Before You Publish Your Web Site Checklist

SO MAYBE YOU THINK YOU'VE GOTTEN YOUR SITE LOOKING EXACTLY THE WAY YOU WANTED IT TO....
YOU'RE READY TO FACE THE WORLD
- BY ADDING A LINK TO YOUR SITE ON THE SIGNITURE THAT GOES OUT AT THE END OF YOUR EMAIL
- SENDING INVITATIONS TO EVERYONE IN YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS BOOK
- LISTING YOUR URL IN MESSAGE BOARDS ASKING FOR CRITIQUES
- AND RECOMMENDING YOUR SITE TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW
- BY APPLYING FOR AWARDS TO PROUDLY DISPLAY ON YOUR SITE...
- BEFORE YOU UPLOAD YOUR FILES ,
- PURCHASE A HOSTING SERVICE FOR YOUR WEB SITE
CHECK YOUR SITE FOR THESE IMPORTANT REQUIREMENTS:

PRINT THIS LIST OUT AND GET YOUR PEN READY - ONCE YOU'VE CHECKED ALL OF THESE OFF, YOU'RE READY TO PUBLISH YOUR WEB SITE!

2) PRIVACY POLICY: Webs Cool Link's Privacy Policy
Make sure you have one. No one that has any experience with spam or identity theft will sign your guestbook unless you have IN WRITING that you are not going to sell or share thier names or email address to another organization. (We're working on ours right now - check back in a week or so...) If you ARE going to sell or share your visitors names, you are legally and morally obligated to advise them of this.Oh sure, most of web sites privacy policies are soooooo long and repetitive that people rarely read them, but you still have to write every intention you have somewhere where your visitors can get to it. There are people like us, that read AND bookmark every agreement we make by signing up for something or returning to someone's site. Don't EVER think that you can't get sued. There are landmark cases every single day, and you cound just be the one that is used next to make internet history. ('Think the guy from Napster ever imagined in his wildest dreams that he would get THAT much publicity? Sure HE'S popular now, but where's Napster now in popularity rankings?

1) NAVIGATION: K.I.S.S. - Keep it simple stupid (well, I don't like the "stupid" part, but it does emphasize that folks in all walks of life should be able to get around your web site and find anything they need to find without confusion.) Make sure all your links work the same on every page, and that everything that is consistent on every page is in the same place on every page.. Merle suggests that you also display a small text menu at the bottom of every page - even if you have a menu (page buttons) at the top or side.

3) CONTACT INFORMATION: As a webmaster, you will probably, at one time or another, go to a web page and wish to link to it from your site, or contact someone wanting more inforamtion. At that point, nothing is more frustrating than having to go through privacy policies and FAQ's to find the correct email address to write to. Many times we've been redirected to list upon list of questions that "you might ask" only to have none of them answer what you want. We have many times filled out a questionaire, including the entire story of what we needed, only to recieve a generated response from that web site that just lists the same information that was in the "questions that you might ask" to begin with!! - never answering our question!!....A FEW TIMES - we were responded to, saying that our letter was spam and to never do it again!! All we were doing is writing to ask permission to link to their site. FRUSTRATING!! To make a long story short - make sure there are plenty of links or even the exact email address listed, to allow your visitors to get in touch with you. THEN, be sure to really READ their letter and answer back in a timely manner.

4) LOGOS,GRAPHICS,FONTS AND BROWSERS: You may have the most eye-catching banner and the COOLEST animations in the world on your site...but if it takes too long to load, you're going to loose your visitor. Be sure to keep your web page loading time to a minimum (you could change some of your animations to regular graphics and they'd be just as cute). Make sure the fonts you use are standard to most browsers or some of the text you took so long to type may not even show up. Remember, not everyone has the same browser as you (Ever notice how some sites have a teeny graphic at the bottom of thier page that says "best viewed with Internet Explorer"?) And some computer whizzes block out graphics altogether so that their pages load faster. Make sure what you have written is spelled correctly and interesting enough to hold their interest without your graphics.. YOU MAY DOWNLOAD DIFFERENT BROWSERS TO SEE HOW YOUR SITE WOULD LOOK BY CLICKING BELOW (temporary link) ON THE APPROPRIATE PROGRAM DOWNLOAD - BUT REMEMBER THAT THEY TAKE UP LOTS OF HARD DRIVE SPACE! -

6) NEWSLETTER: Another part of being a comminity is staying in touch. If you have a web site, you should have a guest book. If you have a guest book, ask for email addresses. That way when you have updates to your site, you can let them know about it. It gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling to know that your visitor took the time to sign your guest book. You contacting them with something that they might find informative lreciprocates the kind gesture. And make sure you advise them you may be sending them a letter and saving their email address ONLY for that reason if you should decide to go with the newsletter idea.. Unless you tell them up front (that is IF they read your privacy policy) they won't think they are just being spammed and never come back to your site as long as they live. SEE #2...

5) MAKE THEM WANT TO COME BACK: By connecting your visitors together in the common reason that they came to your site to begin with, you make them feel a part of your online community. Allowing them to submit information or links allows your visitors to become a part of your site. Give them a reson to come back or to recommend you to someone else. Suggest chat rooms or discussion boards that are related to your topic, or that you think they might find interesting and helpful. Start a message board of your own!Once people start seeing each other logging in to the same place, they will want to keep coming back. Or better yet, having a log in for YOUR site with a password allows them to actually JOIN your site - be a member or a contributor..

7) INDEX PAGE: First of all, don't make the same mistake we did. Our first site has a name so long that NO ONE would ever be able to remember it. Hey - we didn't know how it worked! We just thought that whatever we named our page would be what people typed in to get to us. NOOOOOO..there are path names. With Geocities and many other kind hosts, you have to put thier name first, then your log-in name, then comes the name of your site, and then sometimes even the name of your page! WOW! Just always remember that your index page will not HAVE to say "INDEX PAGE" it will be the last name that you named something.
Not clear? Ok.
Our site: http://www.oocities.org/webscoollinks/index.html does not have to be written: http://www.oocities.org/webscoollinks/index.html.
To get to ithe same pagein your address bar, you could simply type: "www.oocities.org/webscoollinks"
and that will automatically take you to our index page.
(Of course if you want to go to our "Cool Links" page, you WOULD HAVE to actually type: www.oocities.org/webscoollinks/CoolLinks
or www.oocities.org/webscoollinks/CoolLinks.html -
but you don't HAVE to type the ".html" part. ANYWAY... we hope to soon have enough visitors to merit purchasing a domain name so that it will just be WebsCoolLinks.com. WON'T THAT BE GREAT? And that's where we hope to get ALL OF YOU too - all this fun stuff and your own name, for nearly nothing. Talk about a LEGACY.
Just keep checking back with us or we'll check back with you (if you sign our guestbook!)
AND WE'LL BOTH BE THERE BEFORE YOU KNOW IT!!

MOST OF THESE TIPS WERE INSPIRED BY AN ARTICLE WRITTEN BY "MERLE" OF MCPRODUCTIONS.COM IN AN EVERYONE.NET NEWSLETTER, RECIEVED BACK IN NOVEMBER OF 2000, AS WELL AS KNOWLEDGE GAINED FROM READING MANY WEB SITE ADVICE MESSAGE BOARDS AND ADVICE ORGANIZATIONS LIKE ASKME.COM.

IF YOU HAVE ANY OTHER SUGGESTIONS FOR THIS LIST, PLEASE EMAIL US AT WebsCoolLinks@yahoo.com.

WE TRULY WISH TO HELP OUR VISITORS HAVE THE BEST SITE THEY CAN HAVE!

Last Updated: 06-16-07

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