December, 2005

A friend of mine decided to build her own website and asked me about the main points to consider with web development.

I was about to write her a long email with links and tips, when I decided I'll post this in a blog just in case there are others who are curious.

This entry isn't about the work flow of building a site, but rather some links and details I find rather helpful. 

First you need to register your domain name (ie: www.yourname.com). There's a lot of places to do this. I've used godaddy.com and it's pretty good and reasonably priced.

Next, there's hosting. For a personal website, free hosting will do. Your ISP probably provides some free hosting with your service plan. Otherwise, just google "Free web hosting" and you'll come up with plenty of links. Make sure that it supports PHP language. If you plan to have a blog, you'll need hosting that supports a database (most likely Mysql database to be specific).

Ok, now you have your domain registered and a place to host your site, now let's start web design. This the most important step in web development and deserves it's own blog entry. Because it's so involved, I don't plan to cover here. Just remember, it's vital you design with your user in mind. The site must be designed so it's easy for the user and doesn't create any user frustration.

Rather than coming up with a design from scratch, there are plenty of free web templates available. Just google for some and you could waste away an entire afternoon looking at what's all available. Template Box has some good personal web site designs. It includes the original PSD (Photoshop layout — more about that in the next paragraph), so you can customize it to your liking.

You will need Photoshop to edit the layout. Sorry, I don't know of any freebie substitute software available to use instead. You'll have to do some reading up on how to use Photoshop for web layouts. The main thing to know is how to use the slice tool and "save for web" feature. There's too much to write about this to include in a blog, so I'll leave it up to you to do the research here. If you want more than static html for your site… maybe "contact me" page, a blog, or photo albumn, there's plenty of freebies out there.

So your design is established and we can start building. To assist with coding a site, there's a few good web tools out there. I use Macromedia Dreamweaver. It has all the bells and wistles. There are some free tools out there too in case you're not ready to spend a ton of money on software just yet. Check out Evrsoft First Page 2000 - it will do the trick.

I used Wordpress for my web site. It's a blog written in PHP that is very easy to install and (if you know anything about PHP) easy to customize. Don't worry if you don't know PHP, they have a lot of excellent add-ons such as the "Contact Me" page and photo albums. They also have free template designs you can customize and use.

Just a few words of advice on the content of your web site. First, don't ever put your email address directly on the site. You'll end up with tons of spam. Instead, use a contact me page.

Keywords are important. Keywords are targeted words that determine which category your site will be listed under in search engines and directories, as well as words that searchers input to search engines in order to find relevant sites. To learn more, about Keywords. To come up with a list of the best words, a good tool to use is: Google's Keyword Sandbox

After you've come up with your keywords, you're ready to write your site copy. While writing the site copy and content, there are a few rules to keep in mind.

1. Think of one or two main keywords for your site, and make them appear 5-6 times each on your home page.
2. Include the words in your site content and source code (above your site logo, in the subheadings, headlines, first paragraph, last paragraph, etc).
3. Don't go nuts and paste them in every nook and cranny. This is called "keyword stuffing" and search engines don't look kindly on this practice.
4. Some search engines will look for 'keyword density', meaning how far apart the keywords appear. Some will only look at the first 200 characters of your site, and count the number of times the keyword appears. Others will index a bit from the top, middle, and bottom parts of your web site, and search them for keywords. Generally keyword density should be in the 2-3% range. You should include these keywords in your individual page names and in the domain name itself.

Now you need a way to upload your website to your hosting location. I do this using an FTP tool called FileZilla. It works like a charm!

Now that you have your website up and running, it's time to get some traffic through marketing it. Your website should appear on all of the following:

• Print advertisements
• Radio and television advertisements
• Lobby kiosks in high-traffic areas of your enterprise or in local libraries, schools, or other suitable venues
• Direct mail campaigns
• Business cards
• Stationery
• Bills and statements
• Product manuals and product packaging
• Response cards and warrantee cards
• Publications and promotional materials
• Press releases
• Posters and billboards

You will also need to submit your website to all the main search engines. This includes the following sites:

• Google
• Excite
• Lycos
• Yahoo
• HotBot
• AltaVista

You can also consider paid promotion. Paid programs such as Google Adwords will speed up the listing process and almost certainly generate more search engine related traffic for your web site. Given this, it is highly recommended that you establish a search engine submission budget as the costs can rack up quickly. It's a smart idea to do this temporarily until your site gets indexed higher, then stop the program.

Good luck and let me know how your website turns out!

Early Christmas celebrations brings me back to my hometown of Salem, South Dakota; a small community in the middle of the Great Plains where flags fly and pick-ups roar. It's been an extremely chilly week of building snowmen with my nephews when the temps break zero. Or making clay reindeer with my neice when they don't. Winter arrived two days before I did; coming in on an ice storm first, followed by two days of blizzard leaving most of the state without electricity. The local gossip rang of neighbors trapped at home without internet, TV, or refridgerators. Tossed back to the 19th century while living in the middle of the most affluent and modern country on the globe. Surviving such fridged winters takes a rare breed of humans who have had decades or even centuries of conditioning passed down to them from generation to generation. The secret of survival is now second nature, set into gear as soon as the first snow flake falls. We all know the basic rules of winter survival like never lick a frozen pole. But what are those other deep hidden secrets that only the chosen, frozen few know? Based on my own personal experiences of growing up in great tundra land as well as from observations this past week, I've come up with a small list. First, take all your perishable goods and simply place them in the front porch; the part of your house that's too hot sit in during the summer and too cold in the winter. They'll keep until spring. Next, never under any circumstances shut off your vehicle. Stop by the local coffee shop, get your morning brew and local gossip, hang out for an hour, and just keep that puppy running at all times. Another cherished secret I've noticed is that you should never scoop the walk in front of your house. No one ever uses it anyway, so don't bother wasting precious energy. Also, don't bother washing your cars for another 3 months either (or until the food in the porch starts to go off). Your doors will freeze shut and they'll be just as filthy 5 miles down the road anyway. Eat plenty of meat and cheese. It packs on precious insulator fat. Top it off with beer. It has carbs that will eventually convert into more insulator fat. Don't wear hats, scarves, or gloves. They only prove your weakness to the extremese. Real weather-tough men wear only a flannel and a corn seed hat for protection (in camoflage print, of course). Thanks for global warming, winters are now a "light" version of my childhood years when snow drifts reached the roof tops, and milk runs were done on horseback because wheels couldn't make it. I was 12 years old that Christmas morning that greeted us with 12 inches of fresh snow. Living on a farm, the animals always came first, so my siblings and I had to scoop all the feeding troughs before opening gifts. This wasn't so bad except for the fact that the wind never stops blowing here. As soon as we got one scooped clean, another would blow shut again. It was a constant struggle until the sun went down. That Christmas I got the gift of respect for mother nature and her powers over humans. Despite all the rules for survival, she'll always be one step ahead of us brewing up something we never prepared for.