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Web Site Cleanup and Loose End Tie-up

Often web sites need to be cleaned up, straightened up and lightened up. They need to have their loose ends tied up. Maybe you made the site two or three years ago. Maybe your brother-in-law made it on his employer's computer on his employer's time. At any rate the web site looks like a leftover from the geek generation, it takes a long time to load, and nobody knows it's there. The old thing needs some attention, wouldn't you say?

My friend Tim mentioned to me that his company site takes a long time to load because of the graphic on the front page... I said I'd look into it. I looked into it. I'll go into more detail later but let me tell you what I found when I checked the search engines (four of them) for his site. I found they didn't have a clue the site was even there. (Psst... want to know how I checked them?)

To see if your web site is in the search engines (not how high the ranking is, just if it is in there, period). Go to your site in a browser, take your cursor and highlight about two or three sentences of text peculiar to your site. Really, most any two or three sentences will do, as long as they are good and long and full of words. When you have highlighted them (they will have changed color), do ctrl-c to copy the text.

Next go to your favorite search engine. I figure google, msn, yahoo and altavista are enough. Paste your text between two quotation marks in the search blank (ctrl-v) and hit go. If the test is positive you will see one search result, your site. If it's negative you'll see nothing. No result means you are off the event horizon, so to speak. You're nowhere. Well, if you insist you can try it again with a longer bit of text. Try a whole paragraph. Try another search engine. If they don't know where you are you need to tell them.

There are several ways of informing the search engines that your site is out there, open for business and ready to take on all comers. Some of the ways cost money and some cost only time. I will skip the costly ones because I don't know anything about them—I have never used them because I'm too poor, and if I weren't so poor I wouldn't use them anyway 'cause I'm too cheap. OK, for the free ones—the quick and dirty way to get one in is to link to it from a web site that is in the system. My sites are well indexed and well spidered so I worked Tim's link into the context of this article. He will probably be spidered within a week and be in the system.

Another way is to go to the dmoz.org site, find your category, click "Suggest a URL" at the top of the page, write a twenty-five word terse description of your site and click "Submit". Just make sure you follow the instructions to the letter. You don't want to have to re-submit because of a careless mistake, do you? You can do the same with google, yahoo, etc. but you will have to find the submit pages... I can't show you everything, can I?

I will write more a few days. Today is February 6, 2005—if I don't write more in a few days, remind me, OK?

Domain Names are Here to Stay

The internet with its domain name system is here to stay; if you use the web at all you would be wise to go ahead and register your own domain name and begin to use it. Domain names are so cheap now ($8.95/year) that there is practically no reason not to register one and make a simple home page at least, to establish a permanent address on the internet. In all likelihood, you can register your own personal name. If the dot com is taken then get the dot net, dot us or dot ws. My friend Rob got his name in a dot net—robfrazier.net. Carol got carolbuckleyfrazier.com. Robert Roberg and Cara Colleen got their real names too. (Check them out, by the way.) Other friends easily registered their own names in either dot com or dot net. I gave in and registered josephperry.net. I'm sorry to say the dot coms were taken on josephperry and joeperry (no sites on them—probably being held for ransom, hoping to squeeze money out of the guitar player of the heavy metal Aerosmith who has the same name as I do.)

So...go ahead and go to godaddy.com, type your name in the blank and check it out. Then, if you want me to provide server space for your site go on to my Getting Started Page for further instructions.

A domain name address can be more permanenent than an email address or a postal address. After all you could change ISPs or you could move and your friends could lose track of you, but your own domain name will be yours as long as you keep paying the fee and keep your contact information up to date.

Another thing—even if you should decide, at a later date, to transfer your web hosting to another provider—all you have to do is change the NS settings of your domain (which only you have control of with your password) to the NS settings of your new host. Or, if you want to move your site from another host to my service, the same principle applies. And I will do whatever I can to advise or help with the transfer....Getting Started

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Copyright © 2003 Joseph Perry, Greyfort Communications