The JEHM Net News

One way to create web pages from scratch without using HTML is to use an editor that hides the HTML from you, letting you edit a web page as easily as you would use a word processor. These programs are called WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) editors.

Microsoft’s FrontPage is one of the most popular WYSIWYG editors, mainly because it comes as part of Microsoft Office, which lots of people buy just to get Word and Excel. FrontPage is, therefore, seen as a cheap and easy solution, and the fact that it works very similarly to the other Microsoft Office programs is a plus as well.

Using FrontPage

FrontPage is very easy to get started with: you can either create a single page, or a whole ‘web’ (FrontPage’s word for a set of inter-connected pages). You can use the buttons on the toolbar to do simple things like set your text’s font, make text bold and italic, make links and insert graphics.

Going up to the menus will give you access to a few more complicated functions, such as table creation. Part of the reason FrontPage is so popular is that it has all sorts of little scripts ready to insert into your page, including hit counters and animations.

FrontPage Extensions

FrontPage is quite unique in that many web hosts have special ‘FrontPage Extensions’ installed, that allow to upload your site easily from FrontPage to your host. In most cases, though, you’ll be better off just saving the files using FTP. You will also need to have the Extensions installed on your server if you want the forms FrontPage produces to work, or if you want to be able to add its search function to your site.

Really, the Extensions are nothing more than a good reason not to use FrontPage to design any dynamic elements of your site - it will cause you no end of trouble. FrontPage is only really any good when it comes to designing static pages.

FrontPage TEMPLATES

One of FrontPage’s strong points, however, is that it has an easy-to-use templating system. This means that you can download TEMPLATES and easily use them to create new pages in FrontPage. It will create a navigation system for you as you go, using information from the template. This can be a quick and easy way to get started on your website, although you’ll often need to be careful to avoid doing anything that causes the carefully worked-out layout of the template to break.

Problems with FrontPage

FrontPage’s biggest problem is that it produces wildly non-standard ‘Microsoft HTML’. This HTML is bad enough to be completely un-editable by anyone who isn’t also using FrontPage, and has a tendency to display wrongly in any browser apart from Internet Explorer. Even the default template you see before you’ve typed a word in FrontPage isn’t valid HTML!

Worse, because e of the amount of repetition FrontPage introduces into your pages, they can often be much larger than they need to be and so take much longer for your visitors to download than they should. It’s bad enough that many sites offer programs designed specifically to do nothing but clean up FrontPage’s terrible code.

Part of the reason there’s quite a stigma attached to FrontPage amongst web users is that it tends to produce pages that are extremely amateurish. Some FrontPage sites can even crash web browsers, because their authors decided to use FrontPage’s various animated navigation elements - FrontPage is all too happy to quickly add in so much Javascript and Java that a website becomes unmanageable. Page transitions are particularly bad.

Overall, trying to create and manage a website with FrontPage can be a big headache - it’s all too easy to hit one of FrontPage’s bugs and mess something up, or load it with too many proprietary features to the point where it’s pretty much unusable to anyone. Worse, if you open a half-finished web page in FrontPage, its code will be messed up beyond repair.

Author: Lee Asher of Eclipse Domain Services - Domain Names, HOSTING, traffic and Email Solutions. http://eclipsedomainservices.com/

A short time ago it was announced that Microsoft are withdrawing FrontPage from their product range this year. While I’m not a great fan of this particular piece of software, a lot of people are and there are a lot of FrontPage built websites in existence.

There are some concerns being voiced by web hosts about the future of existing FrontPage websites and, in particular, those using FrontPage extensions. These extensions are what power the “bells and whistles” inherent in the software that made it worth using. The extensions provide such dynamic addons as:

* Forms processing * Themes * Search form * Bulletin board * Security * Hit counter * SubWebs * Database features

The concern is that Microsoft are withdrawing support for the software itself and for the extensions. If you have a website built with Frontpage then the server on which the website is hosted will need to support extensions. At worst, once Microsoft have withdrawn, hosts will remove from their servers the extension support and the website will no longer function as designed. At best, the hosts will leave things as they are until the first bug / security threat unviels itself and then be forced to withdraw.

The replacement product has now been renamed Expression and is a completely new product and therefore is not compatible with FrontPage, therefore FrontPage extensions are dead. Expression has only been released in beta format so there is, as yet, no official release and the future looks bleak for any FrontPage websites.

Author: imaker - http://www.imaker.co.uk/

The sole aim of this article is to take you from total newbie to being able to upload files to your web HOSTING account in the next five minutes.

Now of course there is plenty more to learn than is covered in this article but the basic skills you’ll learn will enable you to upload files quickly and easily and have a functioning website in a matter of minutes.

