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Navigating and Publishing on the Web


by William Robert Stanek

An entire universe is growing in cyberspace, and you might not even know it. The Internet connects 50,000 computer networks and 6 million host computers worldwide. Almost every country in the world has computers that access the Internet, and by the end of 1996, 50 million people will have access to the Internet. What is even more incredible is that in two years, the number of users is expected to double, which means more than 100 million people will have access to the global Internet by the end of 1998. The segment of the Internet driving this tremendous growth is the World Wide Web. Not only can you reach these millions of consumers on the Web, you can do so in mind-blowing proportions and in ways that are limited only by your imagination.

In 1995 alone, more than 8 million people gained access to the Web. The source of this great influx of new users was primarily commercial online services such as CompuServe, Prodigy, and America Online, which provide their users with full access to the Internet. When these figures are added to a conservative growth rate of 10 percent per month for new users accessing the Web, this means that 25 to 50 million people will have access to the Web by the end of 1996.

Navigating the Web


If you have browsed the Web before, you know that navigating the Web can be as easy as activating a hypertext link. You activate the link by moving your mouse pointer to the area of the link and clicking the left mouse button. Text containing a hypertext link is underlined and generally displayed in a different color from other text on the page. By default, most browsers display links that you have not visited in blue and links that you have visited in purple or light red.

When you move your mouse pointer over a link, most browsers display the URL path to the file or object that will be retrieved if you activate the link. This is useful to identify the type of file referenced by the link.


NOTE

Some browsers let you select the color of text on the page. The four basic color definitions that you can assign to text pertain to the color of ordinary text, unvisited links, active links, and visited links. Under HTML 3.2, you, as the Web publisher, can define the color of text on the page. These color definitions generally override color definitions defined in the user's HTML 3.2-compliant browser. FrontPage fully supports the color definitions set forth in HTML 3.2.


Although following text-based links on Web pages is easy, following links embedded in graphic objects is not always easy. Some clickable images are displayed on the page with a distinctive blue border. This type of clickable image is easy to identify. Other clickable images have no borders around them at all, primarily because of extensions to HTML that enable Web publishers to suppress the border around images. Yet there are other extensions to HTML that enable Web publishers to place borders around nonclickable images. So, how do you know when an image is clickable if it has no distinctive border?

One way to tell whether the image is clickable is to move your mouse pointer over the image. If your browser shows that a URL path is associated with the image, you can click on it.

As you point and click your way through the Web, you probably don't stop to think about the URLs you are using to access Web resources. However, as a Web publisher, you should stop and think about the URLs you use. For example, the URL http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/pricing.htm tells a browser to use the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) to obtain a file called pricing.htm in the frontpage directory on the www.microsoft.com Web server. URLs are much more powerful and complex than this simple example. The next section takes a closer look at the structure of URLs and how they are used on the Web.

Using URLs


URLs provide a uniform way of identifying resources that are available using Internet protocols (IP). To better understand URLs, you need to know about URL schemes and formats, how URLs are defined, and how to use escape codes in URLs.

URL Schemes and Formats


The basic mechanism that makes URLs so versatile is the standard naming scheme. URL schemes name the protocol that the client will use to access and transfer the file. Web clients use the name of the protocol to determine the format for the information that follows the protocol name. The protocol name is generally followed by a colon and two forward slashes. The colon is a separator. The double slash marks indicate that the protocol uses the format defined by the Common Internet Scheme Syntax.

The Common Internet Scheme Syntax is a common syntax for URL schemes that involve the direct use of IP-based protocols. These protocols specify a particular host on the Internet by a unique numeric identifier called an IP address or by a unique name that can be resolved to the IP address. The information after the double slashes follows a format that is dependent on the protocol type referenced in the URL. Here are two general formats:




protocol://hostname:port/path_to_resource



protocol://username:password@hostname:port/path_to_resource

NOTE

If you use a DOS/Windows-based system, you normally type a backslash to change directories and maneuver around the system. Consequently, you might have to remind yourself that the Web follows the UNIX syntax for slashes, and the slashes you type for URLs should be forward slashes.



