Publishing or uploading your site to your alotted Web Space on your
ISP's server requires the following.
-
The address and method of uploading required by your ISP. Most
use ftp (File Transfer Protocol). You will need to browse the
support pages for your ISP for this. Whilst the pricipal is the
same for all sites - there are variations in naming.
e.g. my site uses
ftp://username:password@homepages.dabsol.net/
- in my case the username is connexions. Where as Freeserve uses
ftp://username.freeserve:password@uploads.freeserve.net/
-
Some ISP's require notification prior to activating a site for
the first time. For others the site is setup when you register
and has a redirect page at your address that takes surfers to their
main site. You overwrite this dummy page when upload your
first homepage. In fact - pages are updated by uploading the edited file.
It is worth mentioning - that only copies of files are transmitted when uploading or
downloading - the originals remain intact.
-
ftp software. PC's have a DOS utility called ftp that can be used
to upload your pages but it is a bit cumbersome to use. With
Netscape Communicator you can upload just by dropping the files
on the browser window once you have made a ftp connection by typing
the full ftp address and password in the Location field.
There is a ftp program called ws_ftple (691 kb download) that
can be used without charge for personal use. Once setup this
program can manages the whole ftp process.
-
Once you have uploaded the world will not be beating a path to your
door - as without links from other sites or a direct knowledge of
your address no one will know it exists. Before you start making
your presence known - give a few friends the address and get them
to browse and comment on it.
-
When it comes to registering your site you will find there are
online forms at most of the search engines but it takes a few
months before it is listed. If it a genealogy site then register
it at Cyndi's site and it will appear in her new listings almost
straight away. Once you start to register your site you will
find that for classification - it is important to focus your site
on a single topic.
Don't be too eager in registering your site - if you get visitors too
soon there wont be much to see and they wont return.
-
One last subject - Meta tags. These are included in the header and
the are accessed by some search engines.
The
"description"
tag is to give information about the page.
Some engines ony access and catalogue the first couple of lines
- so ensure that these make it clear what the page is about
- and after that you may summarise the whole site.
The
"keywords"
tag gives a list of words to be used
by the search engine when responding to a request - but because of abuse - less
weight is now given to them.
To see a full set of these tags - and how they are used - download and
save this page - then examine its header in a text editor. Do the same with
other sites.
Have fun - James Montague.
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