Building Printer Friendly Pages

Written by Lauri Harpf


Your site looks like it's working perfectly. You've tested it with several different browsers under various resolutions. The HTML complies withrepparttar standards and your CSS is impeccable.

Even if all ofrepparttar 134509 above statements are accurate, everything still might not berepparttar 134510 way it should. We often design for screens and blissfully forget that we need to take other devices into account as well. It's surprising to notice that while printers are very widely used, a large part of designers seem to completely ignore them.

Why should I do this? =====================

The more text your site contains,repparttar 134511 more reason you have to think about printers. Many people prefer to print out long pages instead of reading them from their screen. They can't take their 19" screen torepparttar 134512 park, to their bed or torepparttar 134513 beach. However, if they print your content on paper, they can read it whenever they want to, wherever they want to.

By giving your usersrepparttar 134514 possibility to easily print your pages, you're making your site more usable. Atrepparttar 134515 same time, you're encouraging people to spreadrepparttar 134516 word about you and your site. What's more convenient, "Hey, read this great article" or "Hey, go to your computer, fire up your browser and go to this address to read a great article"?

How do I do this? =================

Ensuring that your site is printer friendly can be done in many ways. Personally, I prefer to use CSS forrepparttar 134517 job. While it is not supported by some older browsers, CSS is a good choice because it eliminatesrepparttar 134518 need to create separate "printer friendly" versions of your pages. The same page can have one layout for browsers and another one for printers!

Unless you're already familiar with CSS, you might benefit from taking a quick look at HTML Help's CSS Tutorial ( http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/css/ ) before we begin. It's especially important that you familiarize yourself with class selectors, as many ofrepparttar 134519 examples below will use them.

That being said, let's open up Notepad and start creating our new external stylesheet file.

Modifyrepparttar 134520 layout... ====================

The first step is to eliminate everything that is useless in a printed version ofrepparttar 134521 page. Banner ads, navigation menus and all unnecessary graphics should be removed. You can do this by adding a new class torepparttar 134522 stylesheet:

.remove { display: none }

Web Site Start-up and Promotion Guide For Professionals

Written by Milana Leshinsky


The biggest problem I've always had promoting my web site is keeping myself focused. After all, what should I be doing? Publishing my own e-zine, placing classified ads, looking for link exchange partners, writing articles... My head is beginning to spin just from trying to list allrepparttar promotion strategies available today!

But when my friend who is just putting her professional practice onrepparttar 134508 Internet asked me, "Milana, what should I do now?", it all became very clear: don't spread yourself thin. Choose up to 2 ways to promote your web site and do it for at least 1 month to see if it's effective.

I wrote a brief plan for her to follow this month and I wanted to share it with you. This strategy focuses on writing and thankfully most professionals - coaches, consultants, writers and speakers - are very good when it comes to communicating thoughts on paper.

You must set aside approximately 3-4 hours a week (which is nothing compared to how much time most online business owners spend) and stick torepparttar 134509 plan.

Do not try to implement any other strategies at this time. If you get an idea, write down and try it later. If nothing else, this plan will surely bring your site steady growing traffic. Ready?

1. Create a simple 2-5 page web site. Use an easy-to-use web page editor, such as free Netscape Composer available from Netscape web site. Place your sales copy onrepparttar 134510 main page, and use other pages for information about you, your other products and whatever else you would like your visitors to see.

IMPORTANT: for this strategy, please, offer something free on your web site via an autoresponder. Use GetResponse.com to be able to automatically follow up with people who download your free gift.

Since this promotion strategy will generate a good amount of traffic to your site, you MUST capture your visitors' e-mails or else you will waste all this traffic. Mention to them that you will be sending occasional mailings and that they can always leave your list.

2. Add TITLE and META tags to your web pages and submit them to major Search Engines. Make sure these tags are short and mention only what's relevant. Ask yourself, what word or phrase would I type inrepparttar 134511 Search Engine if I was looking for my product?

Below isrepparttar 134512 list of "Submit Site" addresses for most of them:

http://home.lycos.com/addasite.html http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/addurl http://www.google.com/addurl.html http://www.excite.com/info/add_url_form http://www.northernlight.com/docs/regurl_help.html http://www.directhit.com/util/addurl.html http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php http://hotbot.lycos.com/addurl.asp http://www.anzwers.com.au/cgi-bin/print_addurl.pl

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