Webmaster Outpost
( Strategy, Downloads, Products, Articles )
by Webmaster Outpost Staff
Strategy: "The Right Tool for the Right Job" – That's what my Grandfather always used to say, and the same is true for web sites. Since the Internet is so new, we're all still learning how to do a good job. Not only should always be looking to better tools, but we should dedicate time to using them.
The sordid evolution of the web browser offers little help to the webmaster who is trying reach as broad an audience as possible. Making things worse are the spiffy advanced features supported by the newer browsers that if implemented may make your site inaccessible to many visitors.
We prefer to stick closely to the basics of HTML and leave the advanced features for others. Your content, after all, should be the draw, not some silly eye candy. This is not to say a site should be devoid of flashy imagery and sophisticated navigation, only that it should be balanced with compatibility to minimize excluding visitors.
Another thing to remember is that many computer owners never upgrade their software, so if a computer was purchased two years ago, it probably still has an older browser version on it. We always view our site designs under Microsoft IE 4.0 and Netscape 3.0 and we try to make them look acceptable, although that might not be how we would prefer them to be seen. At least we're not denying them access.
Test out your site in various screen sizes. You want to be sure your visitor can see everything or at least important navigation links.
Go: Screen Size Test
Web Site Garage provides services for maintaining and improving your Web site. Automate site maintenance checks, optimize your graphics and analyze your traffic.
Go: Web Site Garage
While looking at your site with different (including older) versions of browsers is always the best test for you site, there are some tools which can highlight areas in your HTML that might cause problems down the road.
This Web tool checks your HTML tags and repairs common HTML code errors with just one click!
Go: HTML Toolbox
Check the validity and compatibility of your html. This is an important part to your browser compatibility check because most browsers will display poorly formed HTML, however error handling is where the biggest browser differences are.
Go: HTML Validation
If you're learning to create your own images, or if you've just downloaded some from a free site, you may not realize the potential trouble lurking. We like images, but all too often we noticed that the ones we created were huge (40k – 80k) and yet on other sites a similar image would be (5k – 15k).
Want to speed up your pages? Compress images and reduce load time with NetMechanic's FREE graphics optimizer.
Go: GIFBot
Speed up your site by optimizing your images!
Go: GIF Lube
There are a bunch of tools that coach you through preparing your pages for search engines, BUT one thing they cannot do is tell you what text and keywords to include. Still, it can be very helpful to know what guidelines are most widely acceptable.
The Search Engine Tutorial Meta Medic (setsimjr), is a combination webspider and syntax checker. Simply give this application your url, and it will generate a report on your meta tags.
Go: Meta Medic
It automatically scans for more than 50 types of problems, including pages with JavaScript, Custom 404s, FORM tags, Flash files, multi-session IDs, and sites containing Lotus Notes/Domino.
Go: Linkbot
LinkTool makes sure that every link on your page is working.
Go: LinkTool
Is your Web site in the search engines? Get listed in the search engines and watch your site traffic soar!
PositionTool checks how well your page ranks at major search engines
Go: PositionTool
Many of the major search engines now factor Link Popularity into their relevancy algorithms. As a result, increasing the number of links to your site can actually improve your search engine rankings. There is still no one "secret trick" to getting good rankings, but boosting your site's popularity may give it the edge it needs.
This free service queries Infoseek, Altavista, and Hotbot and reports on link popularity.
High search engine ranking requires your pages to maintain optimimum word depth and keyword density. Keyword density is the ratio of a keyword or keyphrase to the total words (depth) on a page.
To rank highly, your keyword density must not be too high or too low. A density of 1% to 7% is generally considered good.
Analyze the keyword frequencies of the top words (excluding HTML tags) on a URL, and enter a second URL to compare word frequencies of a separate page.
Go: Keyword Counter
Whether your site is maintained in-house or is outsourced, you need to know it's up and running.
Netwhistle.com can monitor your Web sites, E-mail servers, routers, and other Internet hardware for you, for FREE! If a monitored target ever becomes unavailable, we'll alert you by e-mail or pager e-mail gateway with detailed error information.
Go: Netwhistle.com
A web site and network monitoring service, Red Alert checks your Internet connection, Web servers, and CGIs day and night, at least four times each hour, and emails or pages you whenever your site becomes inaccessible, returns incorrect data, or is slow in responding to connection requests.
Go: Red Alert
Is your server up? How do you know? Maximize your Web server uptime with 24/7 server monitoring from Server Check Pro.
Go: Server Check
If you have a web site designed to help webmasters, send us an e-mail and we'll gladly place it on our listing of helpful sites.
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