Okay, what's next thing I'm going to look for? A search box, a site map or some other, more general way to find information that I need. Site maps can be difficult to maintain unless they are very general (which, in turn, makes them less useful). Search boxes, on other hand, require no care and feeding at all once you've got them installed (although you should spend some time tuning them to make them even more useful).

If you have a site with a large amount of information or a site which is very diverse, a search box is your best bet.

- First of all, it allows your visitors to find things that they might not otherwise find.

- It causes visitors to go deeper into your site, to stay longer and to look around more.

- Just as important, very little maintenance is required.

- In addition, most of search utilities are free for small sites.

- The pay versions are extremely inexpensive for benefits they provide.

- It just makes your site (no matter how large or how small) look more professional.

Some of unexpected side effects include:

- You make it even more likely that your visitors can wind up on any page. This means your site navigation must be very good or your visitors will get lost.

- Visitors will find themselves dumped onto pages on your site which you did not intend for them to find. Under construction pages, "spam traps" and anything else you've got. Be sure to use metatags and Robots.Txt file to control indexing well.

You have several options when choosing a search box for your site.

- If you edit your site using Microsoft FrontPage, you could use built-in search functions. Note that searching facilities in FrontPage are so lame that personally I would not recommend them to anyone.

- You could use a self-hosted script if your host allows CGI routines. I would not recommend this method, as these routines tend to be very server intensive. In fact, most web hosts that I have found will not allow them to run.

- The best option is to use one of remotely-hosted search functions for your site.

I have found three excellent remotely-hosted search companies.

Atomz - Probably overall best of bunch, but also most expensive by far. I liked Atomz, but we switched because it just became too costly. Atomz allows up to 500 pages to be spidered for free, with advertisements in your results pages.

http://www.internet-tips.net/Products/atomz.htm

Freefind - Excellent service, and one that we settled on because it was very full functioned and inexpensive. The version for personal or nonprofit sites is only $19 per month, a year paid in advance. Up to 32mb of pages can be spidered for free.

http://www.freefind.com/indexc.html

Whatuseek - Another excellent service, allowing up to 1,000 pages to be spidered for free.

http://intra.whatuseek.com/index.shtml

Each of these services has it's own advantages and disadvantages, but all of them work basically same. My recommendation is to try out all three services using their free versions to determine exactly which one is best for your needs. Then go ahead and purchase paid version for correct fit.

How does this all work? Well, once you sign you for an account you supply URL for your web site. You then define a template for results page, or you can use one of basic templates that each service provides. All three services allow you to define a template (in advanced mode) which looks exactly like your site. You then define any special parameters such as pages to exclude, usernames and passwords for protected pages and so on. Once that's done, you install search code on each of your web pages, then tell search utility to spider your site.

It's as simple as that. I fully tested each of three search companies in about an eight hour day before finally settling on one that best met requirements of my site.

Okay, so let's say you now have chosen a search function for your site, you've created perfect template and you've got your HTML code. What else do you need to do?

Avoid Under Construction signs - All good web sites should always be under construction. Including words "under construction", or worse yet a blinking animation, only makes you look like an amateur. These notices are so frowned upon that directories such as Yahoo will not accept sites with one on home page. Most awards programs will immediately reject any sites displaying this dishonorable phrase.

Don't use a hundred different fonts on same page - You can run into all kinds of problems when you use fonts on internet. There are incompatibilities between operating systems (Unix, Mac and Windows all work differently) and browsers. Fonts have to be installed locally by your visitor - if he doesn't have it installed your page may look funny to him.

If you mix many different fonts on your page you are almost immediately known as an amateur. A font or two is fine, but work to avoid "ransom note" effect.

Don't write your HTML to a particular browser - Browsers change very quickly. The one that is popular today may be almost unused in a few months. So don't spend any time trying to fit your HTML to Internet Explorer or Netscape or Opera. Just make good HTML and then let browser do it's job.

Use style sheets - Style sheets (known as CSS) is a way to gain incredible control over how items are displayed on your pages. Better still, you can create one style sheet document and reference it from all over your web. This way, if you want to change, say, your text color from green to blue, you only have to change one file. Every reference to style will automatically and immediately get changed.

Include Meta Tags - Meta tags are used to tell outside world, especially search engines, all about your pages. You should include appropriate meta tags on each and every page. These tags need to give a description, copyright notice, author name, language and search keywords. In addition, it is a good idea to include RSAC rating for content filters.

Include a descriptive title - Be sure and write a short, keyword heavy, very descriptive title for each page. Search engines rely on these titles in determining how to index your site. Be sure your title is accurate and honest as well.

Avoid lots of moving things - An occasional animation is great and can turn a boring page into an award winner, but don't go overboard. In general, more than one animation per page is excessive.