Defining Host Information in URLs

Hostname information used in URLs identifies the address to a host and is broken down into two or more parts separated by periods. The periods are used to separate domain information from the hostname. Common domain names for Web servers begin with www, such as www.tvp.com, which identifies the Web server called tvp in the commercial domain. Domains you can specify in your URLs include

COM Commercial sites
EDU Education sites
GOV Nonmilitary government sites
MIL Military sites
NET Network sites (developers, Internet Service Providers, and so on)
ORG Organizational sites

Defining Port Information in URLs

Ports are rather like telephone jacks on the Web server. The server has certain ports allocated for certain things, such as port 80 for your incoming requests for hypertext documents. The server listens on a particular port. When it hears something, in essence it picks up the phone and connects the particular port.

Port information used in URLs identifies the port number to be used for the connection. If you don't specify a port number, a default value is assumed as necessary. Generally, you don't have to specify port numbers in your URLs unless the connection will be made to a port other than the default. Default values for ports are defined in the URL specification as follows:

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Port 21
Gopher Port 70
HTTP Port 80
Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) Port 119
Telnet Port 23
Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) Port 210

Defining Username and Password Information in URLs

By specifying the username and password information in a URL, you allow users to log in to a system automatically. The two protocols that use both username and password information are FTP and telnet. In a FTP session, the username and password information are often utilized to allow users to log in to FTP servers anonymously. When a connection is made to a FTP server and username and password information is not specified, the following default values are assumed: anonymous for username and the user's e-mail address as the password.

In telnet, there are no default values. If you do not supply the username and password, the user will be prompted for this information. To avoid this, you could allow users to log in automatically by specifying a user and password in your URL. However, you generally do not want to specify a personal password in a URL. Therefore, if you want users to be able to log in automatically using telnet, you should create a guest account with a generic password.

Defining Path Information in URLs

The final part of a URL is the path to the resource. This path generally follows the directory structure from the root or slash directory to the resource specified in the URL. A completely specified path to a resource is called an absolute path. You can also specify a path to a resource relative to the current directory. You will learn more about specifying paths to resources in Chapter 9, "Adding Features to the Page."

Protocol Schemes Defined

Most protocol schemes follow the two general forms of URLs discussed earlier. Protocol schemes conforming to the CISS standard use the double slashes. CISS-compliant protocols are FTP, Gopher, HTTP, NNTP, WAIS, and File. Protocols that do not conform to the CISS standard omit the double slashes. Noncompliant protocols include Mailto and News. Table 2.1 shows the URL schemes associated with each protocol.

FrontPage allows you to create documents that reference any of the protocols shown in Table 2.1. In Chapter 9, you will learn how to reference alternate protocols in your Web documetns.

Table 2.1. URL schemes and formats.

Scheme Description/Protocol URL Format
FTP File Transfer Protocol ftp://username:password@hostname:port/path_to_resource
Gopher Gopher protocol gopher://hostname:port/path_to_resource
HTTP Hypertext transfer protocol http://hostname:port/path_to_resource
HTTPS Secure Hypertext transfer protocol https://hostname:port/path_to_resource
Mailto Electronic mail address mailto:username@host
News Usenet news news:newsgroup-name


news:message-number
NNTP Usenet news accessed with Network News Transfer Protocol nntp://hostname/newsgroup-name
telnet Remote login sessions telnet:/username:password@hostname:port
WAIS Wide area information servers wais://hostname:port/database
File Files on local host file://hostname/path_to_resource

How URLs Are Defined


URLs consist of characters defined by the ASCII character set. The URL specification allows for the use of uppercase and lowercase letters. Because URLs typed in uppercase are generally treated the same as URLs typed in lowercase, most Web publishers use only lowercase letters in their URLs. A fall out of this is that most Web documents and object files are named in lowercase letters as well. If you are on a system that has case-sensitive file naming, such as UNIX, you will find naming your files in lowercase is extremely useful in avoiding possible conflicts.

Although URLs consist of characters defined by the ASCII character set, you cannot use all ASCII characters in your URLs. You can use the letters a-z, the numerals 0-9, and a few special characters including

You are limited to these characters because other characters used in URLs have specific meanings, as shown in Table 2.2.

