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A_Webmasters_Toolkit_and_Tricks
| A Webmasters Toolkit and Tricks
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A Webmaster’s Toolkit and Tricks Author: Jason OConnor
Copyright: 2004
If you own a website, operate or run a website, or you’re a
webmaster, this article is for you. A successful website is
created and managed by a person with an effective toolkit who
knows how to use each tool. There are a huge amount of software
applications out there for people to use for creating, building,
coding and running websites. Here are the ones you’ll find in my
tool box. I’ve been using these for many years and have had
wonderful success with each one of them.
As a bonus, I am going to include a few tricks for some of the
tools that may be of interest to you. (These ‘tricks’ are for pc
users only.)
** Toolkit Item 1 – Dreamweaver ** I have a client who owns and
runs a small business website and who has been using Microsoft
Frontpage since he started. He is not a programmer or Web
designer and has been very frustrated managing his website.
Frontpage adds strange html code behind the scenes that takes
control away from the user and often produces undesirable
results. I suggested that he try Macromedia’s Dreamweaver, which
is the software I have been using for many years. It’s excellent
and does exactly what you want, does not add extraneous code and
makes the life of a webmaster a breeze. After playing with it
for a while, my client thanked me profusely for suggesting it.
Get it at http://www.macromedia.com.
Dreamweaver Trick: To make a global change in your website, that
is, change some specific text or html code on every page in your
site, here’s what you do: In your top menu bar, choose ‘Edit’ >
‘Find and Replace . . .’. In the dialog box that pops up, choose
‘Entire Local Site’ in the top dropdown box labeled ‘Find In’.
This will allow you to make a global change. Also, note the
other choices in the dropdown box. Using this feature will save
you lots of time.
Dreamweaver Trick: Did you know Dreamweaver has a ‘Check
Spelling’ feature? If not, go to the top menu bar and click on
‘Text’ and then choose ‘Check Spelling’ at the bottom of the
menu. Or you could simply use your ‘Shift’ F7 keys.
** Toolkit Item 2 – Photoshop ** Since images on the Web are
both illustrations and photos, Adobe’s Photoshop is hands-down
the best choice for graphics manipulation for a webmaster. It
has a little bit of a learning curve, but well worth it if you
want to include awesome graphics on your website. It allows you
to create buttons, borders, shapes, symbols and of course, it
allows you to change, alter, edit and improve any kind of
digital photograph. Get it at http://www.adobe.com.
Photoshop Trick: The Web allows two main graphics file formats,
.jpg and .gif. Therefore, any image you plan to use on your
website needs to end in one of these two extensions. (The Web
allows the .png extension too, but you ought to use either .jpg
or .gifs only). So, whenever you plan to use a graphic on your
website that you created or edited in Photoshop, you need to
save it as one of these two file extensions. And you also want
your images to be optimized so they are not large causing long
download times for your site visitors. Do this by going to your
top menu bar and choosing ‘File’ > “Save for the Web . . .’. You
will then be able to choose .gif or .jpg in the top right of the
dialog box that opens up. You’ll also be able to see 1, 2, or 4
versions for the same image, optimized in different ways and
having different sizes for you to choose. Always use this tool
in Photoshop for Web graphics.
Photoshop Trick: Want to create soft, almost rounded edges on
your rectangular images? Here’s what you do: In your vertical
‘Tools’ window in Photoshop, choose the top left tool called
‘Rectangular Marquee Tool’. Then click and drag your mouse on
your image to make a rectangle that is 5 to 10 pixels smaller
than your actual image. Make sure that it is equidistant on all
four sides. Then go to your menu bar and choose ‘Select’ >
‘Inverse’. This chooses (or selects) everything outside the
rectangle you just made. Finally, go to your menu bar and choose
‘Filter’ > ‘Blur’ > ‘Gaussian Blur’ and type 1-5 pixels in the
dialog box. That’s it, and now your image will have soft edges.
** Toolkit Item 3 – WS FTP ** This is a great tool for moving
your files back and forth from your pc to your server.
Dreamweaver has a feature that allows you to connect directly to
your server to download and upload html files and images for
your website. But I prefer to have more control over moving
files back and forth from my local pc to my server that houses
my website. Therefore, I use WS FTP (FTP stands for File
Transfer Protocol). This tool enables me to move my files with
ease and with complete control. Get it at http://www.tucows.com.
FTP Trick: This is more of a suggestion than a trick. To make
changes in your html files, always download the latest file(s)
from your website’s server down to your local machine first.
Then make your changes, edits or updates, save your work, and
upload the file(s) back to your server. In other words, do your
entire html editing on your local machine and upload the latest
version after your editing back to your live server. Try to
avoid editing files directly on your server. This methodology
will help ensure that your site visitors don’t see files ‘in
progress’ or errors.
** Toolkit Item 4 – WebTrends ** This tool is vital for anyone
wishing to conduct intelligent e-marketing campaigns and has
interest in improving one’s website. It allows you to analyze
your website statistics. It tells you how many people visited
your site, how they got there, where they went once they arrived
and a huge amount of other critical data. Get it at
http://www.webtrends.com.
** Toolkit Item 5 – WebPosition Gold ** If you want to know how
your website is ranking in the search engines, this tool is a
must have. It allows you to set up a profile for your website
asking you to enter keyword phrases and choose search engines.
By running the program after you complete your profile, it will
tell you where you rank for each engine for each keyword phrase.
If you find that you’re not ranking well, you can make changes
to your website and run the program again in a few days or weeks
to determine if your rankings have improved. Get it at
http://www.webposition-gold-2.net.
If you purchase these tools and learn to use them properly,
you’ll have everything you need to create and manage a website.
Your toolkit will be complete. I am sure there are other great
tools out there, but these are the ones I use, (and I have no
affiliation with any of these companies). I’ve found them to be
extremely helpful. Another webmaster ‘trick’ I use is to utilize
great websites that contain excellent tips, tricks and resources
for creating and managing websites. Below is a partial list of
the websites I visit regularly.
Webmonkey – http://www.webmonkey.com HTML Goodies -
http://www.htmlgoodies.com World Wide Web Consortium -
http://www.w3c.org Webmaster Directory -
http://www.webdevsites.com Free HTML Validator -
http://www.feedvalidator.org Webmaster resources from Webmaster
Toolkit. - http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com Webmaster.org -
http://www.webmaster.org The Webmaster's Reference Library -
http://www.webreference.com SitePoint : New Articles, for Web
Developers and Designers - http://www.sitepoint.com Webmaster's
Color Lab - http://www.visibone.com/colorlab SiteProNews -
http://www.sitepronews.com Webmaster Tool Collection -
http://www.webmaster-tool-collection.com
About the author:
Jason O'Connor is president of Oak Web Works where you
can get a free webmaster newsletter and he also runs Sports & Broadway
Tickets.
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