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Hi! It was nice meeting all of you at the roundtable Wednesday. I do tend to come on a little strong when it comes to the subject of selling on the Internet - Websites are such incredible tools and have so much potential. Having the chance to talk to all of you will be of great help when it comes to putting the E-commerce course together. Many of the concepts and terms familiar to anyone who has created a web page are confusing to someone who has not had experience with them. I put together the notes below for my own use but thought they might be of interest-
One of the best ways to 'see' how web pages are created is to RIGHT CLICK on a page you are viewing and then select VIEW SOURCE (assuming you are using Windows). This shows the actual language which tells the browser (Internet Explorer, Navigator....) what to put on the page you are viewing. Web sites use HTML (HyperText Markup Language). HTML is really quite similar to what you do in a word processor when you specify centering and/or specific type faces and sizes. The difference is that you have to 'show' the browser what you want. HTML can be written (and edited) in Notepad once one understands it. HTML uses the "<" symbol to start a command and "/>" to close it. Whatever you want the browser to do is enclosed within those 'carats'. Note (near the top of HTML page) the META TAGS (if the person who created the page added them). These do not appear as part of the viewable page but are KEY WORDS which many of the search engines use to understand what the page is about. Most important KEY WORDS for search engines (now) are what are found in the DOMAIN NAME, TITLE and in the FIRST FEW SENTENCES on the page. Other factors which influence search engines include how many outside links lead to the page and (with some SEs) how popular (i.e. how many viewers).
ALL THE PROGRAMS BELOW ARE FREE (or free to try in the case of 40tude) http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/ This is the address for the free HTML program Andy mentioned (in case you have not found it yet). I plan to download it and compare it with what I currently use. 40tude (or its predecessor 1-4-All) are the HTML programs I prefer (relatively easy to teach with). You can download a 60 day trial and the program sells for $30 if you decide to buy. This is a very logical program and includes a number of nice features including facilities to upload your completed files to a hosting service. http://www.mmsoftware.com/14All/index.htm Drawings and (most) animated images on the Internet are done in a .GIF format. One of the best programs for working with .GIF images is PhotoPlus 6.0. It's distributed by Serif (from Nashua, NH - who have one of the best desktop publishing programs around). PhotoPlus will do just about anything the $500 image programs will do (my opinion) and it is FREE! Unless you have a super high-speed internet connection, skip the PDF files when you download (they are a 100+ page printable manual). By using the help feature and tutorials that are part of the program you will be able to learn how PhotoPlus works. www.myfreephotoplus.com Most photographs on the web are in a JPEG format. The JPEGWizard will make photos much 'smaller' (read: faster loading) and is very easy to use www.pegasusimaging.com Here's another fun gadget - ANFY JAVA. This program is what I use to put 'snowstorms' over images and moving 'water' on the web. Relatively easy to use and great to play with. If you would like to see how I am currently using JAVA, go to www.classicroads.com/carsoft and click on the TAKE A TOUR buttons. All the effects you will find (I particularly like the flipping pages effect) are from ANFY and are free. http://anfyteam.com/indexen.html
Here's the source for two 'tools' I use for KEYWORD study. Keyword Live monitors
5 search engines in real time so you can see what words and phrases people are
asking for from the engines. Start your browser, then start Keyword Live - go
back to whatever you wanted to do on the web and let Keyword Live run for half
an hour and you will see results from about half a million searches. You will
be surprised to see how people word their searches and will want to adapt your
own keywording to take advantage of the knowledge. Keyword Extractor buiilds
a list of every word used on a page you select and tells how ofter (and where)
it is used. For example, the first page of Let Me Show You Vermont (www.letmeshowyouvermont.com/index.htm
- the lead pages are typically called "index" or "default") uses the word "Vermont"
24 times. When you look at the page "Vermont" only appears 5 times (images don't
count). The remaining 18 "Vermont"s are in meta tags, "alt" codes and as image
titles (pls don't get confused by these terms). With this many VALID references
to "Vermont" a search engine is more likely to find my site when someone enters
that term. http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network.htm Anyway - have
a good weekend and I hope to 'see' you on the Web.
Karl Chevalier