The “main page” of a Web site used to be the standard entry point for all Web sites, back when Web sites all had black text on a battleship gray background. Search engines changed all that. A surfer looking for interstellar hyperdrives arrives directly at the hyperdrive page, but then he or she wants to see who is behind the company and what their quality policy is. Nobody wants to do business with hucksters from Arcturus who sell second rate goods. If the visitor has to click all the way up and down the hierarchy to get to the information they need in the about page, or to contact the site owners, they may give up and leave the Web site. Therefore, there are many navigational shortcuts through the hierarchy.

Another constraint is that the relative ranking of a Web page in search engines like Google depends on the number of links to that page, including the internal same-site links. If you have an e-commerce site that sells thousands of items of different types, you may want to have a link to pages that sell the really popular items, such as the latest rock group or hit movie DVD or smash hit Best Selling book (Son of Harry Potter Returns?) from every page in your site.

In addition to the above neat design, the Web site must have the following:
 Site Map - The Site Map is a separate page that is used by visitors and search engine spiders to find all the pages in a Web site. It is usually linked from every page of the Web site, and, in small sites, it has a link to every single page in the Web site, regardless of hierarchy, using the full path to that page (for example, “http://www.mywidgets.com/products/hyperdrives/interstellar.htm”). If the site is large (over about 300 pages) then lower tier pages can be put on secondary site map pages. The site map is important not just for visitors. Search engine spiders, the robot programs that add your Web pages to the search engines, use site maps to navigate quickly through the site and get to all your pages.
 

Repeating links on every page - A number of Web site pages or facilities must be accessible from every page of the site. These include: The main page, the site map, the contact page and some other pages that you want to push in the search engine. Pages like the home page and the site map must always be linked using a full path absolute link, and the link text (”Anchor Text”) should include the keywords of the main page, not just “home.” Search engines use that link text to rank your main page. If you are selling shoes, the link text should say “Shoes.” Unless your Web site is called “Home,” it is not a good idea to link to the main page with the text “home.” A shopping site needs to have a shopping cart link on every page as well of course.

The following additional links and features are optional, but are highly recommended:

Featured pages - As noted, you may need to promote a particular item on every page of your site, or a group of pages. Often the item or items to be promoted will change, so it is good to have a dynamic system that can generate these links quickly.

Personalized Content - You may want to show visitors content that is especially relevant to them, based on their previous shopping, geographic location or customization specifications.
Search - The search is not important for search engines, but it can be very important for visitors. It ensures that every page in the site is only two clicks away, and it makes it easy for them to find the information they need.

Hierarchical Navigator - This is a graphic portrayal of where the visitor is in the site, for example:
 Shoes >> Ladies Shoes >> High heeled shoes >> Designer shoes
The visitor can click on any of the upper level links to get to that portal page.

Directory organization - The other aspect of Web site structure is the organization of files in directories. There is usually no reason why this has to follow the hierarchical structure of the Web site, though the two types of organizations often coincide. The site should be organized for technical convenience. Very large directories may not be handled well by FTP clients or Web page design software, so you will want to group content. Humans need to work with organized groups of material too. You do not want to go searching through thousands of files to find the one you want to edit. In addition, content that has to be renewed together should stay together, so that you can upload an entire directory using FTP if you have static pages. Another important consideration is that some parts of the Web site, such as applications based on CGI or PHP, or financial transactions areas, require special treatment and protection in the .htaccess or robots.txt files, and it is convenient to group these pages together.

Price

Performance (Speed)

Reliability

Technical Support

Geographical location

Size limitations (bandwidth and files)

Business features

Technical Features

Hosting Prices - Hosting services can cost as little as $25 a year from companies like cleverdot.com, depending on how big your site will be and what features are needed. Prices vary among different companies, often with little justification. Some expensive packages may include many features you will never use. Try to buy only as much hosting as you are going to need, but beware of “hidden” costs, which may include penalty charges (or shutdown!) for exceeding bandwidth (too many downloads), or additional fees for services you need.

