by William Robert Stanek
Creating and publishing your first Web page served as a starting point. The key to establishing a Web presence and building a name for yourself in cyberspace is to create a killer Web site that will stop Web surfers in their tracks. To do this, you
must learn the basics of organizing, creating, and publishing a Web site where you can feature a collection of dozens or hundreds of pages. By following the steps outlined in this chapter, you can become one of the thousands of individuals successfully
publishing in cyberspace.
The difference between a successful site and an unsuccessful site comes from attention to detail, good content, and good organization. Many books on the Internet and Web publishing discuss theories, cover key subjects, show basic examples, but rarely
follow a practical hands-on approach to Web publishing. Books without practical hands-on examples can leave you wondering where to start, how to start, and what to do when you do finally manage to start. This chapter follows a hands-on approach for
creating a Web site. Through practical, step-by-step examples, you learn how to create, organize, and publish your own Web site. The chapter goes on to tell you how you can publicize your site, a critical yet all too often neglected part of Web publishing.
If you don't tell people your site exists, no one will know and no one will visit.
The following list provides the nine steps for creating, publishing, and publicizing your Web site:
You build a Web site one step at a time, and the first step is simply defining what you want to publish on the Web. The basic components of a Web site are the pages you link together. These pages can contain text, graphics, and multimedia. The type of
information you can publish on the Web has only the limits set by your imagination.
You can create a site that has many features, such as community services, product samples, and product information. For example, the Web site I created for The Virtual Press has the following features:
Your Web site can be a commercial venture or simply an adventure. No strict rules say that you must publish either for fun or for profit. Your site can be for profit and still provide the Internet community with a useful resource containing information
about you, your company, your products, and your services. Your site can serve as strictly informational with no sales information whatsoever, providing the Internet community with a fabulous free resource. You might desire to show the world that you have
definitive expertise in a particular subject area, which might ultimately sell yourself, your ideas, or your company to consumers.
You should carefully consider what you want to publish on the Web. You can start by creating a list of your creative projects, the plans for your business, your favorite hobbies, and your areas of interest or expertise. You can use this list to help
you decide areas you might want to Web publish in. To help you manage the list, you might want to use the FrontPage To Do List. Each task in your list should focus on a specific aspect that you want to include in the site, such as a product information
page or a resource page in your area of expertise.
Competing in a global marketplace requires planning from day one. Before you start building your Web site, you must establish objectives and define what you hope to gain from your Web presence. Establishing an identity for yourself and your company in
cyberspace does not come easily. You must use your skills and ideas to sell yourself and your company to the world.
To establish a presence on tomorrow's Web, you must adopt a vision for success focused on global outreach. At the heart of this vision, you should have a strategy similar to the one you developed in the preceding chapter. This strategy should focus on:
You must create a friendly Web site that continues to grow and change. The size of your site, however, won't sell your ideas and products. Your vision and ability to find your place in the world community will draw interest. You want to consider two
major design concepts immediately:
Whether you are thinking on a grand scale or a small scale, the organization of your information is the most important design issue in setting up a Web site. Carefully consider how you want to organize your site. The power of Web publishing is that you
can seamlessly integrate complex presentations. Behind those complex presentations are dozens, possibly hundreds, of individual pages that can contain text, images, and multimedia. The result can either be an unfriendly place to visit and a nightmare to
maintain, or if organized properly, a friendly place to visit and a joy to maintain.
FrontPage has built-in features to help you create a manageable infrastructure at your Web site. Whenever you create a new Web, you are actually creating subdirectories on your file system. Breaking down your site into several Webs makes the site as a
whole more manageable. Instead of having to deal with 1,000 files in a single enormous Web, you would break the site down into several Webs of 200 to 300 files each. Each Web would contain the pages for a particular area of your Web, such as your customer
service area.
Another reason for organizing what otherwise would be a single enormous Web into several smaller Webs is that FrontPage works best with Webs that are less than 500 pages. When your Web contains more than 500 pages, there will be a noticeable delay
whenever you try to open, close, or update the Web. For example, one of the Webs I used with FrontPage during stress testing of the software contained over 650 files. My 133MhZ Pentium with 24MB RAM chugged and churned for an average of 45 seconds when I
tried to open the Web.
