• People don't look at the the screen in the same way as they look at a leaflet. If you put up a lot of text people don't read it. Use slogans and clear terminology

• A screen length is not as big as a printed page..... and people are lazy scrollers...often it's better to spread things through a number of pages.... though not too many as people are often lazy clickers... Basically give people the least information as possible... because you can always hyperlink to pages giving more detail

• YOU WANT PEOPLE TO FIND YOUR PAGES
  Unfortunately when you upload pages they are not automatically indexed you have to take steps to register them with the search engines

  1. prepare each page make sure it has the correct title encoded in it, some search engines use information encoded in the meta tags...make sure you have the correct terms in them
     <META name="description" content="this is the summary that will appear">
     <META name="keywords" content="list, of keywords, you, want">
     <title>Title they see : your organisation</title>

  2. CROSSLINK ...... put in relevant links to other peoples pages, then you can e-mail asking them to the same for you.... so increasing your publicity
     also their logos can help add interest to your webpages

• date pages which are likely to go out of date

• think about ...linking pages through the bottom of the page to lead viewers through a process e.g. introduce.... the problem....what you can do.... application form

• use a clear font like this one...Arial (be aware most people won't be able to see the trendier fonts)

• make it easy for the viewer ...use a standard format and corporate style

• CLEAR and LOGICAL ...Sectionalise your pages and have a menubar to move through sections ...with a HOME button so that people can easily find their way back to the start

• be aware because the way search engines and crosslinks work people will often enter your site through other pages other than the main page but your site has to seem logical to them ..another reason to have a menubar and a "HOME" button

• Have one index page listing every file .... to make it easier for people to find their way around if your site gets big

• The first page must introduce your organisation, give a brief summary and contact details ..telephone, fax etc

• Think about putting your e-mail address on every page so that people can react quickly

• put it hyperlinks to other sites which have relevant information when more depth is needed

• make your site useful...i.e . put good information, links and tools on it ...maybe a gimmick or competition ..that way people will visit your site again and again

• Copyright - under international law, anything is automatically copyrighted as soon as it is created, so you don't need to have a © symbol. Likewise if someone elses information doen't have the symbol it makes no difference you are still stealing it if you copy it

• uses colours to make the pages look attractive, mix text and graphics even sounds and video ..people react well to it.

• Images : keep the file size small so peope don't get bored waiting for it to appear see tips on scanning photos. GIF for upto 256 colours, jpeg for photos.

• BUT don't make the pages look too gaudy

• a background graphic looks nice ....set the background colour to a colour similar to this graphic ...so that people don't notice it loading.

• Don't have a dark background on pages you expect people to print... as older versions of Netscape don't print light text

• A lot of pages look good on the designers PC on a big monitor, and they seem fast because they are coming off the hard disk
  .....REMEMBER NOT EVERYONE HAS THE SAME COMPUTER AS YOU
  
  your pages may look great on your computer .......BUT someone will look at your pages on an old slow computer with

• a low amount of memory... the pages could look slow and he can't see the video
  KISS ......keep the trendy stuff for deeper into the site

• an old browser program.... he can't see the frames, Java doesn't work
  test your pages on an old browser....put in alternatives for frames...avoid Java

• an inferior graphics card .....so they can only see 16 colours
  test your pages by setting your monitor to 16 colours

• no sound card ..... he can't hear the sound
  ......keep the trendy stuff for deeper into the site

• a slow 14K modem.... if your pages have a lot of graphics they look slow ...if he is clever he will have the pictures turned off
  use techniques to keeps the file size of graphics small, use the tag <IMG SRC="..." ALT="this is a word people see if they have pictures switched off">

• a small monitor........ so that your page layout looks bad and characters go off the edge of the screen
  make your browser screen smaller when testing your pages

• He will think your pages are bad (not his computer)...you'll leave him with a bad impression
  use the above techniques to make the pages good for everyone

• Information already in the form of computer files can usually be converted easily to webpages either using Office 97 or Microsoft FrontPage (though the results are not always entirely perfect)
  

• OR using a more manual technique ...

1. make a standard template file .... with the required background colours, metatags and menubars already encoded

2. open the template file in a text editor and save it under the required filename

3. open the document you are taking the information from in a text editor, word processor program or browser

4. highlight the text with a mouse

5. press ctrl-c ... to copy the text onto the clipboard

6. press alt-tab to flick to template file

7. press ctrl-v ... to paste the text from the clipboard into the webpage

1. make all your webpages and save them to a directory on your local computer

2. spellcheck everything

3. test that they work by opening them in the browser and browsing between them HARD DISK

4. when everything is OK ftp the pages onto the server

5. browse to the pages to test them

6. when everything OK ask your friends to browse them to test them

7. if they say they are OK then you are ready to tell the world about your web pages

1. MAKE SURE YOUR WEBSITE IS FINISHED AND TESTED
   first impressions count

2. CROSSLINK - as listed in the layout tips

3. NEWSGROUPS - find relevant newsgroups and put a small message announcing your new website with the address

4. E-MAIL your contacts with the new address tell them to bookmark it

5. SEARCH ENGINES - this is probably the most common way strangers will come across you webpages. There are 1000s of different search engines ... there is no benefit to registering with them all by registering with the top few you will catch 99% of people ...try altavista, infoseek, YAHOO, Lycos and Webcrawler, fortunately there are a couple of webpages which do most of the work for you Submit-It Or Add-It
   more tips

6. LINK EXCHANGE BANNERS - you put some code into your main webpage and when people see your webpage a random banner advertisement appears at the bottom - in return an advertisement for your site sometimes appears at the bottom of someone else's pages. However it's usually not a very good deal because the companies make their money by selling some of the banner space so usually for each time your site is advertised elsewhere 3 commercial sites are advertised on your site and you have no control over the nature of these sites or to where your site is advertised... and it might lead to people leaving your site without going further than the first page

7. EXTERNAL PUBLICITY - announce your new web address, every otherway you can think of

   1. business cards, publications and stationary
   2. in your advertisements

One good reason for not being too ambitious is that you will have to allow time for maintenance otherwise your site can begin to look stale, information can go out of date, external links become dead, newer sites push your site down the search engine listings etc. So check your site every few weeks.

Sometimes you need to change your site to keep people interested. One good idea is to have a NEWS button on your FrontPage leading to your latest press release, that way people will visit your site again and again.

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