Kathy and ktri, great tips.

ktri, welcome to BWS. Do you have a web site you want to share? You can put it in your signature if you want. I'd love to learn more about you.

The most helpful thing I did prior to launching BWS and NABBW was researching sites similar to my idea. I took tons of notes, printed pages off other sites, bookmarked ones I liked, made notes about what I liked and didn't like including colors, fonts, page set-ups, navigational buttons, everything. Then I took that information and shared it with my Web designer which helped her get a feel for what I was looking for. I spent hundreds of hours researching prior to launching both sites but I'm so gald I did. It was well worth it.

Another thing you must consider is site optimization. Without it, no one will ever find your site.

Lots of luck. Feel free to ask more questions.

ktri,
Thank you so much for the information. I actually understood everything you said. I'm either learning or you put the info out so plainly that even I understood. More than likely it's the latter.
When I have a good draft, I'll surely accept any and all advise.

I'm trying to make a web page for Katie. Even using the same one I used for my blog, isn't going well. It's taking too long to upload the photos. Any ideas on a quick, easy, free way of doing it that doesn't take forever to do? I can't just add a page to my website. I can't make changes on that right now.

Does anyone know about "site optimization?" I mean, once you have the site, how do you drive traffic to it?

On mine, there is an item to click that says "promote site." When I do that, I can add it to search engines such as google and others. I have to put in lots of key words that would pull it up in a search. Then you can also do things like link swaps with other people who have websites and use a link to the site in your email signature.

Louisa, are you looking for a quick way to add a website or a quick way to upload photos?

ktri

I've been trying to make a page on my Tripod site that is a separate site or blog about my grandchild. It was taking forever to get a picture uploaded. Then I tried to do another aol page. I've done both of these before. This too was taking way too long and the photos weren't showing up. I can do the photobucket thing for here, but I don't think that will work on them. On my luvs2write website, I could upload photos pretty quickl, but I can't make changes to that now because I don't have the software for it now.

You should use meta tags at the top of each page that have a list of keywords that relate to your site. And a meta tag with a description. Don't put anything in that doesn't relate to your site. Also, take the keywords and put them in a table at the bottom of your page hidden by using the same font color as your background. This will help some with the search engines that don't use meta tags. The meta tags should go on every page. The hidden table can just go on the home page.

Here's a sample of a meta tag. <meta name="keywords" content="collies, Tango Collies, breeder, smooth, rough, smooth collie, rough collie, champion, show dog" />
<meta name="description" content="Home page for Tango Collies, breeders of smooth and rough collies." />

(Put what you want for your site inside the double quotes after content=)

There are lots of other things you can do, too. This is one list of things you can do:
http://www.web-source.net/webpage_optimizing.htm

Then submit your site at dmoz. http://dmoz.org/add.html

if you want, you can go to Google and see how Google-friendly your site is:
https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceL...%3Den&hl=en

You can submit your site to Yahoo here: http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

As for what actually works, you guess is as good as mine! Sometimes I think it's as much magic as it is science.

Maybe it's a problem with the size of the photo file? Just an idea - especially since it isn't working on either domain.

Please remember that your web site is your calling card. You have about 3 secs to keep someone at your site. If you have a shabby, poorly done web site, .... well, you get back what you put out there.

How important is your Web presence? That has to be question #1. If it is important, then let your Web page reflect it.