Speed - Web sites that load slowly lose visitors. If it takes a long time (more than a few seconds) to open the main page of the hosting company it is a really bad sign, and if hosted sites take a long time to load, you want to go elsewhere. A small hosting service with limited bandwidth capacity can become overloaded during peak hours or emergencies. Depending on your product or service, it may be critical to be able to reach people at those times.

Reliability - A good server is up 24X7.

Technical Support - Try to find out what sort of technical support and problem resolution facilities are available. Having 24X7 support by Web site or telephone may not be enough, if the staffers are not qualified to resolve your problem. It is best to speak to people who have used the

Geographical location - Search engines localize search results according to the geographic location of the user. If you are in the United States, you may get different results for a search word than you will get in Hong Kong or London. One of the criteria for deciding this localization is the location of the Web host, based on its IP (Internet Protocol) address. If you want to reach a particular geographical market, it may be advantageous to have a host server in that area. Keep in mind that most Internet visitors, the largest market, is the USA. Of course, there is also an advantage to having a hosting company close by, that you can visit.

Total Disk Space - Different hosting packages provide different amounts of total disk space, ranging from 10 MB to hundreds of GB. The average Web page is probably about 25- 50 KB. Keep in mind that your space needs will probably grow even if you are planning for a small site. If you want your Web site to be seen, and have a reasonably size business, you will probably need a minimum of 500 pages and may need as many as 5,000 or 10,000. For example, a little health foods store might have a hundred pages, each describing a product, but it might also want to have a community Web site about nutrition and a Web log with articles and materials that support the products it sells, not necessarily under the same Web domain address. Make sure that the upgrade path is painless and inexpensive.

Bandwidth - A reasonably sized Web site will use about 3 GB of bandwidth a month, but this can grow very quickly. For example, if you have 100,000 visitors a month, and each one views 2 50 KB Web pages that is 10,000,000 KB or 10 GB. Of course, if each visitor is downloading large software files, white paper documents in PDF or large Flash files, the bandwidth demand will be higher. Be aware also that various Web spider “robots” may access your site, either legitimately to extract information for search engines, or to try to “hack” your site in various ways. This can take up bandwidth that you didn’t plan for. Make sure you have a robots.txt file at your site, as lack of such a file can cause an infinite loop in some spiders, registering huge amounts of worthless download.

When choosing a host and hosting plan, make sure that the bandwidth allowance is adequate for your needs, that penalties for exceeding the bandwidth limit are not excessive, and that there is an inexpensive upgrade path. $5 a year hosting for 10 MB of Disk space and half a GB of bandwidth per month is NOT a bargain, if you pay $50 a GB for exceeding bandwidth.

Business features - If you are going to sell products online, the hosting service should support SSL (secure sockets layer) and https pages, and should provide you with the ability to set up your own online shopping cart and credit card acceptance pages. You will probably also want your own email addresses at your domain, and pop3 and SMTP services that you can use through your own email program to receive and send mail. Configurable autoresponders may also be very important for business sites. You may also want a mailing list service that allows you to compose emails advertising your products and information and send them to all or selected recipients in a database you have compiled. You will also want need access to a database such as MYSQL that can be used for the shopping cart, product catalogues, tracking of orders and tracking of sales prospects.

Technical Features -

FTP - Every Web host should provide an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) service that is fast, works 24X7 and is easy to set up. FTP is a standard protocol that should work with any FTP client software, but not all FTP services implement the entire protocol or implement it correctly, and tracking down mysterious errors can be a maddening waste of time.

Free online html editors - These online editors are often offered as a gimmick by Web hosting companies. They may be useful for beginners. If you are serious about your Web site, you are going to use a serious off-line html editor and you won’t bother with the online editor.

Statistics Package - Almost every Web host offers a statistics package, but these are of varying usefulness and accuracy. The best packages provide counts of unique visitors and usually require that a Javascript reference be included in each page of your site. Urchin software is one example of a such a service. The statistics package should provide detailed histories, data about accesses to each page, origin of visitor according to IP address, keywords used to find the site at search engines, tracking of visitor paths through the site and similar information. At least, the package should be able to distinguish actual visits from more or less spurious measures such as “sessions” and “hits,” and preferably should be able to tell you if the “visit” was from a person or a search engine robot.

