effective site management

I color="#000000" size="2" face="Arial">n DQ March 31, 1998, we showed you how to design

your own web site. Learning how to do so is an iterative process, comparable in many ways

to programming-you experiment till you get what suits your requirements.

After setting up our own site

, we have learnt quite a bit about the nitty gritties,

which, unfortunately, had not fructified sufficiently enough to warrant explanation at the

time we set up our site. However, today, we have learnt a lot more, and these details are

given below.

using a good ftp tool color="#000000" size="2" face="Arial">



We have earlier spoken about how useful FTP Explorer was. Another tool, called WS_FTP is
even better for site administrators because of its capability to easily upload information

to your site. While FTP Explorer remains our favorite choice for downloading files from a

plethora of FTP sites, we have found WS_FTP invaluable when it comes to uploading files to

our own site. It has support for changing Unix file attributes (chmod) that make it

essential if you are planning to use CGI scripts. Pick up your own copy at href="http://www.ipswitch.com">www.ipswitch.com.

the webmaster's resources color="#000000" size="2" face="Arial">



As a Web Master, you need a great deal of resources like attractive visuals, cute buttons,
jazzy icons etc. One good site is , which contains a lot

of stuff for Web Masters. Even if you feel that your site is complete in all respects, we

recommend that you visit this site-you never know what you may find useful there!

At Bignosebird, you can pick up some really

cool stuff like CGI-BIN scripts, MIDI files to add sound and pep to your site, and oodles

of graphics. There are also a lot of tips and tricks, which the newbie Web Master (forgive

the oxymoron) will find useful.

But remember, don't get carried away by all

that you see. Sure, you may be keen on littering your site with oodles of graphics and

plenty of sound, but don't overdo it. Remember, bandwidth is one thing that is in short

supply for most users, and you may end up putting off a lot of your target audience by

using 100 kB graphics which tend to take forever to load.

publicity is the key color="#000000" size="2" face="Arial">



You want a popular site buddy, well, you gotta advertise it around. For effective site
promotion, you need to be endowed with a passion for publicity that rivals a vampire's

blood lust. No, you don't necessarily have to pay millions of bucks and take a banner ad

at some site-you need to register yourself with a lot of search engines and other

directory resources.

A good place to begin is

, an excellent document which outlines tons of

places where you can get registered. The ideal thing to do is to get registered with

everybody who meets the context of what your site talks about. For example, since the Dr A

Kula site primarily concerns humor, we went around and registered with a lot of sites for

humor and general information.

tag gag bag size="2" face="Arial">



A lot of search engines use either your title or your META TAG to index you and provide a
link with key words. Therefore, make sure that you choose the right key words to send

surfers scurrying to your site with gusto. On our site, we have around 18 key words.

Another important thing to do is to ensure

that the first few lines of text on your homepage properly describe what your site is all

about. On our Dr A Kula site, even a glance through the front page will tell you that we

are talking about the funny adventures of the dumbest one-fanged vampire in the Known

Universe.

the ring of truth color="#000000" size="2" face="Arial">



Webrings are contraptions which allow a lot of like-minded sites
with a common theme to come together. One such site which we have joined is called the

Humor Webring. All you need to do is join an appropriate Webring and then follow emailed

instructions, which will normally tell you to put a link to the Webring. This is useful as

it helps in increasing your publicity, besides giving you a warm sense of community and

belonging on the cold unexplored frontiers of the Web.

BALAJI N