Table 2.2. The meaning of characters used in URLs.

Character Meaning Example
: The colon is a separator.

Separates protocol from the rest of the URL scheme. http://tvp.com/vpfound.html

Separates hostname from the port number. http://www.tvp.com:80/




Separates username from the password. ftp://anonymous:william@tvp.com/vpinfo.txt
// The double slash marks indicate that the protocol uses the format defined by the Common Internet Scheme Syntax.

This protocol follows the CISS format. ftp://tvp.com/vpinfo.txt

This protocol does not follow the CISS format. news:newsgroup-name
/ The slash is a separator and is used to separate the path from hostname and port. http://tvp.com/vphp.html

The slash is also used to denote the directory path to the resource named in the URL. /usr/cgi-bin/useit.pl
~ The tilde is generally used at the beginning of the path to indicate that the resource is in the specified user's public html directory. http://www.aloha.com/~william
% Identifies an escape code. Escape codes are used to specify special characters in URLs that otherwise have a special meaning or are not allowed. gopher://unm.edu/books/english/Book%20Table%20of%20Contens
@ The at symbol is used to separate username and/or password information from the hostname in the URL. mailto:william@tvp.com
? The question mark is used in the URL path to specify the beginning of a query string. Query strings are passed to CGI scripts. All the information following the question mark is data the user submitted and is not interpreted as part of the file path. /usr/cgi-bin/useit.pl?keyword
+ The plus sign is used in query strings as a placeholder between words. Instead of using spaces to separate words the user has entered in the query, the browser substitutes the plus sign. /usr/cgi-bin/useit.pl?word1+word2+word3
= The equal sign is used in query strings to separate the key assigned by the publisher from the value entered by the user. In the sample URL, username is the key assigned by the publisher and the value entered by the user is william. /usr/cgi-bin/useit.pl?username=william
& The ampersand is used in query strings to separate sets of keys and values. In the sample URL, name is the first key assigned by the publisher and the value entered by the user is william. The second key assigned by the publisher is question, and the value entered by the user is why+not. /usr/cgi-bin/query.pl?name=william&question=why+not
^ Reserved for future use.
{} Reserved for future use.
[] Reserved for future use.

Using Escape Codes in URLs


To make URLs even more versatile, the specification enables you to use escape codes in URLs. Escape codes are used to specify special characters in URLs that are either reserved or not otherwise allowed. This is particularly useful for protocols (such as Gopher) that allow resources to be defined with spaces between words. For example, to use the Gopher resource Book Table of Contents, you would have to rewrite the resource name using the escape code for spaces. The percent sign identifies an escape code. The number following the percent sign identifies the character being escaped. The escape code for a space is a percent sign followed by the number 20. To use the preceding resource name in a URL, you would rewrite it as follows:




Book%20Table%20of%20Contents

Using the ISO Latin 1 character set, you can determine the values for characters you need to escape. To do this, you convert the decimal value defined in the character set to a hexadecimal value. The decimal value for a space is 32. When you convert this decimal value to hexadecimal, the resulting value is 20. Table 2.3 shows common character values from the ISO Latin 1 character set and the associated escape codes.

Table 2.3. Common character values and their associated escape codes.

Numeric Value Character Description Escape Code
09 Tab %09
32 Space %20
35 Number sign (#) %23
37 Percent sign (%) %25
38 Ampersand (&) %26
39 Apostrophe (') %27
63 Question mark (?) %3f
64 At symbol (@) %40
95 Caret symbol (^) %5f

TIP

When you use escape codes such as %09 for a tab, be sure to include the zero. The computer will interpret the hexadecimal value 09 as a tab.



Who's Publishing on the Web?


The Web is a powerful interface to everything the Internet has to offer. Today when most people think of the Internet, they think of the dynamic environment that enables them to search through and access complex webs of text, graphics, sound, and video. In short, they equate the Web with the Internet—and that's because the Web has swallowed the Net.

The Web was born at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), and it should be no surprise that universities, colleges, and research institutes represent some of the largest segments of Web publishers. Some of the most wonderful Web sites are created by college students and research scientists. These same students and researchers also represent most of the innovators creating new technologies for the Web.

