Articles By Richard Lowe
A webmaster is a person who has many different talents. He will need
to understand the difference between a good site, a great site and a
poor site. He understands what his audience wants and balances that with
the site requirements.
The webmaster also frequently understands how to code a site, although
that is not necessary, either because other people create the code or
he uses some of the excellent site design tools available.
There are many other skills needed to create a successful, useful site
which succeeds in it's primary function: to communicate.
Webmaster Are browser standards necessary? The Pros and Cons.
- Browser Standards You need to publish something and you want just about anyone to be able to read it? Adobe Acrobat is a good choice.
- Adobe Acrobat makes web publishing easy You need to publish something and you want just about anyone to be able to read it? Adobe Acrobat is a good choice.
- Message Board Services can provide content for your site There are several message board services which can provide additional content for your site.
- A well designed site is a pleasure and a money maker You need to consider many different factors when you design a web site. These include the purpose of your
site, audience and resources available.
- Types of Sites Here is a short list of the different types of web sites
- Here's how to disable the right click You want to annoy some users and make them chose other web sites? Try disabling the right click button!
- Some good design tips This article lists some of the things that you need to do to keep your visitors coming back.
- Some Good Design Tips Here are a few tips to help create a better web site.
- Contingency Design Be sure and help your visitors, even if they do something wrong. Handle misspellings and errors to get them back on track.
- First Things First Before you write one word of HTML code, even before you start your analysis, you must define your purpose.
- Who Is Your Audience? Before doing much of anything, you need to understand the group with whom you are communicating. By doing this, you will make your
job many times easier.
- What Do You Want To Communicate? Once you know who you are talking to, you should take some time to figure out what you want to say.
- How Do You Want To Communicate? Now it's time to decide what methods you want to use to communicate your message.
- Why Are You Creating A Site? It's important to know why you are creating a web site so you know when you are hitting your target.
- How To Get Around Your visitors are more likely to look at your whole site if your navigation scheme is logical and easy to use.
- Pulling Them In Deeper You want people to stay for as long as possible on your site. How do you do this? Great content and lots of cross linking.
- Put ALT tags on all of your graphics Be sure to include descriptive ALT tags on every image. Many search engines use this data. In addition, this makes your pages
better for people who surf without graphics turned on.
- Meta-Tags Be sure and set up your meta-tags properly if you want to be found by some search engines. (See also
HTML tag reference guide - <META>)
- What are Meta-Tags Useful For? There is a controversy among many webmasters - to use meta-tags or not? This article describes my opinion on the
matter.
- Navigation is critical to a web sites success Important fact to remember: search engines index ALL pages of your web site, and other sites may link to any
page. Thus, you MUST make sure that your users can navigate easily from anywhere to anywhere.
- Help your visitors by telling them what's new You want to help your visitors get to your site, and a good way to do that is to list what's new.
This makes it easy for them to get to where you want them to go.
- Good Design - External Links It's good to have some links to external pages, but oftentimes these links are more trouble than they are worth.
(See also Link Exchange can improve your hit count).
- Site Map You can aid your visitors to see your whole site by including a site map.
- Good Design - Custom 404 error page The 404 error page is generally pretty lame. If you can, you can use this as a tool to get your visitors deeper into
your site.
- Change Your Colors What should a good web site look like? Every other site on the planet or should it be unique?
- Avoid Mailto The inexperienced or unknowing webmaster tends to use mailto because it's easy. Avoid the temptation as it's got some problems.
- A poor design chases away visitors and gives you a bad name Design your site poorly and your visitors will go elsewhere
- There are many silly mistakes that you can make with text People come to your site for the content, and text is what they usually way. Make sure they can read
it without being annoyed.
- Graphics are great unless you make some of these mistakes Graphics are great except when you make some of these stupid, idiotic mistakes. (See also
Graphics Formats, Graphics Formats -
GIF, Graphics Formats - JPG and
Graphics Formats - PNG)
- Use animated GIFs very sparingly Animated GIFs are excellent when used properly, but it's easy to overdue it and chase away your visitors. (See also
Graphics Formats - Animated GIFs).
- Be careful with various sound options Adding background sound to your pages is generally a mistake
- Video is tough to do correctly Careful with those videos - visitors like video but load times make it difficult to do correctly.
- Be sure and carefully plan your site navigation Carefully plan your site navigation or your visitors will not come back
- Layout your pages properly to keep people happy Plan your page and site layouts well to keep your visitors happy and fulfilled
- Use Java sparingly If you use Java without allowing for non-java visitors you will loose people immediately
- Don't use ActiveX on an internet site My advice is to not use ActiveX at all on an internet site. It's fine to use it on an Intranet site as you control
the environment.