Dashboard Panel - A “dashboard” panel should provide you with easy access to many online facilities such as MYSQL database, the robots.txt file and .htaccess file configuration. At minimum, it should allow you to set up your email addresses, change password, and configure the name of the default file for your Web site.

FrontPage extensions - If you use Microsoft™ FrontPage or Microsoft Web Designer™ and you intend to use any of the front page extensions, be sure that the hosting service supports them. Though Frontpage is a Microsoft product, Frontpage extensions are supported by some Unix-based Web sites

MYSQL - MYSQL is a standard Web database. Unless the server is set up for easy access to MYSQL, you will find it difficult to run may applications such as Web logs, external shopping carts etc.

asp - ASP is a powerful language developed for Microsoft Windows. Usually it will require hosting on a Windows operating system rather than a unix (Apache, Unix, Linux, etc.) but there are Unix-hosted sites that support asp.

cgi - Most sites use cgi for various purposes. The hosting service must allow you to access the cgi directory. Some hosts also provide a number of standard cgi scripts that you can include in your site such as simple contact forms.

php - There are numerous PHP applications that might be used for syndication, Content Managing Systems, Web logs, online surveys, customizing Web pages presented to visitors and many other purposes. One disadvantage of PHP is that it is vulnerable to malicious hacking. The service must provide a recent version of php and it must be protected against hacking. You need to be able to know where the php include file are and other technical information that might be needed by your technical people for writing installing scripts.

Perl - Perl is another popular language for various Web applications that must be supported by a good hosting service, in a recent implementation.

Telnet/SSH - These protocols may be needed for special purposes such as maintaining databases, testing programs etc. Telnet is now more or less superseded by more secure protocols like socat.

crontabs - Cron scripts in Unix-based systems allow you to perform periodic daily tasks. You may need them for sending daily email alerts, updating site contents and other uses. Access to the scripting facility is handy to have, but not usually essential.

Domains and subdomains - You may or may not need to have hosting for more than one domain or subdomain. If you are selling sneakers, health foods, Catholic art and Jewish religious objects, you probably need several different domain names. Some hosting plans include multiple domain names. Multiple subdomains like yoursubdomain.mydomain.com and theirsubdomain.mydomain.com are more frequently included in hosting plans, but they are not as useful.

Reseller or owner?

Many small “hosting companies” do not own their own equipment, but rather buy space and bandwidth from larger companies. They may offer plans that are better suited to your needs, but generally it is better to deal with a company that actually controls their own equipment, and can regulate bandwidth and ensure that the hardware and software are always working properly.

Reviews and Comparisons

There are a number of Web pages that provide free online comparisons and reviews of Web hosting services. It is a good idea to shop around and compare and also to check if there are really negative reviews of a host you have chosen. Examples of such sites are:

www.hostcompare.com

www.findmyhosting.com

www.comparewebhosts.com

www.webhostingratings.com

www.networksolutions.com/web-hosting/compare.jsp

Of course, if you can get recommendations from people who use a hosting service that is also very helpful.

PHP is an acronym that used to mean Personal Home Pages and is now known as PHP Hypertext Preprocessor. It is a Unix-based scripting language that has been around for over a decade and is fairly stable and mature. Some PHP applications are vulnerable to hacking, especially if they use global variables or are run in an unprotected environment.

Most Web programmers prefer PHP because it is free, and because the syntax is like C and C++ which they probably know and love. Likewise there is a lot of PHP open software available for free, which can be adapted for various uses.

ASP stands for Active Server Pages, a proprietary Microsoft product that is made to run under Windows operating systems along with IIS, .NET and .COM, MS-SQL and MS-Access. It uses Visual Basic syntax and can incorporate Visual Basic, which is easy for non-C programmers and ordinary folks to learn. .NET and .COM are powerful development frameworks but they require server overhead. ASP and all the other Microsoft goodies cost money, and Microsoft operating systems do not have a reputation for reliability. ASP is a favorite of many large business sites because there are many commerce, inventory and financial transactions written using ASP, making it easy to maintain compatibility with other businesses, and with systems that they may use internally in running their businesses. ASP alone can be run on some Unix servers, but .NET and other satellites usually require a Windows server running IIS.

