Present yourself to the World
  • Webpages are an electronic extension of you, your business, your advertising.
  • Your site is available to any Internet user on the globe.
  • Maintain consistency in your communications.
  • Communicate clearly: present your message more than once.
  • Tell your global audience what you can provide.
  • Announce your addresses and phone numbers.
  • Use your website URL address in all your communications.
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    Website Authoring Software
    Authoring your own website used to be a propeller-head's domain because you were required to hand code with HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language).  However, over time, new WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) programs allow you to enter the words and graphics almost as easily as entering text into a word processing program.  Microsoft Front Page, Macromedia Dream Weaver MX and Adobe GoLive are some of these programs.  Many web-authors continue to use raw HTML coding, or at least fine tune websites through the HTML coding. Each of these programs has online help built into them. A wide variety of authors and publishers offer     hard copy books written generically on web authoring and specifically on each available program.

    Browsers and Preferences

    Websites will display differently on different web browsers and on different operating platforms.  Viewers can set fonts to display a variety of sizes from extra small to extra large, while the graphics remain at the size the webmaster set.  This means text will take up more or less space and change the look of a website.  Fonts used in websites will not display exactly as intended if the viewer's computer does not have that particular font face installed on their machine.  This can mean a pleasing to the eye font will be replaced with a clunky courier font, much to the dismay of the web author.  It is generally safe to use Arial,  Helvetica on Macs or Verdana.  If your computer has the font, this is written using MS Comic Sans font face.

    Graphics
    Graphics and photos should be optimized for the web, which means they are down-sampled to make smaller file sizes which are downloaded quickly.  Photos which are saved for high definition printing, are usually saved at a minimum of 300 dots per inch (dpi).  Graphics on the computer screen are generally viewed at a maximum of 72 dpi which allows us to use much smaller file sizes.  Graphics programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Image Ready, Corel Paint, Paint Shop Pro or even Microsoft Photo Editor are used to manipulate, crop, resample and down-sample for the web.

    Registering Your Site
    How can you be found on the WWW?  The program     WebPosition is just one way of registering your websites with the top search engines.  You can also go directly to search engines and hand-register your website, which is time-consuming, but well worth the effort.  The major search engines are databases that we can easily search for sites by name, by product, and by key words.  Due to overuse and abuse, the search engines change their rules in this fast-paced, ever-evolving media.

    Meta Tags
    Most WYSIWYG programs have a way of letting you enter the meta name, meta title, meta description of your website.  These hidden tags are viewed in the HTML source <head>, and are used by search engines when they index your website.  An Example below.

    EXAMPLE 1

    <HEAD>
    <TITLE>Stamp Collecting World</TITLE>
    <META name="description" content="Everything you wanted to know about stamps, from prices to history.">
    <META name="keywords" content="stamps, stamp collecting, stamp history, prices, stamps for sale">
    </HEAD>

    EXAMPLE 2

    <HEAD>
    <TITLE>Page I Don't Want In Search Engines</TITLE>
    <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX">
    </HEAD>

    Taken from this informative website:

    Registering Your Name
    This website registry should not be confused with registering your website name or URL (Uniform Resource Locator).  Many webhosts offer an automated website registry bundled in with webhosting services.  They also submit your website name to the lookup service that resolves names into numbers that are the true addressing system of the web. Search for your name of choice or variations of it if that name is taken.  The most common domains are dot coms (.com), for commercial sites.  Generally .edu is used for educational facilities and .org began as mostly web based business. 

    Webhosting
    A webhost is a computer service that contains your website files and makes them available to the world via a 24/7 web connection with sufficient bandwidth or transmission ability to serve multiple viewers simultaneously.  A good webhost has online help, a diesel electric back-up powerplant and webstats capability.  Not all hosts can offer FrontPage extensions which make publishing and updating a simple push button exersize.  Other programs use FTP or File Transfer Protocol for moving files up or down (to the host, or back to your computer.) 

    Introduction to Web Authoring or hiring a web-author

     a Propeller-head Alert

    So you've taken the plunge and decided to get noticed on the Internet by having a Website. Do you hire Calgary-based Slick Willy's Webpage Creators whose resident expert will create for you the coolest site known to geeks? Each day the expert dons his beanie, gives the attached propeller a little spin, puts on his black-rimmed glasses, slips his pens into the pocket protector and guzzles a can of Cola for breakfast as he peruses hot new websites on the fastest hottest computer known to man. . . well, until yesterday.

    The salesman assures you that Propeller-head will pop a few Java applets into your site that will make your eyes spin. He will throw in a shocked movie and a virtual reality model for you to drag around the screen.

    Slick Willy doesn't mention that your hot new site will only be viewable by Internet surfers who have the latest, greatest browser and all the  plug-ins. He doesn't even know that we don't all have high-speed connections to download all this proposed glitz in less than 20 minutes online. Make that 2 hours in the countryside where telusplanet.net, which virtually freezes due to heavy line traffic when the kids get home from school.

    Back to Slick Willy. Even if he told you the downside of his supersite proposal, you'd probably feel like whacking him alongside the ear and imploring him to speak English. Words like ISDN, Shockwave and Java come from another planet, right?

    Maybe we should forget the propeller-head and just hire 14-year-old nephew Dexter to do your website. Heck, he made his own site complete with hotlinks to Nintendo and Doonsbury. Sure, he misspelled a few words but they can be fixed, can't they?

    By now your eyes are rolling around like they've seen the shocked movie at Slick Willy's site. Isn't there a way to create a site without the hassle?

    You need a site that is readable, spelled properly, displaying correct grammar and can be found on the Internet. Being found on the Internet requires some tricks. Search engines such as Yahoo, MSN, Google to mention a few, require different approaches to convince them to recognize and register your website in their database where it can be found by Internet surfers.

    Search engines require keywords, coded into your site. You can see some of these keywords when you view a site. Other keywords are viewable by looking at the source code through your browser. In Internet Explorer, click on "View - Source" or in Netscape Communicator, click on "View-Page Source." Some engines recognize ALT tags, some depend on text within the page, some look only at Meta tags.
     

    No matter who authors you site, content is the reason people will return.  Viewers want information fast, and any effort to delay them with animations, shockwave movies or other eye-popping graphics is often rewarded with the viewer leaving your site in search of a more informative site.


    Back Audio Writing Graphics Advertising

    Here is some low tech coding to give your viewers the opportunity to change your background.

    antiquewhite aqua aquamarine azure beige bisque blue blueviolet burlywood cadetblue chartreuse chocolate coral cornflowerblue cornsilk cyan darkcyan darkgoldenrod darkgray darkgreen darkkhaki darkolivegreen darkorange darkorchid darksalmon darkseagreen darkturquoise darkviolet deepskyblue dimgray dodgerblue floralwhite forestgreen fuchsia gainsboro gold goldenrod gray green greenyellow hotpink indianred khaki lavender lavenderblush lawngreen lemonchiffon lightblue lightcoral lightcyan lightgoldenrodyellow lightgreen lightgrey lightpink lightsalmon lightseagreen lightskyblue lightslategray lightsteelblue lime limegreen linen mediumaquamarine mediumorchid mediumpurple mediumseagreen mediumslateblue mediumspringgreen mediumturquoise mintcream mistyrose moccasin navajowhite olive olivedrab orange orchid palegoldenrod palegreen paleturquoise palevioletred papayawhip peachpuff peru pink plum powderblue rosybrown royalblue salmon sandybrown seagreen seashell silver skyblue slateblue slategray snow springgreen steelblue tan teal thistle tomato turquoise violet wheat white whitesmoke yellow yellowgreen



     

     

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    Rainy Day Digital

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