- Colors can make or break a web site Want to really lose your visitors fast? Use a bad combination of colors on your site! Make it look like an LSD nightmare.
- Organize your site Properly organized sites are a dream, disorganized sites are a nightmare
- Keep your pages relatively short Short pages are the rule in web design. One to three screenfuls is best, longer is a site killer.
- Advertising is a necessary evil You generally want to advertise but keep it short, simple and tasteful (See also
The secrets of how to advertise your web site).
- Use Rings wisely Yes you want to use Rings, but don't use them incorrectly
- Careful with dynamic HTML Be careful with dynamic HTML. Can increase load time, make for slow, clunky sites, and is incompatible with earlier version
browsers.
- Don't change the cursor unnecessarily Be careful with dynamic HTML. Can increase load time, make for slow, clunky sites, and is incompatible with earlier
version browsers.
- Popups are stupid and obnoxious Don't use popups ever. They are annoying, stupid and scare away visitors
- Web Site Maintenance There are many things that you need to do all of the time to keep your site in tip-top shape. These include checking links, promotion and
adding new content.
- Design Tips Designed a web page? This article presents some brief tips to help you create a better site.
- Here's how to add downloading to your site How to set up your site to allow programs and other things to be downloaded
- Add a few of these free extras to your site It's often good to add a few extra touches to your web site to get your users to come back occasionally. (See also
Sticky Sites).
- HTML editors HTML Editors including frontpage 2000, Dreamweaver and NoteTab.
- Frontpage 2000 Frontpage 2000 is one of the best HTML editors on the market
- FrontPage Express You want to use a simple, free and non-bloated HTML editor? Hunt down a copy of FrontPage Express - it's not bad.
- Dreamweaver Dreamweaver is excellent, one of the best editors on the market
- Search Boxes Adding a search box to search your local site gives your visitors more options to get around. Adding a seach box to search the world wide web just
gives your visitors an excuse to leave your site.
- Constantly collect and analyze statistics You MUST collect and analyze statistics about your web site to determine what is working and what is not.
- Webmaster Utilities You've got lots of utilities available to help you make your website even better
- Searching Utilities Do you want to let your visitors search your site? Then try some of these utilities.
- Website technologies Information about some of the exciting and not so exciting technologies available to webmasters to make their websites better.
- SSI Need to do something on the server? SSI may be a good choice for you.
- SSI - Echo Directive You can use the ECHO directive of SSI to display information about the server environment
- SSI - Include Directive The include directive of SSI is used to include a file (html, text or shtml) into your documents. This makes it easier to make
changes.
- SSI - Exec Directive One of the more powerful features of SSI is to execute a CGI routine, which can do just about anything that you want.
- SSI - Tricks Need to do some special things with SSI? Here are some cool tricks.
- SSI - Conditional Expressions Want to get really fancy? You can do IF statements with SSI!
- CGI scripting CGI scripts are a way to get data to and from a server. Many paid hosts support it, and some of the free hosts are beginning to.
- CGI- What the Heck Is That? What is CGI? It's a way to get a web server to do something for you.
- CGI protection codes Adding CGI scripts to your web site? Be sure you understand how the protection scheme works before you do!
- Drawbacks Of CGI CGI scripts are a universal and easy way to get a server to do something for you. However, there are some drawbacks.
- Formmail Security Issues Formmail is a great CGI routine which is very common on the internet. It is used to allow data to be entered and emailed, and it
has a basic security flaw.
- Cascading style sheets Cascading Style Sheets are a great way to keep your web site looking the same all the way through.
- Htaccess file If you have direct access to the .htaccess file, then you are in luck. You can do some very cool things.
- How to set up your own server You want to run your own web server? Here's some data for you
- Server Status Codes Whenever a page is returned by a server a status code is also sent back to the browser. These are the codes.
- Cobalt RAQ4 The Cobalt RAQ4 is an excellent server-in-a-box. I liked it from the first day, although it has some quirks which constrict webmasters.
- Which operating system is best for a web server? Which operating system do you want to run on your web server? There are several choices.
- Which Web Server? Which web server should you use? Apache or IIS?
- Installing Apache 2.0 Apache 2.0 has been released, and I decided to try it out. I found that the product is simple to install.
- What About PERL? I was forced to switch my web site from Apache to IIS. I was concerned because I thought PERL would be difficult to find or expensive.
I needn't have worried.
- Securing IIS 5 If you've got IIS you will need to spend some time working on security. Here are some of the things that you will need to do.
- IIS 5 Administration
Unless otherwise noted, all photos and text is Copyright © Richard G Lowe, Jr.