Your site's Root Web should contain pages and files that pertain to the overall site or to the organization sponsoring the site. The best way to set up the base directory is to use an index or default page that pertains to the site as a whole. This
default page serves as your home page and will most likely be the first page visitors to your site see. The address URL for your base directory usually looks something like this:
http://www.your_company.com/
or
http://www.your_service_provider.com/~you
In both cases, a browser accessing the URL would display the default page for your site. You will find a default page called index.htm in the RootWeb used on FrontPage. You should replace this document with your own. If you use ISP's Web server with a
virtual domain or an account with Web publishing privileges, the RootWeb is normally published to a directory called public_html, which appears under your user directory. Keep in mind that the name of the default page might
vary according to the server software of the ISP. If the filenames index.htm or index.html do not work for you, ask your ISP to tell you the name of the default page for the server.
NOTE
If the public_html directory was not created by your service provider, you can easily create it. On a UNIX or DOS-based system, type the command:
mkdir public_htmlThe preceding command will make a directory called public_html for you. Before you type the command, you should ensure that you are in your user directory. One way to do this on a UNIX system is to type the command cd on a line by itself as follows:
cd
Your site's page and file structure can play a key role in helping you organize your ideas. Carefully consider how the outside world will regard the structure of your site. You can organize different types of information into Webs. You can organize
your site into Webs that pertain to the projects or publications featured at the site. You can also organize the files within your directories into a logically named structure.
Each file that pertains to a particular presentation could use an element of the project's name to relate it to the project. Even if you plan to put individual projects in their own Webs, naming remains important, especially when you plan to publish
multiple projects that are closely related. A book publisher who planned to publish extracts of her books on the Web would not want to name the parts of the first book:
page1.html
page2.html
page3.html
or
chapter1.html
chapter2.html
chapter3.html
A better naming scheme relates the parts of the project to the project itself, which helps avoid confusion when publishing additional projects and makes the site easier to maintain. Imagine a site with a dozen books that has identical names for the
pages of the publications. What happens when the new employee you've hired moves pages 12 to 27 for your third book into the Web reserved for your first book?
To relate the parts of the project to the whole, you could prepend an abbreviation for the project or part of the project's title to the file names. For example, FrontPage 97 Unleashed's title could have the abbreviation
FPU. You could then prepend the abbreviation to the component parts of the project as follows:
fpuch1index.html
fpuch1pg1.html
fpuch1pg2.html
fpuch1pg3.html
fpuch1title.gif
A Web site functions as much more than pages linked together. It serves as your home on the Web, and as such, it should contain doorways that reduce communications barriers and help spread your ideas to a global audience. The first doorway you want to
establish on the Web is the front door to your Web site, your home page. As the first thing most visitors to your site will see, your home page should seem friendly and inviting.
Creating a friendly and inviting home page involves much more than hanging up a virtual welcome mat. It involves creating a well-organized page that reflects who you are and what you plan to do on the Web. The page should follow a sound design that
provides an overview of what the site has available. You can present an overview of content in many ways, but making it a sneak preview of what visitors to the site can expect to find can provide the best way to organize the overview.
Your sneak preview can tell the world that you are dull and unimaginative if you have a home page organized like the table of contents you would find in a print publication. A home page organized in such a pure linear fashion might seem like a logical
way to go, but generally this design has only first-time visitors in mind. Although you want to attract new visitors, you also want to attract repeat visitors. If McDonald's attracted only one-time customers, they would have never sold billions of
hamburgers. The key in business, even with a not-for-profit business, is building a customer base, and you cannot build a customer base if your customers only visit your site once. Thus, your sneak preview should convince users that they want to add this
place to their hot list.
