How to Create Web Sites
Here are some insider tips
on "how to do it". Several of the tools and services you need to develop, publish, market and evaluate a web site are listed on the Links page and the How to Submit page. Check those first. The following is a list of products that work well and that I either use myself or can recommend. Please contact us at WebByPros.com for assistance and/or consulting at any stage of the process.
HTML editors include Netscape Composer (FREE as a part of Netscape browser package) or, for under $100, SoftQuad HoTMetaL Pro or Allaire HomeSite. It is valuable to have "browse"
functionality built in so you switch back and forth between editing and previewing your work. Also, good HTML editors have checkers to validate that you have put all the pieces in the
right place.
Web site creation and management tools are the next level up from HTML editors. I mostly use Net Objects Fusion because it is easy, intuitive, complete, and it always keeps
the links and navigation between pages so there are no broken links. You can use it without writing any HTML or other code directly, while you still have the capability of adding as
much of your own code as you want to the pages generated by NetObjects itself.
The graphics tools include Adobe PhotoShop and ULead SmartSaver. PhotoShop
includes the capability of exporting compressed (small, fast loading) files, but SmartSaver does it better. With these tools you can keep the load time for web pages down near the
optimum 8 seconds. To evaluate the load speed of graphics on your site you should use the free evaluation offered by GifWizzard.com.
They also sell a subscription to a service that scans your site periodically and sends the appropriate fast, compressed files to you to replace the slower graphics on your site.
Film2disk.com can digitize images
from photo, negative or slide formats. Their services are priced very competitively and they provide very high resolution output with your images.
Miscellaneous: The web site creation and management tools include some method for posting the pages you develop to your web site. The mechanism used is FTP (File Transfer
Protocol). I use Crystal Art Software Crystal SiteUpdater because it only updates the files that have changed and it allows me to verify that all the links are valid.
Using WebPosition Gold or some other marketing tool is essential to automatically submit your pages to search engines (see How to Submit). Web Trends Log Analyzer allows an evaluation of the "logs" on your web server. Check with your web presence or web hosting provider to ensure that they make visitor logs available and that those logs have the extended format that includes referrals. When a search engine like AltaVista sends a visitor to your site the log includes information about who they are, what page(s) they looked at, which search engine sent them and what "key words" the visitor used to find your site..
Where to buy: Finally, although I have provided links to the companies that manufacture each product, I buy most of what I need from Provantage. They have most everything at reasonable, discounted prices and they ship promptly.
...........Steve Colberg
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