JSP (Java Server Page) was originally a proprietary technology of Sun Microsystems that more or less fulfills the same functions as asp and php. JSP is now managed by the Java community. JSP implements a Java technology that enables dynamic generation of HTML, XML or other types of documents in response to a Web client request. The technology allows Java code to be embedded into static content. As its name implies, it is an extension of the Java servlet language.

Cold Fusion was originally developed by Allaire as a markup language that allows Web pages to interact with databases. It has been greatly extended by Adobe, which now owns the technology, and probably can compare well with php and asp technology (see http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/proven/ ). It claims to be specially suited for cross-platform development.

Different sources give conflicting advice on what sort of name to choose, because the choice of name depends on the type of Web site or the type of organization it represents. Below, we will try to help you find the strategy that fits you best.

How will people find your Web Site?

The first issue to settle before choosing a name for your site is how people are going to find your Web site. If your site is for a well established business or organization, you probably want to use a Web site that includes your off-line business name, such as www.macys.com/ or www.cnn.com. If you are a large organization or Web enterprise that is going to be known by advertising in the media and word of mouth, then you should choose a unique, easy to remember name like yahoo.com or google.com.

However, if you are small or medium sized site or business you may be depending on Internet search engines to drive traffic to your site. Choosing the right domain name can save you very large sums in advertising and spell the difference between a successful business or informational Web site and failure.

Choosing Top Level Domain Name (Domain Suffix)

There are numerous standard suffixes for Internet domains, including the following major ones:

ac - An academic research institution Web site.

arpa - a Web site of the old Arpanet

biz - A new designation for business Web sites.

com - Company/commercial.

Country specific: us, .nu, .co.uk, - Country-specific domain extensions that localize your site. They may require the owner or person registering the site to be a citizen of the given country.

edu - Educational Web sites.

eu - European Union

info - A relatively new designation for informational Web sites.

int - an international Web site.

gov - A government Web site

name - Can be used for private name Web sites, as for example John.Smith.name

net - Often used for a network of sites

org - Supposedly for non-profit entities.

store - A retail business store.

For a Web site that provides information or is the site of a non-profit organization, .info and .org suffixes may be best, especially if you are depending on search engines to bring people to your Web site. Google and others seem to give more weight to sites with these suffixes. If you are a business, it is generally best to use a .com or .biz suffix. Most people who forget the suffix of a Web site will use the .com suffix.

Choosing a domain name that people will remember

If you are counting on people coming to your Web site by word of mouth and advertising, choose a name that people will remember. It should be brief and special like Yahoo, Google, ebay or Amazon,. and it should be alliterative if possible.

Choosing a domain name by keywords

Most people get to Web sites by searching the Web using Google, Yahoo and other search engines. The search engines retrieve sites and pages for specific search phrases (called keywords) according to many different criteria. The pages with the top listings in search engines get most of the traffic. Studies show that an overwhelming proportion of searchers pick the first site listed by the search engine, and that almost all Web searchers ignore pages that are not in the first ten sites listed for the phrase they were seeking.

The domain name and filename of the page are important criteria for ranking a site in search in search engine results. If you do not have a big advertising budget then you need to invest a lot of though in constructing a domain name that will fit your keywords. For keyword shoes, all other things being equal, Google is going to list shoes.com/shoes.htm above joeblow.com/footwear.htm.

Each major page of your site, including the domain name and main page is going to be optimized for a different and unique keyword combination. If your business is shoes, then the domain name should be optimized for “shoes,” and main pages might be “Men’s Shoes” “Ladies Shoes,” “Children’s shoes,” “walking shoes,” “boots” etc.

