Ken Larsen's web site - Web site creation
In my last job at IBM I created and maintained a
few internal web sites. Since leaving IBM I've resurrected my web
publishing skills and created my personal web site and the following web site
for a psychologist friend of mine using Microsoft FrontPage:
http://jeannehernandez.com/
If other people prevail upon me to create web
sites for them, I may launch a web site business, but for now it's just another
one of my recreational interest.
Lessons learned:
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I built
Jeanne's web site using
"frames". From a navigation and aesthetics perspective, frames are
wonderful. However, from a "search engine visibility" perspective, they're
not great. Extra steps must be taken in the internals of the HTML code to
ensure that all pages get "crawled" and become visible to Google and other
search engines. Here are two web sites which address this issue:
Search Engines and Frames and
Improving Your Listing on Google
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Google's Page Rank is a numerical (0-10) assessment of
how visible a web page is to Google's search engine. To display page rank
you must enable page rank on your browser. Here's how to do this on
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0:
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Click on Settings.
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Click on Options.
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More on the "More"
folder.
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Check "Page Rank and
Page Info". Note: This has privacy implications.
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Here are some tips to improve a site's visibility to
Google:
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It's important to comply with web standards. Here's a
style guide I found:
Web Style Guide
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After reviewing the Web Style Guide, I modified my web
site to have:
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All text is in
Verdana 2 (10 pt) font except for page headings.
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Page headings are
Verdana 4 (14 pt) bold.
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Secondary headings on
a page are Verdana 3 (12 pt) bold.
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Tertiary headings on
a page are in Verdana 2 (10 pt) bold.
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Array of links to
other site pages are in Verdana 1 (8 pt) and are not bold.
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Headings and text are
left justified.
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Captions for pictures
appears to the right of pictures.
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Alt text for pictures
is provided. This is text that appears if the cursor is placed over the
picture.
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The advantage of selecting the font size as 1, 2, 3
instead of 8 pt, 10 pt, 12 pt is that this permits a viewer to modify screen
text size via the browser's "View->Text Size" command.
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To avoid being picked up by spammers, email addresses
should not be posted on web pages. It's best to have a "contact me" which
when clicked upon pops up an email form.
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Pictures posted on the web should be shrunk to their
optimal viewing dimensions before posting. This is to minimize page
downloading time.
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Web pages should be designed to look best on screens
which are 1024x768 pixels as this is becoming the most widely used screen
size. My son Kevin found this information at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Image_use_policy/Size
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Here are some tips on
controlling how web sites index and access your web site:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/controlling-how-search-engines-access.html
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If someone is interested
starting their own web site, my recommendation is that they buy a domain and
hosting service from
GoDaddy, http://www.godaddy.com
It's inexpensive and you can develop it quickly.
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Here's a web site for
creating backgammon board diagrams:
http://apbg.net/bg_diagrams.php
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(November 2014) The current recommendations for web design are
Squarespace and
WordPress,
but I haven't used either.
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Since May of 2012 I've been using Microsoft Expressions Web 4 for web
design. It cost me $ 160 back in 2012. Now (2015) I see that a
free version can be acquired.
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In May of 2012 I bought a domain and 5 years of hosting service from GoDaddy
for $ 280.
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(February 2017) This website/blog builder looks to be pretty good:
https://websitesetup.org/
However, I haven't tried it. It recommends using WordPress, but from
what little I've seen of WordPress, I don't like it. There are ads.
I don't like ads. They're distracting and clutter things up. I
would expect that the ads are there only if you go with the free version of
WordPress. If you paid for WordPress service, you could probably get
rid of them. That's my assumption.
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(February 10, 2018) Gym buddy John Morrison recommends that I study
w3schools.com It gives advice
to schools on web publishing. One piece of advice is to use
Hex={FF,F8,E7} for a background color. It's "Cosmic Latte". When
I got home I immediately began converting my web pages to it.
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(March 2018) Here's a blog that another gym buddy (Diana Walstad) created
using WordPress:
https://dianawalstad.com Diana pays $ 38/year for hosting service.
She learned how to create a WordPress blog from the Rivers Agency in
Chapel Hill. Here is their website:
https://riversagency.com/
January 30, 2019: I spend
$ 570.25 to extend my domain and web hosting service for five more years.
November 23, 2019: At my
gym I have an argument with my highly esteemed friend
Dr. John Morrison about web
design. John founded the computer science department at NCSSM in Durham,
NC in 2005. I asked John what tools he would use if he had to start from
scratch and build a website like mine. He told me that he would build each
page in HTML using a text editor. He is adamantly against using a WYSIWYG
(What you see if what you get) tool. I was absolutely aghast! I
totally disagree and told John that he needs to wake up. Writing a page in
HTML is an extraordinarily tedious operation ... unless you're someone
like John ... who can solve a crossword puzzle in under 20 minutes. But,
if you're a normal person, a WYSIWYG tool is an absolute necessary. He
justified his stance based on the speed that his creations load versus WYSIWYG
created pages. To me, that is not a valid argument. With rare
exceptions, everything loads fast ... because computer hardware has become
extraordinarily fast. Priority should be placed on the aesthetics of the
web pages. John's own
NCSSM page is severely lacking when measured by that criteria. John
said web page design is not part of his department's mission statement.
November 24, 2019: John Morrison is wrong about the NCSSM Computer Science
mission statement.
It can be found on
this page.
Within the mission
statement is "The primary goal for all classes is for students to build a
toolkit that they can use to solve increasingly complex computing problems and
complete
working applications."
To me, the word
"complete" means that a user interface must be included.
I advise John to
upgrade his courses to address this omission.
I assert that ignoring
the value of a WYSIWYG user interface is a major flaw in the NCSSM computer
science curriculum.