Putting your website online

Preparing for upload

You need to have prepared your files properly and have checked them locally including links etc. Please make certain that all your pages are labeled with the .htm or .html tags after the file name leaving no spaces!!

So a file name such as: this file.htm is a problem and should be renamed to either this_file.htm or simply thisfile.htm. Also try to avoid case-changes (I tend to use only lower case filenames).

If you use folders to locate families of files in a self-contained environment,other rules come into play: for instance, folder names are perhaps best as short, decriptive words and I start these in Uppercase. This means a folder might be called: Images or Pics and contain all the images for the site. Folders do nort require any tag (such as .html).

Images however do require a tag such as .gif or .jpg (or .jpeg). Once again, it's best to keep image names all in lowercase.

It seems too obvious to state but I say it anyway: make sure your links are excactly stating the filename that is the filename (including case, spelling, spaces etc).

Also, links that refer to something in another folder must be <A HREF="../Anotherfolder/anotherfile.htm"> (if your file is currently in a folder) rather than <A HREF="anotherfile.htm">

The <A HREF="anotherfile.htm"> only works if you have no folders in your directory structure!

Now: another important convention is to label the very first file of you site either welcome.html or index.html (the "l" in html can be omitted). In your index page (and every other page if you are very good) you should place some relevant "meta" tags.

Uploading

Uploading files is a simple routine which becomes second nature once you've performed it a few times.

You need FTP (file transfer protocol) software (Fetch is good)

I assume you have the actual setting up of a modem and PPP/TCP settings under control (ISP's usually provide this info to their clients and it does differ from place to place in terms of specific protocols). In my experience most ISP's are PC freaks and if you mention you are using a Mac you get very interesting responses.... Anyway, as I said, I assume you've past that point. What you need is your ISP's "dotted quad" a set of four numbers which are a numeric equivalent to the something.com address. With that and your password you can access your subdirectory (usually located in a "public" folder).

Once you're logged on it's simple to transfer files or entire folders to your host as long as you remember to do the following:

Note: You must save as Raw Data .

You can see in the illustration above that there are a mix of files and folders at this level of the site and this means that any forward links from this level to files within folders must specify the folder and file like so: <A HREF="Foldername/anotherfile.htm"> .

You can also see index.htm highlighted. This is the first page of the site. Search engines will visit your site and begin indexing from this page. Some search engine bots (software robots) will only look at this page and if the page is very graphic- rather than text-based, it would be prudent to include a good set of "meta-tags" in the header of the document. Search engines will multiple index if your meta-tags have comma seperated terms, others will only index the first tags.

For example:

<HTML>

<HEAD>

<TITLE>Typical example</TITLE>

<META name="description" content="Werner Hammerstingl is providing insightful comments on the finer points of ashtray collecting with specific subsections such as : ashtrays stolen from 5 star hotels..">

<META name="keywords" content="Werner Hammerstingl, Ashtray collecting, Ashtray collection, Collecting ashtrays, Ashtrays, Antique ashtrays, what's new in ashtrays, stealing ashtrays, trading ashtrays">

I'm sure you've got the idea by now..

Some final words on the subject: List your page often with as many search engines you can find. If it's a commercial site you've prepared, it may be money well spent to pay $US200.- to one of the companies that offer to do this periodically (they have bots to routinely list your site with about 200 search engines).

You can also post a "new site"on relevant newsgroups, but retain "netiqette" atherwise you might get a severe flaming!

Check your site frequently on as many different machines and browsers and screens as possible. You will find little problems and mistakes. Deal with them ASAP.

In the words of Bill Mitchell (MIT) "a website is like a garden... " (think of all the possible analogies and you'll find they all fit).

So, you want to read this again from the top.