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Developing your own
Web site
While one of the services I offer
is Web site development, I know that not everyone wants someone else to
develop their Web site. If you’re a do-it-yourselfer, here are some
guidelines that will help you establish a successful Web site.
Register the domain
name.
Contact Network Services (formerly
InterNIC) at http://www.internic.net/
and pay $70 for a 2-year registration. Most Internet presence providers
(IPP) set up a placeholder page and NSI will propagate your uniform resource
locator (URL) within a few days. When you decide to establish a web presence,
you should be ready to move quickly.
Current recommendation (2003): Ignore Network Services (now part of Verisign) and contact a registrar such as GoDaddy.com.
Set up account
with IPP.
Choose your Internet presence provider
and arrange to set up an account. If you want to use e-commerce, make
sure your account supports it.
Decide some basic
issues.
Will server have Front Page extensions?
What’s the main title for site? Plan ahead for search engine registration
by developing several descriptions of your site: Short (12 words or so),
longer (about 50 words), and up to 50 key words that people will use to
search for your Web site.
Consider design
issues.
What will your overall color scheme
be? How will you lay out the site and how will visitors navigate it? Will
you develop graphics, use clip art, or scan images?
Develop a profile
of the "average" visitor.
How technologically astute will
your visitors be? What size monitor will visitors have and what will be
the resolution of their monitors? How many colors will they be able to
see? What browser will they use? Will their browser support frames? Javascript?
How about the various plug-ins?
Decide what your
development environment will be.
Will you use a program such as Microsoft
Front Page or Macromedia Dreamweaver, or will it be something more basic?
Will your site have frames? Will you include Javascript, themes, borders,
or cascading stylesheets? How will you deal with browsers that don’t
support these? To choose the tools you’ll use to develop your site,
take a look at http://www.blinn.com/wtvn/990117.htm, where I review some
of the most popular Web site development programs.
What extra features
will you provide for your visitors?
Will you use subdirectories for
article archives? If you decide to include a search function, will it
be IPP based or powered by Front Page? Do you want a guest book or discussion
board? Will you add audio or video to the site?
Develop the site
Restrict access by robots during
development because you don’t want a search engine robot to index
temporary pages. Will you use any feedback forms or order forms? If so,
will you process on site or send them via e-mail? If you choose to send
the files via e-mail, will you do that with cgi-email or Front Page?
Once you’ve
developed the site on your computer, make sure it works.
Upload and test the site with Microsoft’s
Internet Explorer, Netscape’s Navigator, and Opera. If you can, check
the site with older versions of the browsers, including the ones from
America Online. If you really want to be sure your site works with every
browser, check it with the character-based LYNX browser.
Insure that appropriate
meta-tags are in place.
Meta-tags go on the head section
of your HTML files. The right tags will improve your site’s chances
of showing up in the various search engines.
Register site
with the
major search engines.
With your site ready to go, it’s
a good idea to register it with the top 8 or 10 search engines. If you
want, you can register with several hundred search engines, but probably
90% of your search-engine-based visitors will come from the top few search
engines. Keep in mind, too, that you need to promote the site by using
standard promotion means — direct mail, print, broadcast.
Remove robot restrictions,
except from specific subdirectories.
Eliminate the robot restrictions
before registering your site. If you don’t, the search engine robots
will be turned away when they come to your site.
Set up e-mail
accounts,
if available and desired.
Your IPP may allow you to set up
e-mail accounts. If so, you can use them to receive comments and questions
from your visitors. You may also want to establish e-mail forwarding and
autoreplies.
Decide how you
will monitor your site.
Does your IPP provide usage information
and other monitoring? If not, maybe you’ve picked the wrong provider.
It’s important to know where your traffic is coming from, how visitors
find out about your site, which pages are most popular, how long visitors
stay, and more. You may need to purchase a Web site analysis program or
your IPP may provide one for you.
Now you’re
ready to begin.
With this information you can get
started developing your Web site.
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