Although Web sites created by research and educational organizations are plentiful, their presence has been dwarfed in recent months by commercial sites. Thousands of businesses are already plugged in to the Internet. These businesses have built some of the hottest sites on the Web and are attracting thousands of visitors every day.

Not all the companies running commercial sites are multibillion dollar conglomerates with thousands of employees. Many commercial sites are run by startup companies who represent small groups of entrepreneurs with big dreams. Many more commercial sites are mom and pop businesses from down the street and home businesses run from the kitchen table.

Behind the massive wave of companies and entrepreneurs carving their niche in cyberspace, the governments of the world watch. They know what commerce without national borders, tariffs, and taxes means to global markets and aren't sure how to regulate it—or even if they can regulate it. Many governments are doing much more than watching; they are taking active roles in the development of the Internet and fostering its growth with funding. Government agencies are publishing their own Web sites loaded with useful information and are among the first organizations to publish on the Web. U.S. government agencies publishing on the Web include the Environmental Protection Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Census Bureau, and a very humorous site from the IRS.

Although many Web publishers represent organizations, this is not always the case. A growing number of Web publishers are individuals who want to share their ideas and interests with the world. These individuals aren't publishing on the Web to make a profit. They are publishing on the Web because it's fun to create something people around the world will see, it's challenging to test new publishing techniques, and it's exciting to build something dozens, hundreds, and often thousands of people will talk about.

Conducting Business


On the Web, your business is never closed. Consumers have access to your site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. They don't have to worry about fighting traffic to get to the mall. They don't have to race to the store after work and hope that it's not closed. They don't have to talk to a sales representative who's having a bad day and doesn't want to answer their questions. They can access information related to your products and services at their own pace and when it's most convenient for them, even if it's 3 o'clock on Christmas morning.

Businesses are striving to establish a presence on the Web for many different reasons. Some businesses are experimenting and trying to discover the benefits of Web publishing. They are promoting their company's product and service online. Often, they try to gauge consumer interest areas and figure out the directions the Web site should grow in to best serve customers.

Other businesses focus strictly on profits from Web publishing. They expect to make direct sales to customers and are interested in little else. These businesses are often disappointed when their Web publishing operation does not generate thousands of new sales. What these businesses fail to realize is that benefits of Web publishing are not always tangible.

Although advertising agencies would undoubtedly argue to the contrary, you cannot precisely gauge the sales generated from a $100,000 television commercial. You can estimate the potential sales based on the estimated size of the viewing audience, but you cannot directly relate sales to a particular 30-second television commercial. The same is true in Web publishing. If your consumers aren't purchasing your product at your online order center, that does not mean they aren't reading about the product online and purchasing the product locally.

Although increasing the bottom line because of Web publishing can be a goal, it should not be the only goal. Internet savvy businesses have many goals for their Web publishing operations and know the Web is best used for


Enhanced Customer Service


What do you do when the customer has questions and wants answers at 3 a.m.? Most customer service departments are not open 24 hours a day, primarily because of the tremendous expense of providing around-the-clock service. The best time to reach customers is at their leisure, and when they have questions about your products or services.

One of the biggest customer complaints is the wait to get service. Nothing frustrates customers more than waiting on the phone or in a line to get service. Some companies solve this problem by hiring additional customer services representatives during peak periods. Other companies simply cannot afford the additional expense of hiring extra personnel, and the result is poor customer service and long waits for service.

On the Web, there is no wait to get customer support. Customers access the Web site, follow your links to your customer support area, and find the information they need. Ideally, the customer service area would have search facilities so customers could search for specific information quickly.

The Web dramatically reduces the cost of publishing product information. Not only can you provide product information to customers, but you can do so on a scale that would be prohibitively expensive through traditional mediums. You can turn your one-page ad for a leading magazine into a 20-page expos[130] on your product for a fraction of the cost of publishing in the magazine. In fact, for the same cost as publishing a one-page ad in a leading magazine, you can probably publish detailed information on your entire product line.

Quick access to information is often critical to the success of your products and services. The Web dramatically reduces the lag time for access to new product information. Instead of having to wait days for product information to arrive in the mail, customers can access new product information at your Web site within seconds after you publish it.

