Picking a font - be
careful what fonts you use on your webpage. If you code a
fancy font on your page, and the visitor's computer
doesn't have it installed, their computer will pick a
replacement font that may not look as good and ruin the
effect you were going for.
Using tables - can sometimes
be very useful to help organize your webpages. Check
out these ideas and links to see if tables would be helpful
to you. Or you may want to try
Cascading Style Sheets
(CSS).
Title Tags - are an
important part of any web page. They tell the
visitor's browser and also search engines what you call your
page. It's often used by search engines as the name on
the link on a list of sites when someone searches.
Check out the link for more information on adding these to
your site.
Meta Tags - are an
important part of any web page. They tell the
visitor's browser and also search engines what type of page
you have. Meta tags include such
things as Description, Keywords, Author, ProgID, Content-type, etc
Check out the link for more information on adding these to
your site.
Graphics/Images -
Putting images on your site is expected, but finding or
scanning them is a challenge. And there are a
couple ways you can make them better for your visitors, even
if you use graphics made by someone else..
Adding your contact information
- you definitely want people to know how to contact you.
However, there are some tricks to putting your e-mail out
there so that spammers don't harvest your address and send
you a zillion spam messages.
Putting
navigation on your page - is a must. Once you
have more than one page developed, you need to think of how
your visitors can have an easy way to move around your site.
Adding a Site Map - can
be a good thing. If you can't fit all your pages on
your navigation panel, a site map is a good way to list all
the pages on your site in one place for visitors' ease in
finding what they're looking for.
Adding Last Date Modified -
it's not really necessary, but sometimes is helpful.
Visitors can tell how current the information is and you can
see the last time you updated your pages.
Putting a Counter on your site
- it's not absolutely necessary and it's totally a personal preference
whether you want to be able to see how many people have
visited.
Creating a Guestbook -
Want visitors to be able to leave a message for you and/or
others? Here are the directions directly from RootsWeb
and they're very good. FrontPage users note:
paste the code into Notepad first to strip before re-copying
from Notepad and pasting into HTML view (otherwise some of
the code will change and not work).
Using Mailmerge and Forms - You may
have several reasons you want to put a form on your website. Mailmerge is the way to get those form inputs
e-mailed to you. Elsi's tutorial is great for this and
she also includes the RootsWeb links to further information.
FrontPage users note:
paste the code into Notepad first to strip before re-copying
from Notepad and pasting into HTML view (otherwise some of
the code will change and not work).
Adding music - Elsi's
site has great info on adding music. Music
is definitely a matter of preference, with strong opinions
on both sides. If you do add music to your site, make
sure that you give viewers the option to turn it on and off.
They may be listening to their favorite CD while surfing and
will hate it when you take over their music. You don't
want another researcher to leave your site and never make
contact with you.
Including a Search Box - If
you have a large website, you may want to give visitors a
way to search through your site to find what they're looking
for.
Link to your WorldConnect database
- If you put your GEDCOM onto WorldConnect, here's
how to add a link/search box on your website directly to your WC
database.
Adding a RootsWeb logo to your site
- Instructions for adding a RootsWeb logo to show
appreciation for RootsWeb allowing you to post your site.
Using Javascripts - can add some
special things to your site. However, be aware that
some people have Java turned OFF on their browsers, so
you'll have to think about what you're doing.
Server Side Includes (SSI)
- are a way to include the information from one file into
one or more webpages (I use it for my menus at left of every
page). Very easy to code on each page and any updates
you make to the original file will show automatically
everywhere it's included.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
- are not something I've used myself, but there's a lot of
buzz out there about how useful they are, so check out the
links here.
