Web Site (Design and Maintainance Advice)Practical Points Quick Questions Practical Solutions Links to Documents Location Maps Thumbnail Images Registering with Search Engines Firewall Protection Indexing with META Tags Templates You Can UsePractical Points
Quick questions to ask about a Web Site
Practical SolutionsLinks to DocumentsIf you upload say, an Excel document (***.xls) to your web space, by creating a Hyperlink to it (<A HREF="***.xls">*** Spreadsheet in Excel Format) anyone who clicks on the link can download the document to their computer. If they have a compatible Spreadsheet program or a viewer, they can save it and view the document as it was created.You can, of course, use most 'Office' programmes ability to File=>SaveAs and choose html or webpage format to create a web-friendly-ish version of your documents. How this integrates into your website though needs careful consideration. Whichever, this an efficient way of sharing documents between employees. Individual documents can be password protected in some cases and/or zipped up in a password-encoded encryption file if security is an issue. MapsBecause of copyright, you can't just cut & paste a map off a mapping utility like Autoroute. You can, however, use Multimap. You can link your postcode to call a map up on their site which can show your approximate location.ThumbnailsGenerating thumbnails can be time-consuming. On a PC, using IrfanView lets you convert many image files in a folder instantly into manageable thumbnails extremely quickly.Registering Pages with Search Engines & DirectoriesWhilst easy to do, the main cost will be TIME. Some software application and services promise to automate this process, but some search engines now ignore automated requests due to having been showered with them.Search Engine Watch is useful if you want to develop a strategy for getting your site listed in search engine indexes. Find the directory/engine's web site and look around. Most search engines have a link to a form you fill in with details of your URL (web address). It can take from a few days to six weeks for your pages to appear.
Popular Search Engines/ Directories:
Firewall ProtectionA Firewall hides your computer's 'identity' from others on the Internet. For Personal (free) and Business use (nominal fee) Zone Alarm comes highly recommended. It sets up a shield that will make your connection to the Internet safer. It works with Dial-up and LAN connections and is very easy to configure. Modern Mac (OSX) and Windows (XP) computers have basic firewalls built in.Indexing with META TagsMeta tags are a way of helping the search engine robots to find and define your site. If e.presley@bluesuede.com had a website.. If he had to pick out the important areas of information, he might write a list of these words; "music, rock'n'roll, all shook up, king, elvis, presley, elvis aaron presley...". This would give the search engine an idea of what was on his pages. He would write this list of words between "meta tags" in the "head" section of his index page. The HTML would look like this:<HEAD> <TITLE>Mr Presley's Rock'n'Roll Web Site</TITLE> <META name="keywords" content="music, rock'n'roll, all shook up, king, The King, King, Elvis, elvis, Presley, presley, elvis aaron presley,"> </HEAD> Note the use of capitals, to take account of names. Try to thin of what search words people might use to find your service. Take account of ambiguity, word-association, different languages and mis-spellings if you wish to. A meta-tag list of 30 well-chosen words is better than one of 60 poorly-selected ones. Templates You Can UseOK, we've made you sweat and try to make sense of the snippets of code needed to construct a webpage and a website. Below are zip files that each contain a simple useable website template:
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