Documentation for products is a key area customers focus on. Manuals delivered with products aren't always detailed enough for customers. Poorly written manuals are sometimes the result of a rush to get the product to market or publishing constraints that limit the size of the manual to reduce costs. Many manuals also contain typos and inconsistencies. Correcting these inconsistencies is costly and impractical when products have already been shipped to wholesalers, retailers, and customers. You can correct the deficiencies of your printed manual by providing a deluxe version of the manual online.

The Web dramatically reduces the costs of distributing upgrades to customers. Not only can you provide information on patches for software products, you can make the patches available for downloading online. Providing customers with free upgrades to your products is good business, especially because most minor upgrades fix bugs in the original product. The company saves money because disks and documentation do not have to be published and shipped to the customer.

To provide quality service and to ensure you are meeting the needs of the customer, you need feedback from customers. Your Web pages can have forms that customers fill out and submit online via e-mail. In this way, you can keep in touch with the needs of your customers. Fill-out forms can also be used to obtain customer opinions on your latest products and services. You can compile these opinion surveys and use the statistics to identify areas for improvement in future product releases.

Public Relations


Building the image of your business is extremely important. One of the best ways to build your company's image is through press coverage. Savvy businesses with Web sites have the Web equivalent of neon signs leading the press to special areas set up for the press.

Often these areas contain lists of contacts for key personnel in the company, such as the marketing director, the public relations manager for hardware issues, or the public relations manager for new product releases. On the Web you can do much more than simply list names, you can include color photos of the company representatives and executive officers. You can include their phone numbers, fax numbers, and e-mail addresses. You can even include online forms for quick submission of public relations questions.

Along with contact information, these areas often contain press releases. Press releases on your business's products and services are free advertising. Many Web sites publish current and past press releases as well as information to be freely distributed by the press. Coverage in the press shows interested parties what your company has done in the past and what it is doing now. Press releases aren't only for the press, however. You should also provide access to press releases in areas frequented by your customers. In this way, customers can also see what the company has done in the past and is doing now.

You can also provide demos and screen shots of your products for downloading. In this way, people who are interested in your products can see them firsthand. If they are interested, they can test the demo. If they need screen shots for publication in a book, magazine, or newspaper, they can download and use the material you provide.

Marketing to Global Audiences


Selling your products and services to consumers is accomplished through marketing. The interactive and dynamic nature of the Web makes it a powerful tool for marketing. If you don't market your products, they won't sell. If you don't tell people about your services, no one is going to hire you. Large corporations spend millions of dollars on marketing every year. Traditional direct advertising mediums include television and radio commercials, display advertising in magazines and newspapers, and mass marketing campaigns through direct mail.

The problem with direct marketing is that there is no guarantee your product will sell based on the advertisement, or that you will actually make sales to the consumers you reach. For example, the typical response rate for direct mailings is 3 to 4 percent. This means if you distribute 10,000 flyers to a targeted mailing list, you will generally make 300 to 400 sales.

In recent years, many companies have been turning to marketing mediums that are more interactive than direct advertising and less expensive than personal sales visits. Companies are using telemarketing to reach potential customers by phone. Companies are also using the long, documentary-style commercials called infomercials to provide customers with information about products in a setting that seems interactive. Although telemarketing and infomercials are more interactive than traditional forms of marketing, they also have drawbacks.

Many people view telemarketing as an invasion of their privacy and when telemarketers get through to a person willing to listen, they only have a few minutes to make a sale. Infomercials, like personal sales visits, are not always practical. Infomercials are produced television programs that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce and televise. To produce a successful infomercial, you need the right type of product.

The wonderful thing about Web marketing is that it is right for all types of products and provides a level of interaction with customers that is on a par with personal sales visits. You don't have to spend $100,000 or even $10,000 to reach a global audience. You can publish on the Web for $100 a month or less.

Your Web pages can help you establish connections with new customers and build relationships with your current customers. Web users reach businesses in the world market at the click of a button. One click can take them to a business in London, England. Another click can take them to a business in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The image you present through your Web site is often all the potential customer will know about your business; thus, you can gain a substantial competitive advantage in a global market simply by projecting a strong image.