So let’s get your website online…

1) Get Some FTP Software

To upload files from your home computer to your web HOSTING account so everyone else can see them by visiting your website you’ll need some FTP software. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and is simply the name of this uploading process.

Some web HOSTING control panels come with FTP software built in so check this first of all as you may not have to download any new software.

Otherwise there are numerous pieces of free or low cost FTP software available which are all very simple to use.

A few options are:

http://www.cuteftp.com http://www.smartftp.com http://www.ipswitch.com

In my opinion all these pieces of sftware are very similar so just opt for the one you find easiest to use.

I personally use SmartFTP and have done for some years with great success.

Download and install the software on your home computer then we’re ready to get uploading your files.

2) Enter Your Web HOSTING Details

Open up the software and enter the location, username and password for FTP access which you will either find in the welcome email your web host sent you when you opened your account or in your web host’s control panel.

Typically you enter these details at the top of the FTP software when you open it up and the software will then save those details for future reference so you only need enter them once.

Once you’ve entered those details into your FTP software, click the connect button, and wait to see that it manages to establish a connection to your server.

It should do so within a few seconds but if not go back and double-check you have entered the correct FTP details. Your FTP details may be different to the details of how to log into your control panel etc. so you may have several password/username sets and it’s not unusual for new users to enter the wrong set of details.

3) Change Upload Parameters

If your FTP software has a “passive” mode, turn it off.

Then find the section where you choose whether to upload files in ASCII or binary format, and select the “auto” or “automatic” function so you don’t need to worry about learning which file types should be uploaded in which format.

4) Upload Your Files

You’re all ready to go now.

Select the files from your home computer that you want to upload to your HOSTING account, and select to upload them now.

You can select to upload them one at a time, or select a whole host of files by holding down your ’shift’ or ‘control’ key and highlighting a number of different web page files.

You should see a progress report from your FTP software as it uploads each file, one at a time.

Furthermore, as they load fully onto your web HOSTING account you should see them appear on the right-hand side of the software, together with their file size.

Pay attention to any file showing a zero file size, as this was likely corrupted in the upload process and you will need to upload another copy to be certain it is working correctly.

5) Final Check

Lastly visit your website with your internet browser (such as Internet Explorer) and check to make sure all your files are there as they should be.

Incase of any problems, just follow the procedure again incase your files got corrupted in the upload process (which does occasionally happen).

6) Job Done!

Well done, now you know the basics of how to use FTP software to upload web page files from your home computer to your web HOSTING account!

About the Author: Richard Adams has been building websites, launching online businesses and advising others how to do the same for over 5 years. His latest site provides free information on small business web HOSTING -> http://www.smallbusinesswebhostingguide.com

Perhaps you may be just getting started in your quest for more traffic, or perhaps you have been working on it for longer. The point is that you are actively seeking new information that will help you get more traffic to your site. Let’s say that you have just started a website and you need to bring in some high quality traffic to make some sales. Go ahead and set a reasonable goal for how much traffic you want by next month. If you are just starting out maybe going from zero visitors per month to 300 would be a reasonable goal.

Now that you have come up with a goal, you will need to work to achieve this goal. I use several methods for traffic building that I will share with you today. The methods I will share with you are all going to be free. Free meaning that they will not cost you any money.

Start by sitting down and writing a few articles about your site’s topic. These articles should be between 250 and 700 words depending on how well you write and your writing style. Come up with a few issues to discuss in your article and write a paragraph about each. Once you have several articles that you feel confident about you should submit them to a few article directories. Be sure to come up with a creative author bio that will entice the reader to visit your website. Put a link to your site in the bio so your readers can visit your site if they want.

If your articles are approved by the article directory then you should see some traffic coming to your site. Write as many articles as you feel necessary to reach your goal for the month.

Another simple method to increase the visitors to your site is by posting on forums. Search for a forum that is dedicated to the topic of your site. Answer peoples posts with professionalism. Be sure to have a link to your website in your signature. The more good posts you make the more traffic you will see.

The quality of your posts is important. The more you sound like an expert the more people will click your link to see what your site has to offer. Making spam posts and posts that are not meaningful is a quick way to waste your time.

Try these two simple methods out for a month and see what you get. Set new goals continuously. Try to double your traffic every month. Remember that it takes hard work, and the more time you put in the more results you will see. You reap what you sow!

About the Author: Jonathan offers more free information on traffic building at 6 traffic Secrets

Don’t waste your time trying to get your website a top rank for the most popular search terms in the search engines; if your site is fairly new, this will be next to impossible. Your competition will already have the top search terms dominated and unless you have a massive advertising budget, it’s not worthwhile to attempt to target these terms - at least not at first.

When you’re creating content for your website, focus each page on a different set of lesser searched keywords and keyword phrases. While these keywords won’t bring in massive amounts of traffic on their own, having multiple pages - each with its own keywords - can produce a sizeable amount of traffic.