Finding the right keywords - If you are constructing a domain name by keywords, choose keywords that:

Describe your product or Web site

Are popular in searches

Are not listed in too many competing Web sites

You can find which keywords are popular through services like Wordtracker or at

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Competition and popular keywords - You can find out how many pages are retrieved by search engines by searching for the keyword. For example, if you type footwear in Google, Google will tell you that it retrieved about 36,800,000 pages for that keyword right now. For shoes, Google retrieves about 216,000,000 pages as of current writing. Competition for “footwear” is less keen than competition for “shoes.” Most of those pages will not in fact be listed by Google, and most pages beyond the first thousand that are actually retrieved are not relevant, but the total number of sites gives you an idea of the competition. It is easy to get to the top Google listings for words that have less than 2 million pages, and very difficult for phrases that have more than a 100 million pages in Google. Overture returns about 880,000 searches per month for keyword shoes (multiply by about 8 or 10 to get the number of searches in Google), but only about 64,000 for keyword footwear.

Checking for existing names - Each domain name must be unique, so you need to check if the domain name you want has already been registered. You can do so at a number of online services such as

www.whois.net - retrieves information about ownership for existing domains, but does not cover all domains.

www.domainsearch.com/ - checks which domain name suffixes are free for a given domain name.

www.nameboy.com/ - suggests names of non-occupied domains for given key words.

www.dynamoo.com/webmaster/choosing_a_domain_name.htm - finds deleted domain names.

Plural or Singular? - Some search engines treat “shoe” the same as “shoes” while others do not. Check carefully when selecting the keyword to use, and use the most popular combination. Google seems to return different results for “shoe” and “shoes.”

What if the domain name is already registered? Chances are, if you choose a popular keyword like “shoes” - the name shoes.com will be taken. Consider alternatives like shoes.biz, or shoes.store, but keep in mind that you must not violate trademark law, and that choosing a domain name similar to an existing one has both advantages and disadvantages in terms of competition. You might consider our-shoes shoes-etc shoes-for-you and similar combinations.

Using separators - Is it better to call your site LadiesShoes or Ladies-Shoes? There are different opinions, depending on whether or not experts believe search engines can parse out the keywords in the names. Better not count on the intelligence of search engine spider robots: put a hyphen between each word.

Keeping out competition for domain names - If you are really serious about “capturing the market” for a domain name or keyword, then you might want to buy up similar domain names. If you are shoes.com, you may want to buy shoes.net, shoes.biz, shoes.store and shoes.us for example. If you are really paranoid, you may also want to register shoessuck.com and other vicious takeoffs.

Buying existing domain names - There are many domain names that are registered, but are not in use, that are for sale. A well known site or business that closed may be interested in selling its name as a business asset. Entrepreneurs have made a business of thinking up names that might be useful to someone and registering them as domain names. You would be surprised at how many domain names are taken up in this way, and offered at premium prices. In most cases, we believe there is no great advantage to be derived from using these name, unless the search word is extremely popular or the brand name is a household word.

What not to do - Don’t use your personal name as a domain name unless people are likely to be searching for it. If you are Jimmy Carter, Paris Hilton, Oprah Winfrey, Beyonce or Alan Dershowitz, it pays to have a Web site in your name. If you are Joseph Nrdspondilowsky, chances are people never heard of you, and your name is not a Web or business asset, unless that is the name of your business. Business names are valuable. Don’t use the name of an existing business as a domain name because you may be sued. Amazon.net domain name might be free, but Amazon owns that brand name.

Dynamic Web pages are generated on-the-fly, usually from a database, when a person or browser requests the link. They have file suffixes like php or asp and may have log queries attached to them. For example. this might be the URL (Universal Resource Locator, which is the Web address) of a dynamic Web page: :

www.mydomain.php?ID=305312§ion=3214&CATID=IP679241

The major advantage of static Web pages is that search engines can find them easily. At one time, search engines could not find dynamic Web pages at all. Google and other search engines can now follow many dynamic search URLs. However, since the URL also determines the search engine rank of a page for a keyword, URLs of dynamic Web pages that have many numbers or text or letters that are unrelated to content will get less search engine visibility than static Web pages with meaningful file names. It is a lot easier for Google to tell what www.mydomain.com/iraq_map.htm is supposed to be about, then it is to rank www.mydomain.com/cms.php?id=35454631§ion=geog&catid=734531&reffer=3551512

Longer URLs are usually penalized in searches as well, and Dynamic URLs that are generated by databases and Content Management Systems (CMS) are generally long.

