Do it yourself
You've
got the page, now where do you put it?
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By
HANS NYBERG
Web pages not seen by the public: Chickens-R-Us.com, LeesBodyShop.car,
Steves_Wood_Supply.log, The-Art-of-Southern-Accents.warsh
You want your Web site seen by the world, don't you?
You are the only one who can see your Web site if it is just
saved on your hard drive. What you really need is to have
it saved somewhere where anyone with an Internet connection
can access it. You need it saved on a server. A server is
a computer, and its sole purpose is to store data and then
give, or serve, it out when you ask for it. This is how just
about every Web page works. You type in a Web address in your
browser, hit enter, and in a few seconds a Web page will show
up. What's really happening is that your computer asks the
server the Web page is saved on to give it the page. If that's
possible, it happens. If not, you will get an error message
like "The page cannot be displayed" or "Bad request." No matter
what, though, in order for the world to see your page, you
need to get it on a server.
I'd strongly recommend against spending $200 a month for hosting
a small Web site. That is quite a pricey option. On the other
end of the spectrum, there are still a number of companies
that offer free hosting in exchange for placing ads on your
page. (A lot of companies offered free, ad-less hosting during
the dot-com boom and went under.) The first place that comes
to mind that has free hosting is Geocities. Geocities places
ads on your page, and it takes time and gets annoying, having
to constantly close ads.
I have used Geocities (www.geocities.com) and don't have too
much of a problem with it. This service receives funds by
placing ads on the right side of the page. You can minimize
and close the ads, but it's a hassle.
Another problem with the ads is that they sometimes cover
up information on the page. There are a lot of advantages
with Geocities, however. There is a generous 10-megabyte storage
limit and fairly good configuration options. There are also
statistics, although I found them surprisingly different from
the statistic utility I use, Nedstat Basic (www.netstat.com).
The only major difference between Geocities and pay services
is the ads. Another affordable place to host with is Hostica,
www.hostica.com. I am currently running two sites with Hostica,
and I am very satisfied. They will host 5 MB for $1 a month.
After hours of searching for someone to host these sites,
I found that Hostica was one of the most inexpensive places
available. They also will register a domain for very little:
$10 a year if you host with them, $13 a year to host somewhere
else. That totals to $22 a year to host a small site, with
a domain.
Domains are a very handy feature to invest in. Instead of
typing in www.geocities.com/username, you could just put in
www.username.com. When searching, I have noticed that I am
more willing to go to a page that is just a domain name than
a page with an address that doesn't even fit on the screen.
You also want a short domain name like I used with my church's
site, www.gbem.org. I could
have used www.greenbayeastmoravian.org,
but it's a lot longer than just four simple letters and a
".org". Besides, how many people can spell "Moravian"? The
other one, www.baycov.org,
is also a lot shorter than www.bayevangelicalcovenantchurch.org.
The final thing to do once you have your page hosted is to
get people on it. There are a lot of things to do to get people
to visit your page. This includes both offline and online
methods. Offline, it is a lot easier to get the address out
in the public if this page is for a business or organization.
If this is true, you can get the address listed in the phone
book and other directories like that in Dot Com magazine.
It can go on business cards and brochures. If this is a personal
Web page, these methods are not practical, and you should
concentrate mainly on online ways to spread the word of your
page. You will spend a LOT of time online if you are serious
about getting people to visit your page.
Last spring it wasn't uncommon for me to spend as many as
10 hours each week trying to get listed in search engines
and directories as much as possible. Add school to that work,
and there's not a whole lot of free time. There are a couple
of places I recommend submitting to first. (Now, I want you
to feel sorry for me because I spent too way much time figuring
out all this stuff. I had to try different things out, and
with Nedstat and other sources I found out what worked and
what didn't.) First is dmoz.org. Dmoz, or the Open Directory
Project, the "largest human-edited directory", where you submit
your page to categories that fit it. Volunteers then make
sure that the category you chose is the best one for it and
enter it into the directory.
A large number of search engines use Dmoz for the pages they
list, most notably Google. AOL, Ask Jeeves, and Netscape also
use the pages in the Open Directory Project. So you're wondering
about Yahoo, one of the most popular search engines? If you've
noticed, on the top of the search pages, it says both Yahoo
and Google. That's because Yahoo uses Google for some of its
searching. So, indirectly, by getting listed in Dmoz, you
will be on Yahoo, too. I would also recommend submitting through
Yahoo's standard submission process, just as a second way
of getting listed. The other - I guess you could call priority
- is to submit with Zeal (www.zeal.com).
This will probably take a little more effort to do. Zeal works
in generally the same way as Dmoz, except that you have to
join, and take a member's test in order to submit anything.
It's more of a hassle, but it is worth it when you see what
search engines are included in the "Zeal Network." This network
includes MSN, LookSmart, AltaVista, and others. Of course
these two places will not reach every search engine out there,
and you will never be able to get listed on absolutely every
engine. However, these two places are a good starting point.
After these places, the only real way to get listed is to
go to each engine and find their "Submit a Site" link.
There are places that will submit a site to many search engines
for free and others for a fee. I've tried the free ones, and
they seem to work OK, but I feel more confident doing it myself.
I found it easiest to go to a site like Yahoo and find their
listing of search engines. Go down the list and submit to
each one. It takes time, but in the end, you will get more
people seeing your page. |
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