 minute. 10. Try to horizontally line up two related images - 6 hours. 11. Remove one of the images - 10 seconds. 12. Set the text's font color to the same color as your background, wonder why all your text is gone - 4 hours. 13. Download a counter from your ISP - 4 minutes. 14. Try to figure out why your counter reads "You are visitor number +16.3E10" - 3 hours. 15. Put 4 blank lines between two lines of text - 8 hours. 16. Fine-tune the text, then prepare to load your web page on your ISP - 40 minutes. 17. Accidentally delete your complete web page - 1 second. 18. Recreate your web page - 2 days. 19. Try to figure out how to load your web page onto your ISP's server - 3 weeks. 20. Call a patient friend to find out about FTP - 30 minutes. 21. Download FTP software - 10 minutes. 22. Call your friend again - 15 minutes. 23. Upload your web page to your ISP's server - 10 minutes. 24. Connect to your site on the web - 1 minute. 25. Repeat any and all of the previous steps - eternity. Creating An Internet Web Site By Steven K. Shapiro sks@skscci.com www.skscci.com/articles.html Page 13 of 13 10/1/2001