The Anatomy of the Web

Or, What Makes a Hot Web Site. You editor tous creating an Internet presence.

by Vernon Keenan

We've all heard about the hot web sites. In a blizzard of announcements from media giants, small companies and independent artists, the general public is gaining awareness of the huge variety of fun and useful resources available on the Internet. In the wake of all this publicity about the Internet, and the World Wide Web in particular, you are probably wondering "How can I make my own web site?"

How does one jump on this bandwagon? What does it take to create a hot web site, and how do you get people to visit your new hot creation? If you're a business person how can this technology help you compete? Building a hot web site is a fun mix of technical knowledge, creativity, creating original content, artistic presentation and implementing a sharp marketing plan.

Just Think About It

A good place to start creating your own web site is by touring other popular web sites. Most of the Web Wanderer's picks are good examples. Notice some of the things that make a web site pleasing to use, and in turn, a popular destination on the infobahn.

Some qualities good web sites have in common include great art, interesting and unique content, information that changes on a daily or weekly basis, and speedy downloads of text and graphics to your web browser.

One thing good commercial web sites avoid is creating "shovelware," or merely taking existing sales and marketing material and creating a linear table of contents linking these materials together. Instead of just creating an electronic press kit, interesting sites, like Megadeth Arizona (http://www.bazaar.net/), create a kind of virtual world where visitors "travel" to different parts of the site where they can interact with information and even other visitors to the site.

Once you've gained some appreciation for what makes a good web site, begin building yours by determining exactly what you wish to accomplish with your new Internet publishing exercise. Do you simply want to engage in personal freedom of expression and put up text, graphics, sounds or movies you've created? Or, do you have electronic commerce in mind by establishing a business presence on the net?

While both personal and business web pages can greatly benefit from meticulous planning, personal web sites can become popular by having a rough quality that comes from a spontaneous creative style. BuzzNet is a great example of this (http://www.hooked.net/buzznet/).

Business pages, though, should be planned using what computer programmers call a "software development life-cycle." A software life-cycle begins with a careful evaluation of the business process that you want to enhance with automation. Determining your business requirements before programming takes off helps to make sure that the needs of your business drives the creation of the web site, and not vice versa. Too often folks enthused with new computer stuff will do the reverse, and focus on fitting their business into the confines of the capabilities of the new technology.

Map It Out

When people visit your web site they will start with the home page. If your site is large, with dozens, or maybe even hundreds, of pages, making the home page an efficient and enticing launching pad to the rest of your site is critical. Using graphics here is often quite useful, as is the presence of a icon bar or navigation tool that helps users jump to different parts of your site whenever they want.

When deciding how users will navigate your site watch out for one of the classic linear traps, often known as "menu hell." Don't force users to use just one navigation method to go from page to page Ð allow them to short-circuit your page hierarchy with an icon bar, or even better, a full-text search engine. Search engines, which allow users to enter some key words in their browser and locate pages that contain those words, are often the most efficient way to help users find information.

Build It with HTML

Building a Web site requires a basic understanding of a computer language called Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML operates used by creating a text file that uses the language's commands to mark up text Ð it defines the appearance and actions of Web pages. Special tags using "meta characters" turns text in bold type, like this. Most HTML commands turn on and off display and linking features.

When Web browsers like Netscape and Mosaic access a Web server, HTML codes are sent to the computer running the browser over the Internet link. The HTML commands also instruct browsers to fetch and display graphics.

Learn HTML

Besides the dozens of books available in bookstores, there are lots of resources available on the web itself that teaches you how to program in HTML. Check the on-line version of the Web Wanderer for the Web Writing directory (http://www.cybertoday.com/cybertoday/wanderer/writing.html). There you'll find pointers to tutorials, reference manuals and other resources. Another great way to learn HTML is to use Netscape's View Source command. This peeks under the hood and shows the HTML code used to create the current page. Using your mouse you can copy and paste that code to your own pages.

One thing often overlooked by beginning web authors is the ability to build and test web pages without being connected to a web server. HTML and graphic files created on your personal computer can be tested with Netscape or Mosaic using the File-Open command. Start with a simple set of HTML commands and see what happens. Then add some more commands to your file and test it again. Besides being instructive and fun, this iterative technique helps new web writers avoid making errors that can be hard to trace.

The part of HTML that gives the Web its magical quality are the hypertext links. These HTML commands tell the browser to highlight text or graphics in the display as a blue hot-link. When the person using the browser clicks on the highlighted part of the display the browser then opens up the new page or graphic. When you're building links to your own pages reference them by file name. This will allow you to test links off-line. Only when you want to link to another page somewhere on the Internet should a full web address, such as http://www.cybertoday.com/, be used as a hypertext address.

Eventually, you'll need to get your pages on-line by uploading them from your computer to a web server. A web server runs on a computer system that has a permanent, high-speed connection to the Internet. ISPs support powerful web servers and lease space on them for as little as $30 per month. HTML files you've created on your personal computer are uploaded to your ISP's web server using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP).

Leasing web space is the smart way to get started with the Internet publishing. You can tell if you need to upgrade to your own server system once you've learned the ropes of web publishing techniques. You'll need to eventually plan on getting your own web server and connection to the Internet if you're going to have an extremely popular site that will be visited by thousands of people daily or if you wish to endow your server with advanced web publishing features like text searching.

Blast-Off!

OK. You've planned the killer web site. Many megabytes of cool stuff is linked to your pages. Outstanding graphics make your site beautiful. Easy-to-use navigation aids makes moving around the site a joy to behold. Now you have to tell the world about your new creation.

Hopefully you haven't used up your creative juices making your site, because you'll need lot more innovation and spunk to let the Internet public know you're out there. There are over 15,000 individual web sites, with hundreds being added every week. How are you going to tell those 5 million or so people with web browsers that you've got something that's essential to their web surfing pleasure?

Start with posting polite messages to USENET news groups that cover the type of service or information you are offering. A fan page about the Grateful Dead will find grateful readers on rec.music.gdead. A new catalog from a biochemical supply company will be eagerly greeted by readers of bionet.www.

announce. Within a few days your message will be distributed to thousands of USENET sites worldwide and potentially read by millions of Internet users. Re-post your messages once ever few weeks so you can reach people who missed your message or are new subscribers to the news group. Some news groups specialize in the announcement of new web sites. One of these is comp.infosystems.www.announce.

Several web sites are dedicated to being a comprehensive index to the Internet. The best of these is Yahoo, located at http://www.yahoo.com/.

Traditional media is another way to reach the Internet public. If your web site is targeted at the general public consider using daily newspapers or radio as a way to advertise your web address. Movie companies have really jumped on this technique. Most newspaper ads for movies now include a web site address. Web sites that are targeted towards niche markets, such as the computer industry or cat owners, may be advertised in magazines like PC WEEK or Cat Fancy.

The web can be a fun place for personal expression, and has the promise of distinguishing your business from the competition. Good luck in building that fun, and maybe even useful, web site that will put you on the Internet.

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vern@cybertoday.com