Some Dynamic HTML (DHTML) pages do not exist on the Web at all in reality and are only assembled when requested. Such pages are usually impossible for search engines to find.

The advantages of Dynamic Web pages are that they can often be generated automatically, by a Content Management System, and can be easily updated from a central database, so that changes in links or site structure can be easily propagated across a whole site, and portal pages and site maps can be generated automatically in an orderly way. Content Management Systems allow people who do not know anything about Web sites or HTML to create new Web pages, and are therefore very useful for commercial applications and news Web sites that must be updated quickly by people with minimal Web expertise.

Some types of dynamic Web page generation systems must be avoided, because they make it virtually impossible for search engines to list the page, or produce hugely inflated page counts. These include systems that make URLs that include the session ID of the user, which is obviously going to change or referrer IDs and the like. Some CMS systems change their URL generation schemes when they are upgraded. If that happens, you can lose all your search engine listings every time you upgrade the software.

An optimal compromise is to use a system that generates dynamic pages and then turns them into static html. The dynamic pages should be deleted to prevent possible penalties for duplicate content. Of course, this usually does not apply to pages that are generated on-the-fly from user search queries.

Most large Web sites have a dedicated IP (Internet Protocol) address that is all their own. If you type the IP address of the Web site in a browser, it will always display the same Web site. Some Web hosting companies, however, use dynamic or shared IP addresses. In the latter case, when a domain name is sent to the server, the server looks up the name and connects to the correct Web site, which may be one of several at the same IP address.

Using one IP address for multiple sites frees up IP addresses, which are becoming a scarce resource. If a site has a shared or dynamic address, when a browser asks for a domain name, the server looks up that domain name and sends the correct page to the browser requesting it. In those cases, you cannot get to a Web site by typing its IP address into the browser.

If you have a business or other site that requires Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protection, for example, for financial transactions, you probably need a dedicated IP address.

There are rumors that search engines discriminate against Web sites with dynamic or shared IP addresses. These rumors have been denied by at least some search engine companies however.

SSL and TLS are technology for secure acquisition of sensitive information from Web site visitors and customers. SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. TLS, which is the protocol that is replacing it, stands for Transport Layer Security, but most people still use the old name. SSL/TLS provides a secure, encrypted link between the Web server and the browser of the visitor on his or her computer. It ensures that all data passed between the web server and browser remain private and integral. SSL/TLS is an industry standard. It is used by millions of Web sites to protect transactions.

Given the proliferation of identity theft and of insecure Wi-Fi connections, secure connections are assuming greater importance. For Web shopping carts it is mandatory.

To generate an SSL link, a Web server requires an SSL Certificate. These come in two flavors. An SSL certificate may be generated for a Web site that has its own SSL mechanism or it may be generated for another Web site that offers SSL services. The latter is a shared SSL certificate.

When visitors are entering data using SSL, a padlock icon appears in the browser status bar.

SSL certificates are issued to legal “persons” - either corporate entities or legally accountable individuals. The SSL certificate will usually include the domain name, the name of the company or individual who owns the certificate, and the address of the owner. It will always include the expiry date of the certificate and details of the Certification Authority responsible for issuing the certificate.

When the visitor’s browser connects to an SSL-secure site, it retrieves the site’s SSL Certificate and it checks the expiry date to ensure the certificate is still valid, checks if it is issued for the site that is being contacted, and checks that the certificate issuer is a trusted authority. If any of these checks fail, the browser may issue a warning. The warnings can frighten some visitors, so it important to make sure the certificate is not expired, is issued by a firm that is in the “trusted” list and preferably is issued to your site, rather than being shared.

Unix is one of the oldest and most widely used operating systems, and most versions of Unix are free. A great deal of free software has also been written for these systems, and a lot of online support is available for them, and software written for one Unix system will usually work for another system. There are also a lot of Web design people who know the Unix system well and can write a lot of good software quickly using Unix-supported languages and databases. It is true, however, that very often the documentation for “open systems” software leaves a lot to be desired. Apache and Linux are two of the most popular brand names of operating systems.

