So you want a Featured Page?

So You Want a Featured Page?
How to make people come back to your page

Think of your homepage as a hamburger from your favorite fast food place. You've got pickles, lettus, onion, ketchup, mustard, bun.. and somewhere in there.. is a hamburger, that's what you're paying for, and that's what you really want. Now before you flip off this page, thinking that I've really lost it.. WAIT! READ! and see if this doesn't make some kind of sense.

The Featured Page part applies to Geocities, but the art, of making people return to your homepage because it's good, applies all over the internet. You want want people to bookmark your site, give them a reason to. If you don't live in Geocities, skip down to this part. If you do.. start reading here.

Content Guidelines

A link back to Geocities (<http://www.oocities.org/">Geocities</a>) on EVERY page *even GeoPlus subscribers*, or an image link, or a GeoGuide.

All images reside upon your Geocities account.

ALL images and links work!

No nudity, profanity, adult material. No racist, or hate pages, even off of any of your links, and this includes awards.

The only banners allowed are LinkExchange and GeoGuide.

Basically if your pages break, any of those.. even if one link doesn't work properly, you're not going to get to be a Featured Page, and you'll have to try again. You should go through your pages, before submitting them for Featured Page status. note: all communities in Geocities have different methods of submitting for Featured Pages. The link above is specifically for SouthBeach. Please see a community leader in your neighborhood for information on how to submit yours if you are not a SouthBeach residence.

Let's say you have all that stuff, what makes the rest of it?

This is what makes people come back to your page, and what makes it stand out to be a featured page, or just to make people bookmark it. Think of your pages in three parts:

Basics

Bulk

Content

What do those things mean?

Basics: This is the "about me" section. It tells people the very basic facts about you: your age, where you go to school, your family, your hobbies, your work, etc.
Bulk: This is the part of your page that "creates the look of many things": awards, webrings, lists of links, friend's pages, cyberpets, guestbook, etc.
Content: This is where the part that will make or break your page, and the part that the next paragraph will talk about.

Content is the main part of your page. When you make a page, you want people to know you, or whatever you're writing about if the page isn't about you. This is where you take all your hobbies, likes, etc, and write about them. Don't just write one sentence saying "I like alternative music", tell the world why you like it. Tell what groups you like. Find some good links that relate to what you just wrote about, but don't just list them, work them into sentences. Do the same thing about ALL the things you like! You can have so many pages based upon your hobbies, a person will sit at your page, reading, for a good hour! You have to make people click your links, and just listing them isn't going to do it.

Remember the golden rule to homepages: Just because you know it, doesn't mean everyone else does. Write about whatever you want to on your page, just explain things to your audience.

Ok, so now you know the three parts that are necessary.. what else is there? Lots of things:

Make your page original. Theme pages are an interesting way to go. What does theme mean? You take an idea, such as what my main one was, which was a castle, and create the feel and look of a castle. The same can be done for a country.. music.. animals.. ANYTHING. Find backgrounds and images that will help create that theme. Go to any search engine, and do a search for things that are specific to your theme. If my theme were music.. do a search for guitars, drums, musical notes, musical instruments, the list is endless. Find the items you want, and use them on your pages.

Make sure ALL your links work! It's important that you do this at least once a month. If a page disappears or moves, and your surfer clicks that link and gets a 404 error, they're not going to really come back, especially if this happens multiple times on your site. If you have a lot of links on your site, you might want to check into a link validator.. CyberSpyder is a good one.
Make sure your text is easy to read on your background. If a person has to strain to read your text, they're not going to be back. Blue on black, purple on black, black on blue.... things like that are very hard to read. Use a color chart! Find a contrasting color so your text is easy to read! If your background is too busy and you can't find a color that is easy to see, then try finding a different background.
Do not trap people in your frames! If you have a frames page, create the links so pages that you have not written, open up in another browser window. If you don't know how to do this it'd be like this: That is just one example! For more info on frames please see this this tutorial.
Do not go frame crazy. Frames can be done well, but just because you've learned how to do them, don't make your pages look like the start of the Brady Bunch with a tic-tac-toe setup.
If you're doing your page at a specific resolution (800x600) make sure your pages are alright in a 640x480 resolution. If people have to scroll to the right to see all your stuff, they won't be back. If you don't know how to check this, please see this page on resolution.
Do not overdo Java or Javascript. It's a cool thing, no doubt, but applets can take awhile to load.. and a flashing screen on your index.html page can be seen one too many times, especially if people have to go back to your main page to get to the rest of your pages. Too many applets can cause computers to crash and slow down the loading of your pages. Use these things in appropriate places.
Don't be afraid of using "back" or "next" buttons. Being able to maneuver around in a homepage is very important. No one wants to have to sit there and constantly be hitting the back button on their brower, just to get back to where you list your pages. All it takes is a link on the bottom of your page saying "next".. and you'll be giving your viewers a way around your pages.
Check your pages in both Netscape and MSIE. Make sure that just because they appear in one browser, they'll show up in the other. A majority of times, if they aren't working in Netscape, but work fine in MSIE, it's because there's an open table someplace. If you check, you'll save approximatly 50% of your surfers from some frustration. If you're having problems getting it to work right, you can always ask for help. Be sure to run your pages through a HTML validator as well. Here's an online one, and more can be found at Tucows
Animated graphics and graphics in general are GREAT! .. but.. *isn't there always a but?.. lol* Don't over do them. Too many animated graphics really slow the loading of a page down. Large graphics do the same thing. Use your animated graphics sparingly, and reduce the K size of your images with a site such as Gif Lube or with a program such as WebOpt. Also please use height/width/alt tags in your images. This allows for faster loading of your pages. Also remember about border=0 if your images are links.
Along the same line.. think of your loading times. If it takes over a minute to download your first page..(and that's being very generous).. you've lost your audience. Time your pages with a cleared cache on your own modem.
Update your pages regularly! People won't come back if they see the exact same thing time after time. Add new pages, add different graphics, different links. The possibilities of pages are endless, and it takes quite a bit to use 2-6 MB of space (depending where you're at) use it all and have fun!

All of this sounds like a lot, but it's really not, and these considerations for your viewers, will keep them coming back to your page, and increase your chances for becoming a Featured Page in not only Geocities, but everywhere on the web.

Eve's Realm is not responsible for this, or any banner, within this table. Click at your own risk.