7 Steps to finding your site.
Transient


One of the biggest obstacles to having a successful website is getting the people to it. I've had many sites over the years, and although one in particular was mildly successful, the rest died a relatively quick death. Why? No one came. So, in response to that, I've come up with a plan as you will, on how to run a successful site using tools freely obtainable on the web. Most of these tools are relatively behind the scene while a few are obtrusive in a small way to some visitors to your site. You can't please everyone and sometimes you may need to sell your soul a little bit. Please note that some of these tools are design specific, meaning what works with cms may not necessarily work with a gaming site or blog, although I am writing this for my blog.

1- Preparation. First thing you should always do when contemplating your own place on the web is decide what it is you can offer to the people that may come to your site. One thing I find alot of people do is take for granted just how many sites there are that will offer close to what you will. I know I have many times. An easy way to get a grip on this may be to install Stumbleupon and set the search for the type of site you plan. You can stumble for hours just on design sites. Not to say this should be a deference to you beginning, but rather set in stone that you need to be unique. Simply copying a site, and trust me it's been done, won't guarantee anything. You still need to offer something different or be passed by. In my case, I decided on a blog that would offer design tools and advice. Has it been done? Yes, many times. I am fine with that because I know from experience that I need to offer something that not many others do and more importantly, I need to give it time to mature. I can't expect people to flock. It's not like I'm giving away cars for each comment left.

2- Software. There are so many different types of software available that it almost seems impossible to decide what fits your idea the best. So, with that in mind, lets go through the more popular first.

CMS (content management system)- One of the most popular because of the seemingly infinite possibilities it offers. The main attributes of a cms are that you can have many people contributing to the site, much like a forum, but with a design that offers a more professional atmosphere. Likely the most popular of the CMS's is Joomla and Wiki. Joomla is free to use, and with time and patience, can offer you everything you need. Wiki, as with the most popular of this software on the web, Wikipedia, is the essence of a site relying on member input. Others available include PHPNuke, Drupal, e107, Mambo, and Xoops. There are many others as well, but these seem to be the most popular, at least while I write this.

Forums- Maybe the most used website software on the web, I exclude html pages, forums are totally reliant on the members contributing to the site. There are millions of forums on the web, although I would hazard a guess that likely 95% of these are the big 3. VBulletin, Invision, and PHPBB. All three offer most of what you could ever need in a forum based site, although the two paid forum softwares, Vbulletin and Invision, offer more along the lines of functionality, at least for someone without some html, php, or mysql smarts.

Blogs- What I use and I'll tell you why. It's in my mind, more intimate. It's me and you...and no one else. I write the songs...you get it. If it fails, I have noone to fault but myself, and because of that, and the control I have over that, I have a little more incentive to make quality contributions. Now, that said, there really is only two blog softwares, Wordpress and Moveable Type, and yes I know, there'll be people who wonder why I left out others, but when you type in "blog" in Google, try finding yours in under 5 minutes. By the way, I am talking about software you will install yourself, not pre-hosted such as blogger. Both offer everything, and I mean everything you need, are easy to install, and you are writing posts in minutes. They also offer some very nice designs for every facet of use and both have very good add-ons that make it all that much easier to concentrate on the content, not the code.

There are others, but for the purpose of this post, I'll stick with the more popular mediums.

3- Content. You could have a successful site with just about anything as long as you make the site inviting and easy to navigate. Maybe because I've been around the web for so long or because I'm just older, but the saying, "less is more", certainly applies to my tastes. There is nothing worse in my mind than clicking a link and spending 5 minutes waiting for someones idea of a flash intro to load, or worse, full page images. Lots of them. A little idea of what me and many others are doing after 10 seconds...leaving. Another peeve of mine is a site that looks like it was created during the late 60's with the author on lsd. Pink, blue, purple, red, and green DO NOT LOOK GOOD together on a web page. I can't really stress that enough. If the visitor to your site likes the design, doesn't need to shield their eyes for fear of going blind, and you offer something, anything, to capture their eye, they will stay and at least take a look. That's all you can hope for. After that, it's up to you to keep them.

Some ideas on how to do just that can be found by browsing popular websites. Your choice really, but, if you plan on making sewing your topic of choice, looking at a site based on car parts likely won't yield much help. Stick to your niche. Likewise, if it is sewing, make sure you know something about it before you start. People tend to visit sites in the hope you can tell them something they don't know. When it comes to that something, make sure you make it easy for them to understand. The saying, "explain it to me like I'm stupid", should always apply. If you need to show images use thumbnails or links. There is some pretty cool code floating around the web that allows for thumbnails to maximize on top of the displayed page without directing visitors away, which is important. If you really need to direct visitors away, make a new page load. That way, they can close it and be right back where they started. All this is easy to do fi you take the time to prepare.

4- Coding. Keep it simple stupid. Trust me. Less is more. Every query to a database, every script that your browser needs to load, and yes, all those graphics take loading time. Time that could be better spent having your visitor browse your site. Besides, most things you think are cool are not essential to the folks getting to your site, and much like a business, word of mouth, or rather good word of mouth, is invaluable. So, keep it simple and stay within the ability of your host to provide the speed needed.

