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: 

1. 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 
2. 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:
   • Click on Settings.
   • Click on Options.
   • More on the "More" folder.
   • Check "Page Rank and Page Info".  Note:  This has privacy implications. 
3. Here are some tips to improve a site's visibility to Google:
• It's important that the site be linked to by other sites ... particularly by sites which themselves are significant and are not "link farms" or scurrilous. 
• Google uses the text on a web site’s home page for its indexing.  Therefore, your most important text with appropriate keywords should be placed there.  Reference:  http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesArticle/id-2555.html
• Page titles are important search criteria, so it is vital that your titles contain keywords that people might search on.  Reference:   http://www.theemiratesnetwork.com/computers/webmaster/submit3.htm
• For more tips, see: http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/google.shtml and Timing Google's Crawl
4. It's important to comply with web standards.  Here's a style guide I found:  Web Style Guide
5. After reviewing the Web Style Guide, I modified my web site to have:
   • All text is in Verdana 2 (10 pt) font except for page headings.
   • Page headings are Verdana 4 (14 pt) bold.
   • Secondary headings on a page are Verdana 3 (12 pt) bold.
   • Tertiary headings on a page are in Verdana 2 (10 pt) bold.
   • Array of links to other site pages are in Verdana 1 (8 pt) and are not bold.
   • Headings and text are left justified.
   • Captions for pictures appears to the right of pictures.
   • Alt text for pictures is provided.  This is text that appears if the cursor is placed over the picture.
6. 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. 
7. 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.
8. Pictures posted on the web should be shrunk to their optimal viewing dimensions before posting.  This is to minimize page downloading time.
9. 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
10. 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
11. 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.