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| Important things you should include when designing a web site: Please do not put "Welcome" in your page title! If you want to welcome someone to your site do it in the initial heading within the body of your page. The web page title is displayed in the browser caption where it is hardly noticed by the user. When the site is bookmarked the title text is placed on the bookmark. If the user alphabetizes their bookmarks, your bookmark goes to the bottom of the list with all of the other "Welcome..." bookmarks. The title of your web page should include the name of your site, product or site purpose; you can include a short phrase that explains the site as well if you wish. For example: <TITLE>AcqURL.com</TITLE> OR <TITLE>AcqURL: a simply powerful bookmark manager</TITLE> OR <TITLE>AcqURL Web Design Tips</TITLE>. The actual description of the site should not be included in the title, that is the purpose of the Web Page Description. The Title tags should be placed between the header tags <HEAD> and </HEAD>.
2. Web Page IconThere is a relatively new concept from Microsoft called Favicon. A Favicon is an icon image that you can use to brand your web site to make it stand out from the crowd. If you have a Favicon on your web page server, then every time someone bookmarks your site with Internet Explorer 5 (or greater) or AcqURL, your own icon will be displayed instead of the default bookmark symbol. IE5 and AcqURL will automatically look for the Favicon file whenever it is asked to bookmark a page. This is an automated function that cannot be turned off in IE5 (however it can be turned off in AcqURL under the Setup menu) and is completely transparent to the browser. Your visitor will not receive any errors if no Favicon.ico file is found. However the generic icon is displayed instead and you will have lost a good opportunity to 'highlight' your site. So to rectify the situation you need to create a file called 'favicon.ico'. This needs to be in an authentic icon format. Many people assume that an icon file is just a bitmap, however this is not the case. You cannot just rename a bitmap with an .ico extension and expect it to work. You will need to create a 16x16 pixel 16 (or 256) color icon, using an icon editor. After you have created your icon make sure you have named it correctly. It should be called favicon and should have the .ico extension. In other words:"favicon.ico".
You can either place a copy of your icon in the root directory of your site (where your pages most likely reside), or you can alternatively place a single copy of your Favicon anywhere you wish and include a LINK TAG within your HTML pages to point to it. The tag should look like this:
Testing your Favicon: AcqURL will automatically load the favicon image from your site when it is bookmarked. If you change the favicon image, AcqURL will recognize that the image has changed, and load the new image. IE5, however, tends to hang on to a favicon image even if the image has been changed at the site.
3. Web Page DescriptionThe web page description is very important! This is what AcqURL uses to describe your site to the user. Some search engines also look at the page description for placement. AcqURL has the ability to read your web page description without taking the user to your web site. Simply by typing the URL of your site into a blank bookmark button, AcqURL will go retreive your web page description and place it on the bookmark, without even sending the browser to the site. The description can be up to 1000 characters long and should describe the page as well as promote it. The purpose, of course, is to convince your target audience to visit your site.
The tag for the web page description is a META tag and should look like the following: The Description META tag should be placed between the header tags <HEAD> and </HEAD>.
4. Web Page KeywordsWeb page keywords probably get more attention by web page designers than any other tag. This is because most web page designers have heard that search engines use keywords to determine the position of the web site within the search engine. This is not a myth. Keywords are very important in getting your site recognized and positioned on search engines/sites. At this time AcqURL does not look at the keywords tag, but rather relies on the description tag for web site information. Still, it is important to include a keywords tag to promote your site. You can have up to 1000 characters in your keywords tag. Keywords should be seperated by commas. Keywords can also be repeated for higher positioning, but too many repeats can get you kicked out of the search site. Try to think of any words that are specific to your site or product, and words that users might use in trying to find it.
The tag for the web page keywords is a META tag and should look like the following: The Keywords META tag should be placed between the header tags <HEAD> and </HEAD>. |
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