Designing a site with content for first-time and repeat visitors remains extremely important in creating an inviting place to visit. Yet, you also want your house on the Web to feel like a friendly place to visit. The friendliest sites on the Web
consider the user's time and present information in the right level of detail based on your location within the site. Many houses exist on the Web that I visit. Some sites I visit often because they seem friendly, useful, or entertaining. Other sites I
visit once and only once because they feel unfriendly and do not respect my time, or anyone else's. These sites often have the 50,000-byte graphics doing the greeting instead of the Web publisher. Anyone can create monstrous graphics and pitch them at the
world, but it takes practice and skill to obtain a working balance between efficacy and grandeur.
The design of your site does not stop at your home page. The best sites on the Web have many special areas or mini-sites within the site. These mini-sites can be the star attractions, utilizing features that constantly change and grow. My house on the
Web at tvp.com is no exception. The design of the site has changed many times, but the features always had a design that kept first-time and repeat visitors in mind.
In addition to the community service area developed in Chapter 41, "Designing and Publishing a Home Page," some areas you might want to add to your first Web site include:
Through step-by-step examples, the remainder of this chapter builds these pages. You can use similar pages to form the basis of your Web site and save hours of work.
This section explores advanced techniques for linking the pages of your site. Page linking is extremely important. The more navigation mechanisms you provide within the site, the easier time visitors will have finding their way around.
Your site should follow a flowing design with multiple routes through the information infrastructure you have created. Readers should have the capability to advance from overview pages to more detailed pages within your site. They should also have a
way back to your home page and should be able to start a new search from any level within the site.
Realize from the start that the Web structure enables users to enter your site at any level, and you will have a head start on many Web publishers. You can easily come across a Web page that gives users no indication of where the page is within the
information infrastructure at the site. The worst of these pages become dead-end streets, with no way to return to the site's home page and no way to access any other information at the site. Finding a dead-end street on the Web becomes frustrating to say
the least; however, dead-end streets occur because the creators lacked foresight. They either thought that all visitors would access the site starting from the front door, or they just never stopped to think about the consequences of creating such a page.
The key to building a friendly and inviting home page rests in good linking. When I created The Virtual Press site, I considered the navigation mechanisms I would provide to readers very carefully. Although the site has changed many times over the
years and has grown from a few dozen pages to a few thousand pages, the attention to user friendliness and ease of navigation has remained a constant. The current version of The Virtual Press home page is shown in Figure 42.1.
Figure 42.1. The Virtual Press Web site begins with a home page.
As you can see from Figure 42.1, the home page is broken down into three frames. You set up frames using the Frames Wizard. As discussed in Chapter 14, "Using Frames and the Frames Wizard," the contents of each frame are in a separately
defined HTML document. When you create a frame-enhanced page, you should always create a separate version of the page for browsers that do not support frames. The Frames Wizard lets you specify this page as an alternate page URL.
The left side frame is used to display TVP's logo, which is animated using client-pull technology. To create the animation, I rotated the axis of the logo image and saved each rotation as a different image. When these images are linked together in a
sequence, they form an animation.
Client pull enables you to update documents at specified time intervals. With client pull, the server sends data to the client. When it is time to update the data, the client browser opens a new connection to the server and either retrieves new data or
refreshes the current data. Afterward, the client closes the connection and waits until it is time to update the data again. FrontPage allows you to create documents that use client pull. You do this by setting a Meta variable with a refresh interval and
the URL to the page to load after the time interval has passed. The refresh interval is specified as the number of seconds to wait before refreshing the current page or retrieving a specified page.
To set a Meta variable for any document open in the FrontPage Editor, select Page Properties from the File menu. In the Page Properties dialog box, click on the Custom tab. Next, click on the Add button in the System Variables section of the Custom
tab. In the Name field of the dialog box shown in Figure 42.2, enter the keyword Refresh; then in the Value field, enter the time interval followed immediately by a semicolon, a space, and then the
keyword URL. The value you set for the URL keyword must be the fully specified URL to the document or file you want to retrieve.
Figure 42.2. Using client pull by setting Meta variables.