Web marketing is not a replacement for traditional marketing and is best used in combination with other types of marketing. However, Web marketing can certainly help companies of any size meet their marketing needs. The following sidebars show some comparisons that you might want to consider.


Television Advertising Compared to Setting Up and Maintaining a Commercial Web Site

Option A: Television commercial
Audience: One million television viewers
Cost: $125,000
Breakdown of costs:
Development and production: $50,000
Broadcast expense: $75,000
Duration: 30 seconds
Recurring costs for broadcasting same commercial to similar-sized audience: $75,000

Option B: Web site with hundreds of megabytes of data available
Audience: 10,000 hits per day for 365 days (3.65 million hits)
Cost: $120,000
Breakdown of costs:
Purchase high-capacity Web Server: $20,000
One-year salary for server administrator: $50,000
Professional site design: $20,000
One-year T1 connection to Internet: $25,000
Installation fees for T1: $5,000
Average duration of exposure to advertising: 3-5 minutes/hit
Recurring costs for maintaining Web site: $75,000



Magazine Advertising Compared to Running a Web Site from an Internet Service Producer's (ISP) Web Server

Option A: One-page magazine advertisement
Audience: 100,000 readers
Cost: $18,000
Breakdown of costs:
Development and design: $8,000
Publication expense: $10,000
Average duration of exposure to advertising: 30-60 seconds
Recurring costs for running same advertisement in other magazines: $10,000

Option B: Web site on ISP's Web server with 10 to 20 megabytes of available data
Audience: 2,500 hits per day for 365 days (912,500 hits)
Cost: $11,300
Breakdown of costs:
Professional site design: $10,000
One-year account fee: $1200
Phantom domain set up and registration: $100 (includes $50 annual fee for domain registration)
Average duration of exposure to advertising: 3-5 minutes/hit
Recurring annual costs: $1250 minimum, additional $2-5,000 for site maintenance



Direct Mail Advertising Compared to Producing a Web Publication

Option A: Mass marketing campaign through direct mailings
Audience: 10,000 consumers
Cost: $2000
Breakdown of costs:
10,000 sheets paper: $75
10,000 envelopes: $125
10,000 envelope labels: $50
Printer supplies for laser printer: $100
Mail expense (bulk rate): $1400
Targeted mailing list: $250
Average duration of exposure to advertising: 0-60 seconds
Recurring costs for subsequent mailings: $1750-2000

Option B: Web publication with 23 megabytes of data
Audience: 500 hits per day for 365 days (182,500 hits)
Cost: $650
Breakdown of costs:
One-year account fee: $600
Set up: $50
Average duration of exposure to advertising: 3-5 minutes/hit
Recurring annual costs: $600



Electronic Commerce


Making direct sales on the Web is not only a possibility, it is a reality, and the interactive nature of the Web is largely responsible for making these sales. Businesses all over the world have online order centers. Primarily, their customers use fill-out forms to directly submit orders for processing.


CAUTION

Online ordering has tremendous potential. Dozens of Internet-savvy businesses have increased revenues 200 to 300 percent through online ordering. However, for every success story there are several companies who fail miserably. The primary reason companies don't generate sales online is that they don't take the time to learn about the market. Traditional advertising and marketing schemes simply do not work on the Web.

The company I founded, The Virtual Press Inc., offers many services to businesses wanting to establish a presence on the Web. When I wear my Internet consulting hat, the advice I often offer new businesses is this: Don't measure the success of your Web site by the revenues generated from online orders.

The Web is best viewed as an extremely powerful advertising medium and marketing tool. Television commercials don't generate sales that can be specifically correlated to a single commercial either. You wouldn't pull the plug on your television commercials when 10,000 viewers fail to run out and buy your latest gizmo immediately after the commercial. So why would you pull the plug on your Web site?


Because electronic commerce is in its infancy on the Internet, the mechanism behind direct ordering differs greatly from site to site. A growing number of businesses have set up ways for customers to make secure transfers. In this way, sensitive information, like credit card numbers, is protected by encryption. More businesses will adopt secure transfer methods when true security standards are implemented.

