Web Site Creation: Good Practice Guidelines Before, During and After

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Web Site Creation Good Practice Guidelines
Before, During and After

• Marieke Napier
• NOF-digitise AdvisorUKOLN
• University of Bath

Email M.Napier_at_ukoln.ac.uk URL http//www.ukoln.ac
.uk/
UKOLN is supported by
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Contents

• Here are some general issues that will come up
  when creating your web site.
• N.B. Many activities apply to various lifecycle
  stages of a project
• Before
• URL naming
• During
• Web-Based Dissemination
• Newsfeeds
• After
• Weve Been Here Before
• Mirroring, Migration Preservation
• Conclusions

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Before.
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URL Naming Policy

• Issues
• Having your own domain is a good idea (e.g.
  http//www.ariadne.ac.uk/)
• Short URLs are good (more memorable search
  engines tend not to index deeply)
• Sub-domains may be a useful compromise (e.g.
  http//ariadne.bath.ac.uk/)
• Keep URLs short by using directory defaults

www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue5/metadata/intro.htm www.a
riadne.ac.uk/issue5/metadata/ Shorter, less
prone to typos and allows for format and language
negotiation, new server management tools,
etc /issue5/metadata/intro.fr.html /issue5/metad
ata/intro.pdf (.cfm, .asp, .jsp)
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During.
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Web Site Promotion

• You want
• Your quality pages to be found in a timely
  fashion by users of search engines
• To encourage others to link to you
• To ensure this happens you should
• Have a domain and URL naming policy
• Exploit the Robots Exclusion Protocol - see
  lthttp//www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.htmlgt
• Be aware of barriers to robots (which may also be
  barriers to humans)
• Think about metadata
• Think about a linking policy and procedures

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Web Marketing

• Sites linking to you
• Swapping links, short and persistent urls, having
  a logo or icon to put on peoples pages,
  bookmarks, citations
• Mailing lists, JISCmail - tailor your messages
  and dont forget to advertise internally
• Search engines and directories
• Join industry hub sites - subject related
• Good site design

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How People Find You

• People type in URL from a freebie or
• refereed journal (article on subject)
• 2. People follow a link
• 3. Search engine

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Search Engines Site Design

• Keywords - what are they, are they obvious, where
  are they?
• Metatags
• Links - frames
• URLs - Short and sweet, avoid ?, , and other
  strange characters
• Bridging Pages
• Database delivery
• Robots.txt file

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Planning Search Engine Strategy

• You search for your project name and find a
  personal page of a former colleague with informal
  information ?
• To avoid this
• Distinguish between (a) initial information
  about the project (b) information for project
  partners, funders, etc. and (c) information for
  end user
• Use search engine techniques to
• Ban search engines from indexing certain pages
• Register key pages (e.g. list of new resources)
• as appropriate

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Metatags
ltmeta name"keywords" content"SCRAN, scotland,
scottish, scot, gael, scran, alba, past, history,
image, identity, scran, ethnography, archaeology,
scran, education, school, college, university,
museum, gallery.."gt

• Dublin Core (DC)
• Resource Discovery Framework (RDF)
• Issues with metadata
• Spamming
• Variations of Keywords
• Search Engines that dont support Metatags -
  Excite, Fast, Google, Lycos

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Relevancy Ranking

• Location and frequency method
• Problems
• Popularity method
• Important pages?
• Reviewed sites
• Metatags
• Payment

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Submitting your Site

• Submit key pages
• Submit to key search engines AltaVista, Excite,
  Google, HotBot Lycos, Northern Light
• Submit manually from Search Engine Web sites
• Use a submission application or Web service

Add a URLGoogle.com
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Robots

• Make use of the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP)
  to ban robots from indexing
• Non-public areas (e.g. area for partners)
• Pre-release Web sites
• Pages prior to an official launch
• Remember to switch off ban after launch!

