|
Top
10 Webmaster Challenges
© 2002 by
William
Nabaza
Webmasters
deal with a myriad of complex design challenges every day.
This article will discuss the top ten challenges and provide
solutions and tips for solving each problem.
- Browser
Compatibility You must design your Web site so
that it is viewable on both browsers: Netscape Navigator
and Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE). Netscape Navigator
is very strict when it comes to HTML tag completion, but
IE isn’t. You need to view your site first using
Macromedia Dreamweaver before publishing to the Web.
Make sure you’ve run the command convert to ensure
your site is version 3.0 browser compatible. If you’re
using Netobjects Fusion to create the layout of your
site, make sure that all layer objects are converted
into tables. This is highly recommended if you want to
reach a broader and wider audience.
Online resources:
A) Dr. HTML, located at www2.imagiware.com/RxHTML/
B) Web Site Garage to check your links, located at websitegarage.com
- Graphics
Optimization
Web graphics play an essential part in your Web design,
because it conveys the emotion and impact of your site.
Always make sure that all of your graphics are in .gif
and .jpg format. Unless your site deals with
photography, minimize the use of the .jpg format. You
can use Macromedia Fireworks to minimize the file size,
especially the slicer feature if you need to place a
large photo on your site. Another option is the export
preview of Macromedia Fireworks. This allows you to
remove unwanted colors in your graphics, thus decreasing
file size.
You can also do this online by using one of these online
utilities:
A) GIF Optimizer by Media Builder, www.gifoptimizer.com
B) JPEG Cruncher and GIF Cruncher, www.spinwave.com/crunchers.html
C) Windows-based graphics optimizer, CyberView Image
Lite (JPEG Compressor),
www.cyberviewcd.com/cvimage/index.html
D) Advanced GIF Optimizer, www.gold-software.com/ago.html
E) Photo Crunch (JPEG Compressor), www.imroncorp.com/photo.htm
F) JPEG image compression FAQ, www.faqs.org/faqs/jpeg-faq/part1/
Visitor only for $0.01. Try our pay per click search engine.
The cheapest on the market.
Start here.. |
- Keeping
the Site Fresh
I think this is the bulk of a webmaster’s work, if you
want your site frequently visited. You can keep your
site fresh by really working on new content on a daily
or regular basis and by making it interactive. As with
content, you can make use of www.moreover.com,
www.subportal.com,
www.newshub.com,
and other content syndication sites to provide the
content for your site automatically. Let them do the
hard work for you! If you place a tag, they will email
you with new content. As for the interactivity, offer
your visitors web-based email accounts, a message board
with a chat room, a search engine crawler, and banner ad
rotation. This is easy, and provided by Everyone.net.
Searching your site is another way to easily provide
information to your visitors. You can get a site search
engine from www.picosearch.com
and www.atomz.com.
- Pushing
Information to Your Visitors
A Web site is a “pull” promotion, but as a
webmaster, you also need to be thinking about how you
can “push” information to your visitors, users, or
subscribers. You can publish an ezine on a weekly or
monthly basis just to let your users be informed about
the latest technology you’ve added to your site. As
for the mailing list, you can get a free mailing list
from www.egroups.com,
www.topica.com, or
you can choose a paid service such as www.aweber.com
or www.getresponse.com.
As for the content, you can get lots of articles from
bbs.weblord2000.com, or try one or more of my articles
that can be found on the same Web site.
- Driving
Traffic
Webmasters shouldn’t forget to announce your Web site.
Accomplishing this is easy for Web sites that already
have a lot of traffic, but even sites that are starting
out with 5 or 10 members can benefit from the viral
marketing of online recommendation software. Services
include
www.recommend-it.com, www.evite.com,
and www.ewomp.com.
- Dealing
with Spammers Unfortunately, the reality of the
Internet is that people will spam and flame on a daily
basis. Web-based email addresses like the ones set up by
www.everyone.net
are spam-proof. You can set up your account so that any
emails sent without your address in the “to” box can
be directed automatically to the trash or spam folder.
However, flames and hate emails are a different field.
You shouldn’t try to get even or retaliate. These
people are not a joke. It might cost you your ISP or
your e-life. Instead, check out www.spamcop.net. It does
the nitty-gritty work of automatically reporting
misbehaving people to their postmasters. Usually, it’s
helpful to get the ISP, or at least the IP address of
the suspected person.
Visitor only for $0.01. Try our pay per click search engine.
The cheapest on the market.
Start here.. |
- Stickiness!
Webmasters are also faced with the challenge of keeping
their site sticky. CBSMarketwatch.com
is a good example of a sticky site. This
stock/investment related site contains timely news and
excellent company data. The vast amount of information
results in a good number of page views per visitor.
Plus, visitors return on a daily basis to get the
latest-and-greatest market news and stock data. Lots of
page views per visitor AND repeat visits. now that's
what you could call really sticky.
Here are some additional suggestions:
A) Make your site a portal of information. It encourages
your visitors to return and stay. Hotsheet.com is one
example of a one-page portal.
B) Add games to your site. You can get some here: www.uproar.co.uk
or at www.pogo.com/affiliates.
C) Make your site interactive with a guest book, forum,
tell-a-friend link, webring, customizable news,
contests, polls, e-card, and free for all links. Bizland.com
allows you to sign up for an account and place the code
on your site.
D) Provide links to freebies, get-paid-to-surf sites,
contests, incentives, jokes, quotes, mp3, and gnutella.
Just don’t forget to opt in for at least their email
address before they can actually download stuff from
your site.
- Find
Your Web Host
It's critical to find the right Web host.
Although you may need to get your own server when your
site gets one million page views per month, most sites
that are starting out do not require the complex and
expensive task of managing your own servers. There are
many Web hosting providers that are willing to provide
starting at 40gb of Web space. You can also look and
compare different Web hosting providers on these sites: www.webhostdir.com,
www.hostfinders.com,
www.hostindex.com,
www.hostsearch.com,
and www.findahost.com. I always recommend the advanced
search, which allows you to specify your budget and the
specific features you will need.
- Think
Globally
Keep the site international in its appeal.
Babelfish.altavista.com allows you to place snippets of
code into your site that will automatically translate
your English site to a different language, such as
Spanish, Italian, German, or Polish. As webmasters, we
must remember that we cannot filter countries on our
site. We must be able to communicate with them.
- Search
Engine Submissions
Webmasters love to promote their sites on message
boards, newsgroups, link exchanges, and even email, but
they often forgot the best source of traffic. Submission
sites like www.jimtools.com,
www.weblord2000.com/submit.htm,
and www.beseen.com
can be used to submit your site for free. You don’t
need to submit to all of them, only to the major ones,
like Yahoo, AltaVista, Google, Hotbot, Infoseek/Go.com,
Lycos, and Northern Light.
I
hope that you have found these tips helpful. For more
information, please visit my site,
www.webtor.org.
-----------------------------------------
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Angela is the editor of Online Business Basics, a practical
and hype-free guide to building an Internet business on a
shoestring budget. It's a proven hit with beginners, who
love the down-to-earth style and loads of instantly useable
tips! Click here for details:
http://onlinebusinessbasics.com/article.html
|
Adlandpro
Toolbar gives you instant access to your
Free Email Account, Free Website, submission to
over 8,900 sites, learning tools, free discussion
list on marketing and promotion with 26,000
subscribers, Free 5 day Website Success course by
email, plus instant search. Click
Here. |
|