The power of the long-tail

The long-tail refers to the large numbers of keywords (and keyword phrases) with small numbers of searches on the search engines. While there are only a handful of popular keywords, related to a particular niche, that have the highest number of searches, there are plenty of keywords related to the same niche that are searched for fewer times (the long-tail).

If you target the keywords in the long-tail there is much less competition, so its easy for you to dominate the search engines for these terms. And if you rank well for enough of the long-tail keywords, you can produce the same amounts of traffic that you could see if you were to rank well for the more popular keywords.

When you’re targeting long-tail keywords, don’t try to stuff too many onto one page. Split them up into related categories and create separate pages with content that targets a category containing only two or three keywords at most.

Do not underestimate the power of the long-tail; a large list of less frequently searched keywords can generate just as much traffic as a small list of popular keywords.

Discover how to get your website indexed quickly by the search engines.

Learn how you can find the insider scoop on the latest Internet Marketing products before you buy them! - RatingsHub

About the Author: Sean Kenaston is the senior editor of No-Nonsense-Marketing.com; a website that offers the information you need on Internet marketing without all the hype and nonsense.

Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for a number of different reasons. But before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data.

Most web HOSTING companies will provide you with basic web traffic information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. However, the data you receive from your host company can be overwhelming if you don’t understand how to apply it to your particular business and website. Let’s start by examining the most basic data - the average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

These figures are the most accurate measure of your website’s activity. It would appear on the surface that the more traffic you see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the behavior of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge the effectiveness of your site.

There is often a great misconception about what is commonly known as “hits” and what is really effective, quality traffic to your site. Hits simply means the number of information requests received by the server. If you think about the fact that a hit can simply equate to the number of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how overblown the concept of hits can be. For example, if your homepage has 15 graphics on it, the server records this as 15 hits, when in reality we are talking about a single visitor checking out a single page on your site. As you can see, hits are not useful in analyzing your website traffic.

The more visitors that come to your website, the more accurate your interpretation will become. The greater the traffic is to your website, the more precise your analysis will be of overall trends in visitor behavior. The smaller the number of visitors, the more a few anomalous visitors can distort the analysis.

The aim is to use the web traffic statistics to figure out how well or how poorly your site is working for your visitors. One way to determine this is to find out how long on average your visitors spend on your site. If the time spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an underlying problem. Then the challenge is to figure out what that problem is.

It could be that your keywords are directing the wrong type of visitors to your website, or that your graphics are confusing or intimidating, causing the visitor to exit rapidly. Use the knowledge of how much time visitors are spending on your site to pinpoint specific problems, and after you fix those problems, continue to use time spent as a gauge of how effective your fix has been.

Additionally, web traffic stats can help you determine effective and ineffective areas of your website. If you have a page that you believe is important, but visitors are exiting it rapidly, that page needs attention. You could, for example, consider improving the link to this page by making the link more noticeable and enticing, or you could improve the look of the page or the ease that your visitors can access the necessary information on that page.

If, on the other hand, you notice that visitors are spending a lot of time on pages that you think are less important, you might consider moving some of your sales copy and marketing focus to that particular page.

As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital information about the effectiveness of individual pages, and visitor habits and motivation. This is essential information to any successful Internet marketing campaign.

Your website undoubtedly has exit pages, such as a final order or contact form. This is a page you can expect your visitor to exit rapidly. However, not every visitor to your site is going to find exactly what he or she is looking for, so statistics may show you a number of different exit pages. This is normal unless you notice a exit trend on a particular page that is not intended as an exit page. In the case that a significant percentage of visitors are exiting your website on a page not designed for that purpose, you must closely examine that particular page to discern what the problem is. Once you pinpoint potential weaknesses on that page, minor modifications in content or graphic may have a significant impact on the keeping visitors moving through your site instead of exiting at the wrong page.

After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, it’s time to turn to your keywords and phrases. Notice if particular keywords are directing a specific type of visitor to your site. The more targeted the visitor - meaning that they find what they are looking for on your site, and even better, fill out your contact form or make a purchase - the more valuable that keyword is.

However, if you find a large number of visitors are being directed - or should I say misdirected - to your site by a particular keyword or phrase, that keyword demands adjustment. Keywords are vital to bringing quality visitors to your site who are ready to do business with you. Close analysis of the keywords your visitors are using to find your site will give you a vital understanding of your visitor’s needs and motivations.

Finally, if you notice that users are finding your website by typing in your company name, break open the champagne! It means you have achieved a significant level of brand recognition, and this is a sure sign of burgeoning success.

About the Author: Antony Raj specialises in Online Marketing and Ecommerce and other Internet based Business http://www.EarnMoneyFromNet.com

This week at The JEHM Net it is all about traffic, how to generate traffic, how to interpret your traffic and how to make your website traffic work for you to acheive the goals you want to reach.