Currently, businesses with online order centers use a variety of methods to secure transfers. Many businesses have customers set up an account with the business before ordering online. Customers are assigned an account number that can be used for online ordering at the customer's convenience. Normally, any orders placed using the account number can only be shipped to the address the customer specified when the account was set up.

Some businesses allow customers to place orders online and then ask them to confirm the order by phone or fax. Customers would typically get an order reference number that they could provide to a sales representative or automated voice mail system along with their credit card number. Because the customer would have already provided all the essential information online, the whole confirmation process by phone or fax would typically take less than a minute.

Spreading the Word About Your Ideas


Often the focus of Web publishing is on the business benefits, yet the Web is much more than a place to conduct marketing and advertising. You don't have to publish on the Web for profit. For every business publishing on the Web to increase the bottom line, someone somewhere is publishing on the Web simply to spread the word about his or her ideas.

The Web is an open repository for information. Research institutes, universities, colleges, nonprofit organizations, and individual Web publishers freely publish information. One of the primary reasons to Web publish is to gain recognition for your ideas, research findings, and projects. Yet, you can Web publish simply because you want to share information and ideas with others. Knowledge is power and is the key to freedom for all people of the world.

Spreading the word about ideas you have published on the Web is easy, and more importantly, free. Dozens of Web sites specialize in indexing and cataloging information that is available on the Web. Some of these sites maintain specialized lists of popular, new, and cool documents. Other sites maintain comprehensive lists.

Web users rely on these databases to find resources on the Web. To add your documents to a list, all you have to do is register your documents. This generally means filling out a form and submitting it online, which takes only a few minutes. The key information you enter into a fill-out form includes your name, business address, e-mail address, uniform resource locator (URL), and a brief description of your document. You can find a comprehensive list of catalog sites in Chapter 41, "Designing and Publishing a Web Site."

Features of the Web


The Web is the most dynamic medium you will ever publish in. Using the rich features of the Web, you have virtually limitless possibilities for publishing your ideas.

Much has changed since the early days of the Web. Although the first Web publications were largely textual in nature and limited in multimedia features, today's Web publications are highly graphical and rich in multimedia features. Using the facilities of the Web, you can easily incorporate images into your publication.

Web publishers use images to convey their messages in ways more powerful than text alone. FrontPage features support for over a dozen image formats. Because FrontPage is a WYWIWYG authoring tool, all images you use in your publications can be viewed directly in the FrontPage Editor.

Interactivity is a key ingredient for making connections with readers. Highly interactive documents invite readers to become participants. When your readers are actively involved, they are no longer simply watching as you unfold ideas in page after page. They are deciding how they want to unfold the story and are choosing their own path through it. Although the Web is not the only medium you can use to create interactive publications, it is the most versatile and least expensive publishing medium available.

Creating multimedia documents for use on the Web is easier than you might think. In fact, the Web is the easiest publishing medium to create multimedia documents in. At the Web publisher's fingertips is the world's greatest multimedia library—the Internet and all its archives. Not only does this library have thousands of multimedia clips that you can obtain for free or for a small fee, it is complete with a multimedia developer's toolkit that you can obtain for free or for a small fee as well.

As if free clips and tools weren't enough to persuade you that Web publishing is your best choice for creating multimedia publications, the wonderful thing about Web technology is that it is advancing at an explosive pace. Already you can create publications with animation, soundtracks, and video without needing any special tools at all.

Summary


Navigating the Web is easy if you understand the principles of hypertext linking and URLs. Although hypertext references can be text- or graphics-based, they are all defined by URLs that specify the path to the resources to be accessed and retrieved.

The most exciting time to publish on the Web is right now. You have a ground floor opportunity to be a part of something truly wonderful and for once, it isn't going to cost you a bundle to join. People all around the world are publishing on the Web for fun, profit—and because they can.

The Web is the most versatile medium you will ever publish in. Web publishers have proven time and time again that there are no real limits to what can be published on the Web. Not only are they publishing every imaginable type of document that has ever been created, they are doing it successfully, and they are helping to build the most powerful information system in the world: the World Wide Web. Best of all, with FrontPage, publishing on the Web has never been easier. So, what are you waiting for?

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