| Note:
Some Links may be out of date.
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| Important
Note:
These lessons were first scribbled in 1999. While
some things may be out of date the principles
still hold true. |
5
Things to do Before you Promote
Before
we start to promote our website we need to make sure
that when folks find it they won't leave immediately.
There
is a nice website with a ton of utilities that you can
use to perform many of these tasks.
http://websitegarage.netscape.com/
1. Loads Fast-
Nobody likes to wait for a site to load. Here are some
ways to decrease your load time.
1. Use words instead of pictures.
2. Optimize your graphics. You can try this free gif/jpeg
optimizer.
http://www.netmechanic.com/GIFBot/optimize-graphic.htm
3.
If you use nested tables, make sure they are only nested
2 deep.
4. If your page still loads slow (>40 secs max) consider
splitting the content and making two separate pages.
2.
Looks Good
If
your site looks good on your computer, that's great.
How does it look in a different browser, with different
screen resolutions? One of the easiest ways to check
out your site on different platforms (browsers, screens
etc) is to check it out using anybrowser.com
http://www.anybrowser.com/
Make
sure to check out these pages-
Site Viewer
http://www.anybrowser.com/siteviewer.html
Then
the screen size test (don't forget WEB-TV).
http://www.anybrowser.com/ScreenSizeTest.html
3.
Reads Well.
After
your site looks good, now show it off to some friends,
business associates and relatives. After they look at
it ask them these questions.
1. What is the main point of my site?
2. Was it easy to navigate (did you get lost)?
3. How do you think it could be improved?
4. Make sure that you don't have any glaring spelling
errors.
http://websitegarage.netscape.com/
4.
Links Work
Nothing
stinks worse than clicking on a link and getting the
dreaded 404 page not found message.
You
can try a shareware link checker/validator program here:
http://www.goldwarp.com/bowlin/linklint/
5.
Validate your HTML
Messy
HTML not only makes it hard for browsers to read your
page, it also makes it difficult for search engines
to spyder the page (this is something that nobody wants).
http://validator.w3.org/
Step
2- Finding good keywords for your site.
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