Webmaster section
The following page is more or less for unexperienced webmasters or people who would like to become one. If you already have a site, you might skip my thoughts on websites, webhosting and traffic issues - yet you might find something interesting in the list of links below.
And two words on the layout of this section: under construction.
A site:
Oh well, that is easy, you might say. I could do a personal homepage.
But be honest with yourself. Who wants to know about John Doe ?
Your friends, your family, but the rest of the world might not care too much about who and what you are.
So you should consider something else to draw some attention.
Perhaps you have an interesting hobby which is worth a website ?
Or a region, topic or whatever. But present more information to your user than 'Hi my Name is John and this is my website' - Unless your name is John and you don't really want to be present on the web, but reserved that phony domain only for email purposes.
The right topic is the most difficult part in building a website. It is not that tough to learn to create a site - the web is full of resources how to do this, good programs to create a site are availiable for free - the two big browsers are even shipped with visual editors which make it possible to create a site without even knowing what html is and how it works (the resulting code is another story) - it is the finding of the right topic which makes things difficult. I know a guy who makes his living on designing websites. He did it for money for three years until he started his own page - he didn't know what to put on it. Think about it.
Now go one step further. You know what you want to be on your page. Before you continue, make sure that it is legal. You don't want to be another fan page or download page which gets closed after a copyright infringement.
Even the building of your site might contain legal traps. Keep in mind there are no such things as freeware images. Don't use other peoples images on your site, not even that real cool back-button you like so much - not unless you got the other guys explicit permission to do so. A general rule here is: When in doubt, don't do it.
Even if it is legal, keep in mind whatever you publish on the web is accessible to the rest of the world. So if you are having an affair and don't want your wife to know, or you are cheating on your boss and don't want to get fired - DON'T PUBLISH IT ON THE WEB.
Ah, and by the way, those who register their own domain should forget about anonymity on the net at once. When you got your own domain (a common one, not one from those few countries which don't allow to see who is behind the domains) has pinpointed your location, your name and your phone number in less than one minute. Not that this is a bad thing, but I advice you to only give away your cellular phone number when registering a domain. Calling it is more expensive, it may keep away people who want to play a practical joke on you.
But let's think you know what your website will be focused on, what do you need to build your site ?
1.) Software
- HTML-Editor
Something to write your site with. Netscape and Internet Explorers come with their own visual editors. Good for some first steps, but the resulting code is...well...let us say unoptimized. Better are real HTML-Editors like Arachnophilia, Firstpage 2000 or Homesite. If you intend to use one of them, learn something about HTML. Grab a documentation on it somwhere on the net, download it and have it ready. You will need it. Don't be alarmed. Hardcore users can do it even with Windows Notepad.
- Browsers
Yes, browsers. Plural. Why ? A document looking fine on the Netscape browser might not look exactly the same on IE, Opera or Lynx. Be prepared for that. Don't make your surfers do the beta-testing for you - test it on multiple browsers before you publish it. If it looks bad on one of the major browsers, forget about it and create another version.
- Imaging Software
In the beginning, there is text. Second is downloaded buttons and clipart. Then everything gets worse. You want that picture on your site, you have an idea for a cool separator or a graphic navigation element. Ok. But you need something to scan and edit your images with. Most programs will do. Make yourself familiar with transparent GIFs - it may become handy when using images that should not necesarily appear rectangular. Round Buttons for example. JPG compression is another issue. Everything on the net requires bandwith and download time. People won't wait for a 1 MB picture to load - so compression is a must.
- FTP-Client
One day, your site will be published on the net. This is your little helper who does the upload to your server.
2.) Hardware (optional but useful)
Space:
You need a place where your site is hosted. For a simple 'hello world' page a site with one of the common free hosts might do. You don't need to spend multiple bucks or euro on 100 MB+ storage, unlimited bandwith and full cgi support for a small site.
But if you are annoyed when your site is often unavailiable, your traffic redirected to your freehosts sponsors, who manages it to keep up a advertisment ladden 404 page even in times of worst server problems (and you can't get away from the conclusion that the servers are in perfect condition and your host is just redirecting some of your traffic), it is time for paid hosting.
Other reasons for paid hosting is a) your ego demands so and b) you want your own domain. Both of it makes sense. Your own domain is something you can take with you, even if your provider ceases to exist - a piece of continuity for everyone, especially your surfers and your email. And paid hosting is not that expensive - if you don't exceed bandwith limits and things like that.
Be honest to yourself on what you want to spent on your presence on the web. Low cost providers are cheap, but sometimes not worth the money. I myself had great trouble getting away from a provider who had regular server difficulties (don't serve 500.000 domains on a single Sun - learn, guys). On the other hand, it does not make sense to pay for a dedicated server with redundant high-speed connections for a personal homepage...think about it.
Traffic:
Now you have a site. Fine. But what fun (or profit) do you have without visitors ?
It is somwhat boring to do regular upates on a page that is not visited. At first, you make your friends visit your page. That is completely normal, but not very satisfying, for they won't visit your site every day.
