Martin Reed

How to start up a new Web Site

Q.  If your Octopush / UWH club doesn't have a Web Site, what do you do?
A.  Start up a new one.

It's really not that difficult, although it can be at bit daunting at first. Try following these easy steps. Please note that this is just a set of personal opinions that have evolved over years of browsing the Web. All alternative experiences, recommendations and contributions will be welcomed and incorporated.

Always keep in mind that if your site features useful information that is regularly updated and doesn't take forever to load, people will come back; if you make it difficult or irritating for them, they won't.

• WEB SPACE / WEB ADDRESS - a short URL is better
• Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) give you a certain amount of space on their servers in which you can host your own web pages: 3Mb is mean, 5Mb is about standard and 10Mb is generous, although an increasing number of ISPs now give more than that. 1Mb is equivalent to approximately 400 printed pages of text. Scanned photographs are typically 30K-50K in size, so only 20-30 will take up 1Mb of web space. Other graphic images may be from 1K upwards, depending on size, complexity and content
• The address (URL) at which your web site can be found is specified by your ISP. Note that CompuServe's subscriber web space has very long URLs that can easily exceed 72 characters. At this point, hotlinks in email addresses are wrapped onto the next line and stop working. Give careful thought to your ISP and choose short names for directories and main pages wherever possible
• It is possible to register your own "domain name", so that the address of your web site is "www.yourownname.com" or "www.yourownname.co.uk". If you want to pay for this degree of personalisation, register the name before you set up the web site. The main reason for this is that as soon as a site goes live it will be picked up by the various Internet search engines. This means that if you change your web address, you will have to update all the references to your site with all the search engines. Most service providers can register a domain name for you, but prices for this service and subsequent maintenance of your domain vary enormously, so it is worth shopping around.
• TOOLS FOR THE JOB - an HTML editor and a web publishing utility
• In order to construct your web pages you will need a web page editor. Microsoft Front Page, HoTMetaL Pro and Netscape Composer are some of the tools on offer; the range runs into dozens. Most are designed to be used as easily as a word processor.
• Note that Front Page contains a number of extensions to standard HTML: using them will render your pages unusable unless your ISP supports Front Page Extensions
• In order for other people to be able to view your web pages, you must publish them to your web space on your ISP's server. Most ISPs support straight FTP, XOOM requires straight FTP which excludes the Microsoft Web Publishing Wizard, while CompuServe requires the Microsoft Web Publishing Wizard with its own extension DLLs
• CONTENT - what do you want to say? You may want to include:
• a page that tells people how to find your club. Proper road maps are useful, but invariably copyrighted, although there are a number of web sites that can feed maps into a browser window when provided with a reference such as a postcode or ZIP code
• a "Meet The Players" page, to make the faces behind the masks a bit more human
• a news page for the benefit of club members and visitors
• a fixtures list and results pages
• personal pages promoting yourself or your business
• TARGET AUDIENCE - to whom do you want to say it?
• Your page may be intended only for the use of your club members; however, it may also be accessed by local people who have never heard of the sport, or by players from other countries who may shortly be visiting your area and may be looking to join you for a game
• If you choose to put contact addresses and telephone numbers on your web site, always specify them in full, including town name and telephone dialling code. Your reader may not be familiar with your area
• UPDATE REGULARLY - out of date or incomplete information is worthless
• The most effort you will ever put into your web site is in getting it established. Once it's up and running the effort needed to keep it up to date is minimal
• If an event has a time limit or a fixed date, always specify the date in full, including the year
• Once an event has happened, remove it from your web site or refer to it as having happened
• LOADING TIME - keep to a minimum
• Try to make your pages load as quickly as possible - not everyone has a 56K modem or ISDN
• Don't incorporate anything that isn't necessary
• COLOUR - good visual effect with no loading time
• Make use of the ability to use colour in your pages: colour loads instantly, graphics don't
• A consistent colour scheme shows a sense of identity: if your club has club colours, use them as the basis for your pages
• GRAPHICS - keep 'em simple, keep 'em small
• JPG format produces smaller files for photographs and other high-definition images, GIF format produces smaller files for other types of image
• GIFs can be reduced to 16 colors, which reduces the size of the image file still further
• Use 16-colour GIFs wherever possible. 16-colour GIF images often don't look any different to 256-colour images, but load much more quickly
• BACKGROUND IMAGES - make them small, or make them wide and short
• See "Graphics" above for choice of image format
• Backdrop images repeat across and down the page
• An image that is narrower than the browser's viewing area (such as the backdrop to this page) will be repeated across the page. Small images, which loads quickly, repeat often and can be very effective in creating patterns
• An image that is wider than the browser's viewing area will be truncated; it will not be wrapped round to the next line. A very wide, very short image can be used to create a border down the left-hand side of the page. For examples, see the photo album effect on the Octopush Photographs page or the writing pad effect on any of the fixtures/results pages on this web site: both of these graphic images are less than 2K in size

• PHOTOGRAPHS - if they're large in size or number, thumbnail them
• If you have a number of photographs that you want to make available on your web site, think about who will be viewing them. Large images take just as long to download no matter how small you display them on the page. Will everyone want to view all of these images?
• Use a graphic editor to create thumbnails of your large images. Display the thumbnails on the main page and hyperlink the thumbnail to its associated large image. That way people have to wait only for the large images that they actually want to see
• JPG format is always more compact than GIF for photographic images
• TEXT-ONLY BROWSERS - can you understand your own page without the graphics?
• All graphic images should have "alternative text" associated with them
• All graphic images should be large enough for the alternative text to be displayed. Images should be a minimum of 23 pixels in height, and wide enough for the text to be displayed inside the image frame
• FONTS - basically, don't use them
• People may be browsing your web page from PCs, Apple Macintoshes, Sun SPARCstations, other UNIX boxes, mainframes, and any number of other machines. If their machine hasn't got the font you've used, they won't see the effect you want them to see. Use a graphic instead
• PRINTING - will your page print neatly? Will it even print at all?
• White lettering on a dark background looks striking on-screen, but white lettering also prints white on a printer, i.e. it doesn't print at all
• If you expect your page to be printed, test it to make sure that it prints the way you expect it to
• AND FINALLY - please add a link on your page to point to "Octopush Central"!
• Please feel free to copy the "Octopush Central" graphic at the bottom of this page and serve it from your own site. The image below is displayed at 230 x 23 pixels, and is hyper-linked to the URL of Octopush Central, which is http://www.reedconsulting.com/octopush

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