5- Ads. An easy way to make a few bucks, but there's a drawback. If no one is going to your site to click on them, why have them? I see far too many sites start out with ads on them. It doesn't really make sense to me because you can't click them, and you can't have your friends keep clicking them for you. Maybe it's just me, but when I go to a site for the first time, I don't pay attention to the ads at all. Not in the least. Fact is, if I never go back to your site, how would I click them? Getting the idea? Sometimes it's better to dedicate your time to the content than the idea that you're a success. That said, if you do have them on your site, placement is everything. If there's a big flashing ad at the top of your page telling me I'm your 1,000,000th visitor, what do you think I'm going to do? Likely nothing. By the way, it's annoying seeing those anywhere, let alone as soon as the page loads. Have your ads out of the way, and make sure the ads you have are pleasant and interesting. It is possible to do this. And for god's sake, no pop-ups, pop-unders, or any other intrusive ad. I'm not going to click a link to protect my virus riddled pc, and likely, I'm also never coming back to your site. Trust. If I don't trust the ads, I don't trust you.

Affilates- Same thing applies here. If i click a link on your site and I'm flooded with pop-ups, not good. Protect yourself from other sites by linking to those you know can only help you. There's no shame in telling your uncle Jimbob that linking to his escorts site isn't going to happen, family or not. Protect yourself, and you'll be protecting your visitors, which in turn, keeps them coming.

6- Hosting. Searching the web for good hosting is like a needle in a stack of needles. Finding one any different from another, and more important, finding one better than the other, is hard. Painstakingly hard. Some advice. Don't listen to these sites that offer reviews. You'll notice the ads most likely on the side when you go to these sites are from the reviewer. Do the math. Ask around. Go to sites you trust and ask them what they suggest. More than likely they'll be happy to tell you who they host with and let you know the ins and outs. Very good way to find an affiliate for your site. Think linkback. One of the things I've done in the past, and I'm guilty of not doing this time, although everything is cleared up now, is asking a busy forum who their host is. The reason for this is that forums use the most bandwidth out of the software I've mentioned, so if their site is relatively fast, likely so is their host, especially if they've been around for a while. On the other hand, if you find one that is less than helpful, an easy whois on their domain will yield all you need to know. Make sure you get some type of whm with your hosting, such as Cpanel or DirectAdmin. Makes things a whole lot easier, although I still prefer the old fashioned way of installing.

7- Search Engines. There are a few ways to get listed, and even better, listed high on a search engine. One is to make sure you have lots of people doing searches for your site, or visiting other sites and clicking a link back to your site. Thus, linkback. These are things that make search engines notice you. Another is to have a sitemap that allows the search engine to access everything on your site without actually going through everything. Basically an xml file with everything on your site broken into text. Both ways are essential but there are other ways, much simpler in fact.


<a href="http://www.yoursite.com/forums/">photoshop</a>

A simple hyperlink with an anchortext on your site. The anchortext being photoshop in this case. With this anchortext, you are raising the chances of a search engine posting your site in relevant searches.

Meta tags. Not extremely useful, but they do help. Just don't flood them with useless information, and remember that the most prominent keywords should go first. Do a search for keywords to get an idea of what they would entail.

Manually submitting your website to a search engine is more effective than using a program or website to do it for you. Takes a little time, but is worth it. You only need to do it once.

Being search engine friendly is also important. If you were to turn off all the coding for your site such as java, or css, you would see exactly what a search engine crawler sees. If you can actually use the info left, and it is discernible, then you are fine. Flash and Java script is bad and search engines likely can't or don't even bother trying to read it as much versus html markup. Keep that in mind.

Don't be hasty. Finish your site and make sure everything works. Have a friend check it for you. Double check. Starting with an incomplete site can cause the search engines to not have a complete index and maybe not come back for months.

Create webmaster accounts at Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo! Site Explorer and submit your site to directories like Dmoz and JoeAnt.


Some search engine myths:

* Outbound links improve your ranking
* Submitting your site to the search engines too many times will get you banned
* Links from .edu and .gov sites are worth more then links from other TLDs
* Pages with .php extensions don't rank as well as pages with .html extensions
* Search engines won't index pages with query strings/all query strings are not search engines friendly
* Using seo software will get your site penalized
* Too many hyphens in your domain name will cause the search engines to label your site as spam
* Traffic is a factor in a page's ranking

While this is by no means perfect, it does however give you some ideas on how to implement some tools that are freely available and maybe, just maybe, allow you to have a successful site. Just always keep in mind that unlike your collection of playboys with pages that just won't open anymore....this is something you want and need other people to see.


Sources- Sitepoint which provided the myths and some relevant info on search engines, Google also for search engine info, Wikipedia for info on itself, and myself, for which all the years of trying never did any of this until now.

Thank you Transient for your submission and hard work

thanks a lot for that,
very nice to hear your experience :)

thanks for the advice... I am currently creating a new site based on Xoops. I am in the configuration stage at the moment... choosing modules to install, such as CBB (a forum). Trying to keep it to a minimum, as right now I don't have anything to really offer as far as content. I will likely install the Wordpress module for Xoops as well.

Many thanks Transient - extremely useful information there!

Luckily I've had great success in regards to visitors on my website without submitting to search engines mainly because I've never bothered to learn how.

Now I do, I'll be signing up soon!

some excellent advice i'm in the process of setting up some sites atm and it's allot more work than i expected but this has given me good insight on which way to head.

thank you.

Now THAT was an awesome post...insightful and very educational. That info will be beneficial to any new web-master-to-be. Figures that it was written by another Canadian...we're a crebral sort.

Thanks very much for the contribution!

WoWwww ....

That was really good advice . Clear and practical .
My first site like totally flopped . Now i can understand some of the mistakes I made .
Btw I am still in the blue about advertising and income from that .
Could smone give me a place to start from ...

Thnx ...