My advice is that you submit your site to search engines. There are numerous tools on the web which might help you in doing so - but if you want something done properly, you have to do is yourself. And if someone offers you a 'free submission to hundreds' of search engines for a banner placement on your site, forget about it. Anything that requires a banner is not free. If you want advertisments on your page, place someone's banner that pays you for it.
Furthermore, it does not necessarily make sense to add your site to any search engine you find on the net. It is a time/effect problem. You can spent days on the net to submit your site to search engines. But being listed with the smaller ones does not necessarily bring you any visitors. It is important to be on the bing ones - and stay there. I will show you a list of the engines I recommend at the end of the traffic section.
But it is not enough to simply submit your site to the engines. Add meta tags. If you don't know how, use a search engine to find a documentation on them. There are plenty of resources on the net. Be accurate on the meta tags. Most engines consider incorrect tags as spam and simply don't list you. Whatever is in the description tag should also be within the very same document. In general, there are three rules with meta tags: be short, be descriptive, be accurate
It may look nice to use a site with a linked images, animated buttons and graphic navigation elements. Ok. But place alt-tags within the img-src tag. A search engine can not see what is on your images. Therefore, a site with linked images is more or less an empty document if there aren't any tags around...
Another time variable is the time which passing between your submission and the date your page is finally added to the search engine's database.
This can be up to several month. Don't worry about it, as long you do not pay for the listing, there is nothing you can do about it. And don't try if you got your lucky day and submit your site before it is ready - 'under construction' pages don't work well with search engines.
Now to the list of the more important engines:
Away from search engines, it might be useful to exchange links with other websites which offer similar information than yours. If your website has the right topic, there might be others with exactly the same problems as you. If not, there might yet be a newspaper or something else with a huge list with links related to your topic...be creative.
If you are still clueless: All webmasters like to know where their traffic comes from. Some, especially those without a logfile, have tools installed on their page which track the number of visitors (who cares) and referrer information (bingo). When you know where the others get their traffic from, you should look up the sites referring to them. Maybe this proves useful...
Getting commercial - a word on sponsors...
Nothing is for free. Not even free hosting.
Some day you may come to a point where you decide to reduce the costs of your hosting or even want to make some money from your webpage. At this point you have two options:
1.) sell something
2.) help others to sell something
Unless you are in for a lot of work and costs (if someone knows how to run an online shop with credit card billing for free, drop me an email), it will be the second option.
In general this means, that you send traffic to someone who buys it from you - something which is generally connected with the intention to sell something to your visitors.
In most cases this is done by placing a banner or textlink redirecting surfers to your sponsors page. This can also be done by use of blind links (for example a back-button that leads directly to your sponsor instead of back) of popup consoles (ever noticed those windows opening on other peoples websites ?).
Popups and blindlinks are very distinct methods of (excuse my language) pissing of your surfer. The probability that they won't buy at your sponsor is very high, and the chance they return to your site is minimal. Be aware of the fact that the amount of surfers who use software that blocks popups is on the rise.
Back to paid links and banners.
There are three ways you can be paid:
1.) per click
2.) per sale (you get a percentage)
3.) not at all (the sponsor cheats you, or, catches you cheating him)
One and two are fine. Which one is better for you, depends on your site and your visitors. If you are paid per click, you should have huge amounts of traffic, or else it will take ages for you to be paid. Let's do an example. Say you got 20 visitors a day, 3% of them will click on a banner which pays you 5c each (US currency). Minimum payout is 50 USD. This means that 1000 people need to click on your banner until you get paid. With the assumed click ratio of 3 %, 0.6 surfers will click per day. So, in 1667 days, you will recieve your first payment - this is appwoximately 4.5 years.
If your site perishes from the net before that time, the only winner is your sponsor.
So what about two ? Per sale sounds fine - especially if you have VERY specific traffic.
An example here: You run site with information on a specific region of the world. Your traffic ist from search engines mostly. Those people come for information on that one specific region. They did not come to buy cartoons, they do not want to look on adult pictures. So DON'T display a sponsor offering cartoons or adult pictures. Display something connected to that region...books...travels...sure you get the point. Will it work ? I don't know.
Three. The cheating problem. If a sponsor offers much better conditions that all of his competitors, be careful. He might not be honest. You don't want to end up with all the work without getting paid. Perhaps you do a little research on the web about your sponsors reputation, perhaps you ask other webmasters - be careful.
There are only two questions which say all about the quality of a sponsor:
1.) Will they pay ?
2.) Do they answer emails ?
If both answers are yes, good, if one is no, forget about it. You don't need a sponsor which does not pay or shaves clicks. And if they don't answer your emails in less than three days, I also wouldn't do business with them. You need someone to talk to is something goes wrong, not someone who don't answers.
Keep in minds that there are webmasters out there who try to cheat on their sponsors. So be honest and read your sponsors rules very careful. This may save you money. If you do not understand them, ask your sponsor. Most of the business on the net is in english. If you are not a native speaker, be sure that your english is good enough to understand what is going on.
Ok - thats it, just my two cents...
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