Microsoft has developed its own proprietary IIS system which runs on NT and Windows server platforms. Microsoft extensions include many powerful tools such as FrontPage extensions .COM, .NET, MS-SQL, Microsoft access, asp technology and Visual basic. These tools allow web designers to write up problematic and complex tasks quickly and easily. However, they are not needed for most applications. Windows-based servers do not have a great reputation for reliability, and have more “security holes” than Unix-based systems. ASP and FrontPage extensions can be run on many Unix based servers. Unless you already have an application that uses asp, .COM, .NET, MS-SQL, Access or Visual Basic, the consensus is that Unix-based systems such as apache are preferable.

Some rules for site design that will make the site usable and user-friendly

KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid - Avoid fancy and annoying popup windows, background movies, floating advertisement window and complex scripts that slow up browsers and can cause them to hang or crash. Likewise, avoid background music, which is usually annoying to visitors and can slow down loading of Web pages. A gifted and ambitious Web designer, left to their own devices, can make clever use of inline frames, scrolling windows, popup windows and other gadgets to produce a Web page that nobody can read and that will only work in one type of browser. That is not where you want to go.

Main page must be useful - Don’t put a big graphic or presentation on your main page and an “enter” button. Most people who get to that main page will never click the “enter” button or link, and search engines won’t have any text to tell them what the site is about.

Avoid Clutter - This doesn’t mean there cannot be a lot of information and links on a page, but the information should be grouped both visually and according to content. Special links or features can be put in different colored areas, Menus should have no more than 10 items, but may have sub-menus. Each section should have a meaningful header that tells the visitor what it is about.

Make it easy to get to what you want visitors to see - The site should be designed so that the visitor can get to the most important pages by clicking a link from the main page, and can get to all pages with no more than two or three clicks. Studies show that people will usually not click more than three links. Be sure to include a search engine and a well organized site map, and a simple menu system that allows easy navigation through the site. The site map should be linked from every page, and if possible, the search engine form should be visible on every page. Pages that are part of a sub section should always have a link to the top page of that section and to the main page of the Web site.

Consistent and functional layout - The layout of the main page of a site may differ from that of interior pages, but the interior pages should strive for the same look and feel throughout, so that visitors know they are at your site and know where the menus and other facilities are.

Fast performance - Visitors will leave Web pages without viewing them if they take too long to load. No page should take more than 10 seconds to load if possible, and certainly not longer than a minute on an average Internet hookup.

Reliability - Check regularly for broken links, bad forms and other errors using a professional tool or through the host statistics package.

Readability - People must be able to read your message easily. This simple rule is broken repeatedly by sites that have “artistic” water marks, brown text on black background, 9 point text and other aberrations that are favored by some Web designers.

Don’t waste space - The top part of the main Web page is the most critical part of your site. If new visitors don’t like what they see there or can’t find what they want, they will leave. Don’t count on people to scroll down, and don’t waste the top part of the page on huge logos and other irrelevant graphics.

Sensible layout - Very narrow columns of text that are favored in some Web logs and advertising - laden sites are annoying to read as they require visitors to keep scrolling down.

Use Graphics Well - Graphics are important assets for illustrating your point, and search engines like them too, up to a point. However, large and heavy graphics slow down loading of the Web page and can obscure your message.

Browser Compatibility - Make sure your pages are visible in the most popular browsers - Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Firefox, Safari and Opera. You may be in for unpleasant surprises if you do not check, like jumbled up tables and black text on black background.

Provide Contact Details - There must be a working email address for people to contact the Webmaster about site problems, as well as a way to contact marketing or other personnel about content or product issues. The contact page link or address should be available on every page of the Web site.

Simple, Correct Language - Don’t use a big word if you can use a little, simple one. Explain acronyms and special terms. Check for grammatical errors and typographical errors. Pages with numerous language errors tell visitors that you are an amateur and don’t know your business.

Give the people what they want - No amount of clever design can make up for boring, inaccurate or useless content or shoddy or expensive merchandise. If you provide interesting content and merchandise that people need, and if you also design your site well, then you will be able to attract visitors.

