A Webmaster’s Toolkit and Tricks

Written by Jason OConnor


Continued from page 1

** Toolkit Item 3 – WS FTP ** This is a great tool for moving your files back and forth from your pc to your server. Dreamweaver has a feature that allows you to connect directly to your server to download and upload html files and images for your website. But I prefer to have more control over moving files back and forth from my local pc to my server that houses my website. Therefore, I use WS FTP (FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol). This tool enables me to move my files with ease and with complete control. Get it at http://www.tucows.com.

FTP Trick: This is more of a suggestion than a trick. To make changes in your html files, always downloadrepparttar latest file(s) from your website’s server down to your local machine first. Then make your changes, edits or updates, save your work, and uploadrepparttar 132339 file(s) back to your server. In other words, do your entire html editing on your local machine and uploadrepparttar 132340 latest version after your editing back to your live server. Try to avoid editing files directly on your server. This methodology will help ensure that your site visitors don’t see files ‘in progress’ or errors.

** Toolkit Item 4 – WebTrends ** This tool is vital for anyone wishing to conduct intelligent e-marketing campaigns and has interest in improving one’s website. It allows you to analyze your website statistics. It tells you how many people visited your site, how they got there, where they went once they arrived and a huge amount of other critical data. Get it at http://www.webtrends.com.

** Toolkit Item 5 – WebPosition Gold ** If you want to know how your website is ranking inrepparttar 132341 search engines, this tool is a must have. It allows you to set up a profile for your website asking you to enter keyword phrases and choose search engines. By runningrepparttar 132342 program after you complete your profile, it will tell you where you rank for each engine for each keyword phrase. If you find that you’re not ranking well, you can make changes to your website and runrepparttar 132343 program again in a few days or weeks to determine if your rankings have improved. Get it at http://www.webposition-gold-2.net.

If you purchase these tools and learn to use them properly, you’ll have everything you need to create and manage a website. Your toolkit will be complete. I am sure there are other great tools out there, but these arerepparttar 132344 ones I use, (and I have no affiliation with any of these companies). I’ve found them to be extremely helpful. Another webmaster ‘trick’ I use is to utilize great websites that contain excellent tips, tricks and resources for creating and managing websites. Below is a partial list ofrepparttar 132345 websites I visit regularly.

Webmonkey – http://www.webmonkey.com HTML Goodies - http://www.htmlgoodies.com World Wide Web Consortium - http://www.w3c.org Webmaster Directory - http://www.webdevsites.com Free HTML Validator - http://www.feedvalidator.org Webmaster resources from Webmaster Toolkit. - http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com Webmaster.org - http://www.webmaster.org The Webmaster's Reference Library - http://www.webreference.com SitePoint : New Articles, for Web Developers and Designers - http://www.sitepoint.com Webmaster's Color Lab - http://www.visibone.com/colorlab SiteProNews - http://www.sitepronews.com Webmaster Tool Collection - http://www.webmaster-tool-collection.com

Jason O'Connor is president of Oak Web Works where you can get a free webmaster newsletter and he also runs Sports & Broadway Tickets.


How To Design Your Web Site With CSS

Written by Herman Drost


Continued from page 1

4. Improve search engine rankings – search engines generally spiderrepparttar code atrepparttar 132336 top of your web page first. For most sites that meansrepparttar 132337 navigation bar will be spidered first (resides at top of page code). CSS enables you to positionrepparttar 132338 code for your content atrepparttar 132339 top making your page search engine friendly. Properly marked up HTML pages can easily found and properly categorized by search engines

5. Fast loading – CSS reducesrepparttar 132340 amount of tags used therefore producing clean code. Tableless design can reduce your load time by 25% to 50%.

6. Reduce bandwidth – compactingrepparttar 132341 amount of code used will reducerepparttar 132342 amount of bandwidth needed to host your web pages. Therefore you won’t have to pay higher fees when adding more web documents to your site.

7. Accessibility - increasing accessibility with CSS means being able to serve web content to a larger audience, increasing web site usability, even for non-disabled people. Content can easily be formatted for projection as well as screen display. Tableless layouts display well on hand-helds.

8. Improverepparttar 132343 printing of web pages – most printers will only allow you to print a portion ofrepparttar 132344 web page. With CSS your whole document can be printed.

When you use CSS it becomes quick and easy to apply new styles that can not only effect all styles on your web page but even your whole site.

Inrepparttar 132345 next article I will explain how to layout a web page using CSS.

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com. Affordable Web Site Design and Web Hosting. Subscribe to his “Marketing Tips” newsletter for more original articles. mailto:subscribe@isitebuild.com. You can read more of his in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles


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