If you want to continue the animation, the document specified with the URL keyword should also have a Refresh Meta variable set. When you reach the last document in the animation sequence, you can make the animation loop
infinitely by simply setting the URL keyword to the first document in the animation sequence. Here are sample values for the Refresh Meta variable in an animation sequence with eight documents that repeats infinitely:
10; URL=http://www.tvpress.com/doc2.html
10; URL=http://www.tvpress.com/doc3.html
10; URL=http://www.tvpress.com/doc4.html
10; URL=http://www.tvpress.com/doc5.html
10; URL=http://www.tvpress.com/doc6.html
10; URL=http://www.tvpress.com/doc7.html
10; URL=http://www.tvpress.com/doc1.html
Because I knew some users would get tired of the animation, I designed a mechanism for stopping the animation. Clicking on the logo image causes the animation to stop. When the animation is stopped, you can click on the logo again to restart it. Figure
42.3 depicts how the documents are linked together. To use a similar technique in your home page, link the logo to a document that contains the logo but does not have any Meta variables. This second document can then be linked back to the first document or
file in your animation sequence. In this way, users can start and stop the animation by clicking on the logo.
Figure 42.3. Linking an animation that can be stopped and started.
The main frame contains the eyecatching front door to TVP's order center. Each book between the bookends is a clickable image that will take the reader to a key section of TVP's order center. Although these graphics appear large on-screen, they do not
hog bytes. Under the images, a mini text menu provides readers with an alternate route to the order center. A text menu ensures that readers with a text-only browser can easily navigate the site. It also provides easy access to the order center for readers
who might have turned off the graphics-loading capability of their browser.
Using the main frame's scroll bar, you can view additional sections of the page. One section on this page tells visitors about upcoming events at the site.
Informing visitors of upcoming events is extremely important. For large or complex Web sites, you might want to have a "What's New" page. A "What's New" page provides a great way to inform visitors of recent changes. Repeat visitors
to your site will appreciate the effort because a "What's New" page makes it easier for them to use your Web site efficiently. You help them find new information faster, and ultimately, they return the favor by revisiting your friendly Web site.
As shown in Figure 42.4, the final section of the main frame provides contact and copyright information. You should always provide a point of contact for questions, technical or otherwise, about the site. Ideally, the contact name is linked to a mailto
reference that lets visitors easily send e-mail to the point of contact. When you create links in the FrontPage Editor, mailto is one of the protocol options in the World Wide Web tab of the Create Hyperlink dialog box.
You should also provide a copyright notice to the pages of your site to tell the world that the site is an intellectual property, and as such, has protection under U.S. and international copyright laws. Instead of displaying complete copyright
information on every page, you might want to create a link to a copyright page.
Figure 42.4. Always provide contact and copyright information.
The bottom frame contains a text-based menu that functions as the primary navigation mechanism to the key areas of the site. Figure 42.5 shows this menu in detail. Although I could have designed a cool image map to replace the text-based menu, I
decided not to do this. Minimizing loading time whenever possible serves as an important concept in Web page design, especially when you consider that most Web users have a 14,400-bps modem. If your site has many attractions, you should consider using a
text-based menu as the primary navigation mechanism.
Figure 42.5. Creating a text-based menu section for your frame-enhanced home page.
Your home on the Web should have many rooms. Filling those rooms with wonderful content doesn't always happen easily, especially when you have to choose which room to fill first. A new site should build its rooms a little at a time. You should start by
building a solid framework for the site that tells the world who you are and what you plan to do. Show visitors you possess dedication to the development of a wonderful resource, and they will return to see the progress of your site even if it is in the
early stages of development.
This section shows you how to build two more rooms for your site:
Because these pages are part of the corporate background and history, they are placed in the RootWeb. As you develop the areas of your Web site, keep in mind that you should create separate Webs for each key area. This will make your Web site more
manageable.
All Web publishersfrom well-known national or international companies to individual business peopleshould take the time to tell the world about their businesses. Too many sites on the Web offer products or services to the world and forget
to tell the world who they are and what they represent. Your business background page provides essential background on what your site represents to the Internet community. This page can provide the background and history of your business. It can also
provide an overview of products and services you currently offer or plan to offer.