User-agent Disallow /partners Disallow /draft
Note
/robots.txt in Web root
Note that use of directories to group related
resources will have many benefits controlling
indexing robots, mirroring and auditing software,
etc.
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Accessibility

• Robots have similarities to the visually impaired
• Good design for robots is likely to be good
  design for people with disabilities (and vice
  versa)
• Make use of tools such as Bobby, WAVE, etc. to
  check accessibility see lthttp//www.cast.org/bob
  by/gt

You should formulate plans for making your Web
site search-engines friendly and accessible
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Problems

• Why isnt my site appearing on any Search
• Engines?!!?
• URLs
• Frames - ltNOFRAMESgt tags
• User-agent negotiation
• Robots.txt file
• Database delivery
• Javascript
• Flash and other proprietary formats
• HTML
• Free Web site hosting

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Measuring Your Success

• Checking your URL
• Search for Spiders
• Botwatch
• Statistics
• Referrer information
• Refine keywords
• Link popularity

hostcultivate-int.org/
urlcultivate-int.org/
domaincultivate-int.org/
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Other Ways Of Dissemination

• Users find your Web site by
• Search engines
• Following a link
• Entering a URL which they found on a mouse mat,
  pen, in an article, etc
• Links to your Web site are valuable as they
• Drive traffic to your Web site
• Improve ranking in citation-based search engines
  such as AltaVista
• Possible problems with links
• Link-spamming services ?
• Being in the Web sites that suck portal
• Resources needed to encourage linking

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Encouraging Links

• You can
• Submit to directories (e.g. Yahoo!)
• Use directory (and search engine) submission
  services
• Have clear entry points with static URLs for key
  menu pages
• Think about who you want to link to you and why
  they would do so
• Target them and think of motivation (e.g.
  attractive small icon)
• Monitor trends in links to your Web site (e.g.
  try lthttp//www.linkpopularity.com/gt)

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Of Interest? News Feeds

• Providing automated news feeds which can be
  included in third party Web site with no manual
  intervention is a good way to support
  dissemination

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Extension to News Feeds

• The RDN (Resource Discovery Network)
• Wants to provide news feeds about developments by
  RDN hubs
• Its using the RSS standard for news feeds (and
  XML/RDF application)
• A CGI-based RSS parser (and authoring tool) has
  been created
• To allow potential users to try it out easily, a
  JavaScript parser has also been written
• See lthttp//rssxpress.ukoln.ac.uk/gt

Can this (slightly) heavyweight CGI solution be
complemented by a lightweight JavaScript solution
be used within your NOF-digi project?
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After
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What Happens When The Funding Stops?

• When the NOF project funding finishes what
  happens?
• The project gracefully turns into a fully-fledged
  service, with new funding from NOF, the EU, your
  organisation, etc.
• The project staff all leave and the Web site is
  shut down, is moved and cant be found, or is
  broken and there is no-one with the interest,
  expertise or permissions to fix it

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Weve Been Here Before

• The UK Higher Education sector has been here
  before
• CTI Projects
• CBL applications locked into obsolete hardware
• TLTP Projects
• CBL developers using Toolbook on standalone PC,
  which could not be deployed on campus LAN
• eLib Projects
• Web sites disappear
• EU Programmes

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Survey of eLib Web Sites

• WebWatching eLib Project Web Sites
• Ariadne article published in Jan 2001
• Of 71 Web sites, 3 domains no longer available
  and 2 entry points have gone
• LinkPopularity.com results shown
• Survey also includes
• Analysis of entry points (links, HTML,
  accessibility)
• Nos. of pages indexed by AltaVista- 0 in some
  cases ?
• Due to robots.txt file
• Due to frames interface or other robots barrier
• See lthttp//www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue26/web-watch/gt
  

SOSIG 7,076OMNI 5,830EEVL 3,865History 2,605Ne
tskills 2,363Ariadne 2,144 xxx 10
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Survey of EU Web Sites

• WebWatching Telematics For Libraries Project Web
  Sites (Fourth Framework)
• Exploit Interactive article published in Oct 2000
• Web site availability
• Server details
• Apache 41 IIS 10 NCSA 3 Netscape
  3 Other 6 (e.g. Mac, GN)
• See lthttp//www.exploit-lib.org/issue7/webwatch/gt
  

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Mirroring and Preservation

• Another way to maximise impact of your Web site
  is for it to be mirrored
• Use of Web mirroring software to install service
  at another location (e.g. overseas to overcome
  network bandwidth problems or behind a firewall)
• Issues about whether you are mirroring output
  from a service or the service itself (affected by
  push vs pull mode of mirroring)
• NOF, for example, may wish to mirror your service
  in order to preserve it (once funding runs out
  and everyone leaves)

Note that you may wish to mirror only the project
deliverables Web site, and not the Web site for
partners or the Web site about the project
another reason for having separate Web sites
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Conclusions

• To conclude
• Make plans for the architecture of your Web
  service (URL naming, mirrorability,
  dissemination, etc.) at the start
• Ensure your Web site is friendly to robots
• Think about use of neutral resources which can be
  processed automatically by software (avoid the
  human bottleneck)