Custom content - Large Web sites customize content according to their visitors. They may display language choices according to the IP address of the visitor, they may automatically show shoppers items that others with similar interests have bought (”Shoppers who ordered ‘Web design for Dummies’ also bought…” ) or they may let visitors design their own personal portal.

Sticky features - If you sign people up for an email newsletter, you can tell them about new features at the site and keep them coming back. Likewise, personalized e-mail addresses, personalized content, lists of favorite books and music and similar paraphernalia all have the object of developing visitor loyalty. The simplest sticky feature is probably a little script that makes the site into the home page of the visitor if they so desire.

Don’t annoy people - Don’t keep opening a new window when visitors exit your site, don’t greet them with loud music, search engines that don’t work, popups and other gadgets that get in the way of what they want to do.

See what others are doing - Usually, the design of similar Web sites is a good clue to the type of design, structure and look you should have.

Get a Second Opinion - Ask friends and acquaintances to check out the design and improve it according to their comments.

Rules are made to be broken - Some of the most successful sites and e-commerce enterprises became that way because they found a better way to do things. Web site design “fashions” change all the time. Different designs may be suited to different uses and visitor segments. Don’t let a Web designer intimidate you into making the sort of site they know how to make, rather than the one you need to attract and hold visitors.

Virtual hosting provides shared resources on a single computer. If the user is given some administrative privileges, this may be called a “virtual server.” Virtual hosting and virtual servers provide disk space, CPU time and bandwidth within an actual computer or computers that may be shared by many different users.

The main advantages of dedicated servers are:

• You control every aspect of the machine and operating system and have supervisor access to the root directory.

• Your data are safer and cannot be hacked by other users in the same server.

• You control all the resources, so there is no chance that another site will hog bandwidth or bring down the server.

• The amount of disk space, CPU time and bandwidth depends only on the physical capacity of the server. There are no penalties for exceeding bandwidth.

Disadvantages of dedicated hosting:

• Dedicated hosting is significantly more expensive than virtual hosting.

• If you run the server, you are also responsible for software and hardware upgrades, scaling and repairs. Dedicated hosting on a single server usually cannot offer you redundancy schemes. You usually have one set of hardware and access routes to the Internet Web world. If there is a hardware or software problem, your site goes down. Some virtual hosting solutions can offer redundancy protection, so that your site stays up even if a specific computer or router has a problem.

Dedicated hosting variations - Managed dedicating hosting services will handle chores like hardware and software maintenance and upgrade for you - at a price. You can also buy your own equipment and have the hosting company manage it for you - this is called colocation.

You should only consider dedicated hosting if you have a really large Web site, or one with critical data that must not be accessible to outsiders, such as large and confidential financial transactions, medical records or data related to national security.

Note: Dedicated hosting is not the same as Static (dedicated) versus dynamic IP address. Most virtual hosts will provide you with a unique dedicated static IP address.

Top Level Domain types - Each domain name has a suffix that is called the “top level domain name.” The suffixes are supposed to tell visitors and search engines something about the Web site. The following are some of the most popular and significant domain types:

ac - An academic research institution Web site.

arpa - a Web site of the old Arpanet

biz - A new designation for business Web sites.

com - Company/commercial.

Country specific: us, .nu, .co.uk, - Country-specific domain extensions that localize your site. They may require the owner or person registering the site to be a citizen of the given country.

edu - Educational Web sites.

eu - European Union

info - A relatively new designation for informational Web sites.

int - an international Web site.

gov - A government Web site

name - Can be used for private name Web sites, as for example John.Smith.name

net - Often used for a network of sites

org - Supposedly for non-profit entities.

store - A retail business store.

Where to register a domain name? You can register a domain through several registry companies. The best of these is undoubtedly Godaddy. Important considerations are price, ease of update, ease of transferring domain name ownership and hosting details and choice of names. Godaddy ( http://www.godaddy.com ) has earned a reputation as the best place to buy domain names for international Web sites. It has slashed domain registration prices to $8 a year and less and provides near real time services. Godaddy is now the number one domain registrar in the world. Its innovative services include free emails and Web logs, free hosting, bulk transfer rates and more.