Your business background page could contain four parts:
Your background page could begin with an overview that summarizes the background of your company or your business efforts in a few paragraphs. The summary should highlight the key points of your business and could focus on the following elements of
your business:
Figure 42.6 shows the overview section on TVP's background page. The summary stays short and points out the corporate mission, goals, and objectives. Your summary should also be short and to the point.
Figure 42.6. A background page could begin with an overview.
Showing the world you are serious about business can become the purpose of the next section of your page. The design and content of the page tells the reader a great deal about who you are. You want to show the world that you are a professional. You
also want to show the world you feel serious about business. If you are presenting a service to readers, you want to demonstrate why they should use your company and not one of the other companies they could jump to at the click of their mouse button.
Showing that you know your subject area and have studied the market helps make your case.
The Virtual Press provides services to Internet-smart consumers and businesses. Figure 42.7 and Figure 42.8 demonstrate that we have studied the market.
Figure 42.7. Show the world you mean business and are a professional.
Figure 42.8. Demonstrate your expertise and business savvy.
After demonstrating your expertise and business savvy, you should provide readers with a list of your products or services. Ideally, your list will contain links to pages with detailed information that readers could access if they wanted more
information. If you are just starting out, however, this spot can serve as an excellent place to tell readers what they can expect to see in the coming months. No Web site gets built overnight and readers know this.
Figure 42.9 shows the product and service summary for TVP. The summary appears as three lists. The first list pertains to books TVP publishes. The second list pertains to services TVP offers. The third list pertains to community service areas TVP
maintains.
Figure 42.9. A Product and service summary.
The way you complete the page becomes as important as how you start the page. Don't create a dead-end for readers. At the very least, provide them with a way to easily return to your home page. Finish your background page with address and contact
information, as shown in Figure 42.10.
Figure 42.10. Always include a way to return to your home page.
Just as Web publishers sometimes neglect to tell the world about the background of their business, they also sometimes neglect to tell the world about themselves. Telling the world about yourself is extremely important, especially if you offer a
service or product to Internet users. Again, the number of sites on the Web that offer services or products to Internet users and then fail to provide adequate credentials still seems amazing.
Why should anyone listen to your advice on rebuilding classic cars? Perhaps they should because you have worked as an auto mechanic for 20 years, rebuilt hundreds of cars, and won dozens of awards. No one will know these facts unless you tell them. The
mechanic's background page could show a picture or contain a link to a picture of every award-winning car featured at the site.
NOTE
As you develop the page, keep in mind that a reader who visits your business background page might not visit your personal background page and vice versa. Consequently, you probably want to build some overlap into the material you cover on both pages.
Your background page could contain four main sections:
Your background page should begin with a summary of your personal and professional life. You might want to keep the section short, usually three to five paragraphs will do. Project a positive image by touching on the high points of your life and
career, not the low points.
This place can help bring down the barriers between you and the reader. You can do this by adding a few tidbits of personal information that shows the reader the world isn't so large after all. You, the publisher, have a family, interests, and hobbies
to match your ambitions and dreams.
Figure 42.11 shows the first section of my personal background page. To make the page as interactive as possible, the key links to other pages at the site appear in the summary. I also provided a link with a mailto reference so that readers can easily
send me an e-mail message. Try to work links into your list as well; the more interactive you make your page, the better.
Figure 42.11. Show the world your personal side.
After you tell the world about yourself, tell the world about your plans, goals, and objectives for the Web site. These plans should serve as an overview and only provide as much or as little information as you feel comfortable providing. Figure 42.12
shows this section of the background page.
Figure 42.12. Tell the world a bit about your plans.
After telling the world about your plans, back those plans up with your credentials. Here you should publish an electronic version of your resume or simply outline the milestones in your professional career. A great way to present your resume is as a
series of bulleted lists, as shown in Figure 42.13.
Figure 42.13. Add your credentials with a Web version of your resume.
Whenever possible, work links into your resume section as well. If you worked for IBM, then add a link to IBM's home page in the section of your resume that outlines your job at IBM. The education section of your resume also provides another good place
to add links.