Over the next 7 days we will be publishing a new article about Website traffic so come back each day and read up on how you can improve your website traffic and become a “superstar”!

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I recently ran into an old friend who had a Second Hand shop up on the Avenue. After some small talk, I asked him how business was going, and he told me that he had closed the store down and moved to another location. I was somewhat surprised since he had been there for about 10 years.

When I asked him why he had moved, he told me matter of factly, “Bill, you’ve got to go where the traffic is”. While that’s good general advice it’s a little different in the world of cyberspace. While there are some methods which will enable you to receive instant traffic, the reality for most of us is it takes time and effort to build a web presence and steady traffic.

Building long term traffic can be done in several ways, and the best part is many are FREE. Some of my favorites are; linking, traffic exchanges, writing articles, and posting to forums.

One of the foremost ways that people use to increase traffic is linking to other sites. While there are many linking strategies, the one I’m referring to is exchanging reciprocal links with other sites.

I first used this strategy with an ‘Oldies Internet Station’ I had started about 5 years ago. While our site was strictly about Oldies music, I realized that there were many related sites such as collectibles, movie posters, CD and record sales, nostalgia sites, etc., that were prime candidates for exchanging links.

After making a list of suitable sites, I emailed the people running them, and showed them why exchanging links would be of mutual benefit to both of us. While not everyone responded, some did, and I continue to receive traffic from some of the sites to this day.

A couple of points; look for sites that relate to what you’re about, but don’t try to link to sites selling the exact same thing. Another thing is, you’ll want to find sites that already have hundreds of links to other sites. In most cases, your link will get lost among the crowd.

Linking to other sites is often overlooked by many people but can be a great way to build long term traffic. The thing is, you just never know how much traffic one site can bring you over time.

traffic exchanges are another way to build long term traffic if used properly. The mistake that many people make with them is that they try and sell some product directly on the exchanges.

A more effective way to use traffic exchanges is to build a network of people who will continue to build traffic for you many years from now. There are two basic approaches that you can use to do this.

First, you can join several exchanges and link one site to another. For instance, if you had four sites named Joe, John, Pete, and George, you would advertise Joe’s exchange on John’s site, you then would advertise John’s site on Pete’s site, etc., until you’ve linked all the sites together.

Another way to do this is to advertise one U.R.L. that has numerous exchanges integrated into it so that by joining one site, your signup has the potential of joining numerous exchanges under you. A couple of points, many of the people that sign up under you will do nothing.

To work traffic exchanges effectively, you will need to have lots of patience and understand that sooner or later you will run across that go getter that will be active and join all the programs and actively surf building your network and traffic. Also, you’ll have greater success if you create your own unique pages.

So many people on the exchanges are using the same affiliate pages that their effectiveness have become quite diluted. Create a simple page or series of pages and do as mentioned previously. traffic exchanges can build lots of long term traffic but it takes time and patience.

Another way to receive lots of long term traffic is by writing articles for directories. You’ll benefit several ways from writing articles and submitting them to Article Directories.

First, you’ll receive traffic directly from people who read your articles and click on the link in the ‘Resource Box’. The Resource Box is a small box of text at the end of the article where you’re allowed to talk a little about yourself and your business.

It also includes a link back to your site. The real kicker that will bring you lots of long term traffic is when a webmaster or some other person with a website decides to include your article on his website. Along with your article, you guessed it..your Resource Box will be included with the article and a link back to your site.

Finally, as you write articles and your incoming links increase, more weight will be given to your site since search engines often give added weight to sites with numerous revelant incoming links. All in all, writing articles for directories is a real win-win-win situation!

Posting to forums is another great way to build long term traffic. When you sign up for a forum they’ll usually allow you to include a ’signature’ which is usually three or four lines of text which allows you to advertise yourself and your website.

This means that every time you post to a forum, you’re advertising yourself and your business, and these posts often stay active for years. Also, Google indexes forums looking for relevant content, so if you’re a regular poster, you’ll receive lots of FREE advertising!

A couple of things to keep in mind; when posting make sure that you’re saying something of relevance, don’t just add a ‘me too’ kind of post, but try and add something to the discussion. Also, when joining a forum, check the rules to make certain that you’re allowed to include your signature.

Some forums require you to post 50 times or more before your signature is included. Be certain to understand the Forum’s rules before joining.

While building long term traffic takes time and effort, it’s well worth it since things you do today will bring you targeted traffic years from now. Start today by using some of the free traffic builders, and be patient. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but…it was built.

About the Author :: Bill Thomas is actively engaged in Network Marketing. He also contributes articles from time to time on business and other topics. His current website is..Create a SURGE of Free Targeted traffic