The final section of the personal background page features contact and address information. Although this information might appear on your business background page, you should include the information here as well. As you can see from Figure 42.14, the
page ends with a link back to the home page and provides copyright information as well.
Figure 42.14. Finish the page with links and contact information.
NOTE
Many Web publishers use the address element as a way of signing the page. Text within the address element usually displays in italics. As shown in the preceding example, addresses are usually preceded with a horizontal rule and are often one of the last elements on the page.
Now that you have several finished pages and the makings of a wonderful site, you will want to test the site before you publish it. Make testing your Web site easier by checking the accuracy of your information one page at a time. Follow the advice on
proofing and testing your pages discussed in Chapter 41, "Designing and Publishing a Home Page."
You can test the links used in your pages using the FrontPage Explorer's verify hyperlinks feature. Don't forget that you have to individually test the RootWeb and all the Webs in your site.
TIP
Browsers can change your window to the Web and different browsers might display your page in different ways. Always test features at your site with multiple browsers. I typically use three different browsers to test pages: Lynx, NCSA Mosaic, and Internet Explorer. Lynx, a text-only browser, can test features for readers with a text-only browser. NCSA Mosaic, a graphics-capable browser, tests images and features for the average reader. Internet Explorer, an advanced browser, supports its own unique extensions, Netscape extensions, and HTML 3.2 extensions. Internet Explorer can test the advanced features at the site.
Most Web publishers don't have their own server and must use an Internet Service Provider's Web server. When you use someone else's server, you have two publishing options. You can use the Publishing Wizard as discussed in Chapter 40, "Designing
and Publishing A Home Page," or you can export your documents from FrontPage and transfer them yourself.
While publishing your new site on an external server, you might encounter problems that you did not encounter when publishing your first page. Sometimes you just can't access your pages. The first thing you should do is to make sure all files are where
they should be. Most of the time, HTML pages and associated files must be in very specific directories, such as the public_html directory, for the files to be accessed. If your files appear in the proper directory and you still
can't access them, check the following:
All operating systems flag files and directories with permissions. The permissions on files and directories are very important, especially on UNIX systems where the default file permissions are set according to an involved permission set. If you have
problems accessing the file, check permissions on both the file and the directory where the file resides.
NOTE
On a UNIX system, a directory must be executable by the user to be readable. Typically, you want permissions on your public UNIX directories and files set so that users can access your files, but cannot write to the directory. The command you would use to put your files and directories in this mode is chmod 705 filename chmod 705 directory_name Or chmod 755 filename chmod 755 directory_name
NOTE
On a DOS or Windows system, valid modes for files and directories include System Hidden Read-only Executable.If you have problems accessing files and directories, make sure the files are at least readable by the user. Your files and directories should not be hidden.
The file extension you use should match the file type and format. Web servers can use the extension to determine what type of file you are trying to access. Web browsers can use the extension to determine what type of file you are retrieving and the
action to take on the file. If you use a UNIX, Macintosh, or Amiga server, your HTML pages should have the extension .html. While your UNIX, Macintosh, or Amiga server might be configured to recognize the extension of .htm as a
valid HTML document, it is often easiest to avoid a potential hassle and use the extension .html. If you use a Windows-based server, your HTML pages should have the extension .htm.
Most Web server software wants directories with HTML documents to have an index file. Servers will generally display the index when a user specifies a directory name instead of a filename and if the index file doesn't exist, you might experience
problems. The index file is sometimes called index.html, but not always. On a Macintosh server running MacHTTP or WebStar, each folder should have an index file called default.html.
NOTE
The lack of an index file can sometimes represent a security problem because most servers will display a list of the contents of a directory if no index document exists. If you are unable to use the filename index.html or index.htm, contact your Web adminstrator.
You've published your Web site. You have a wonderful Web site or at least a start on what will become a wonderful Web site. Now you have to tell the world about it. In fact, you must tell the world about it. On the Internet, no road maps exist
and unless you tell people you have created a new site, no one will find out. Thankfully, dozens of Web sites specialize in spreading the word about Web resources. These sites maintain databases that Web users can search or meander through using links to
specific categories.
The good news is you can register your site with most of these sites for free. All you have to do is to tell the site where they can find you and what to expect.
In the past year, over a dozen new databases have appeared on the Web and soon dozens more will be available. Tracking down all these databases individually to ensure maximum exposure to the millions of Web users becomes difficult and time-consuming to
say the least. Instead of spending an entire day registering your site, one solution would be to register your site only at the major databases, but then the question becomes which major databases. Here is a list of the major databases and the URL to their
submission page:
Apollo: http://apollo.co.uk/
EINet Galaxy: http://galaxy.einet.net/cgi-bin/annotate
HomeCom Global Village: http://www.homecom.com/global/gc_entry.html
Jump Station: http://js.stir.ac.uk/jsbin/submit
Lycos: http://lycos.cs.cmu.edu/lycos-register.html
New Rider's WWW Yellow Pages: http://www.mcp.com/newriders/wwwyp/submit.html
Starting Point: http://www.stpt.com/util/submit.html
Web Crawler: http://webcrawler.com/WebCrawler/SubmitURLS.html
What's New Too: http://newtoo.manifest.com/WhatsNewToo/submit.html
Whole Internet Catalog: http://gnn.com/gnn/forms/comments.html
World Wide Web Worm: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/home/mcbryan/WWWWadd.html
World Wide Web Yellow Pages: http://www.yellow.com/
Yahoo: http://www.yahoo.com/bin/add
Another solution for registering your site with a database is to use a site that acts as a pointer to the databases. Pointer sites provide a way of automating the registration process and using the fill-out form provided at the site, you can submit
your information to multiple databases at the touch of a button. Currently, there are two primary pointer sites: Scott Banister's Submit-It page and HomeCom's Pointers to Pointers page.
The Submit-It page appears shown in Figure 42.15. A great thing about the Submit-It page is that all the database sites you see listed at the top of Figure 42.14 are automatically selected to receive your submission. You can tell the site is selected
by the X in the box associated with the database. If you don't want to register with a certain site, you would click the box to deselect the site and the X would disappear.
After you complete the online form partially depicted in Figure 42.16, you can automatically register your site with more than a dozen Web databases. The key information you enter into this form includes your name, business address, e-mail address,
site URL, site title, and a brief description of your site.
Figure 42.15. Use Submit-It to register your site with more than a dozen databases.
Figure 42.16. A fill-out form at Submit-It makes submission easy.
The Pointers to Pointers page appears shown in Figure 42.17. This page has an organization very different from the organization of the Submit-It page. Dozens of large, small, and specialized databases appear in a comprehensive list. Some databases are
presented with a checkbox that you must select individually to place an automated submission. Other databases, particularly the specialized databases, are provided only as links that you must visit individually to submit your information.
HomeCom's page features a fill-out form for automatic submission to databases you have selected. This form appears partially depicted in Figure 42.18. The key information you enter into this form includes your name, business address, e-mail address,
phone number, fax number, site URL, site title, and a brief description of your site.
Figure 42.17. Use Pointers to Pointers to register your site with large, small, and specialized databases.
Figure 42.18. The Pointers to Pointers submission form.
Creating, publishing, and publicizing your first Web site remains easy if you follow the nine steps outlined in this chapter. If you follow the advice the examples present, your first Web site could have as many as four pages. These include your home
page, business background page, personal background page, and the community service page developed in the previous chapter. Creating a Web site involves much more than creating pages; it involves developing a strategy and focusing on sound design concepts.
To attract visitors, your pages seem friendly and inviting. One way to ensure your pages feel friendly is to design them with both first-time and repeat visitors in mind. You should also ensure that your site has no dead-ends. Dead-ends become
frustrating and can easily be avoided by following a sound page design that includes adequate linking. You can use links to create image and text menus, to keep visitors informed, and to provide a feedback mechanism for readers. You can also use links to
ensure that all your pages lead somewhere, even if it is only back to your home page.