Platinum Edition Using HTML 4, XML, and Java 1.2
(Publisher: Macmillan Computer Publishing)
Author(s): Eric Ladd
ISBN: 078971759x
Publication Date: 11/01/98
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Indexing your site to make it searchable is a great way to make any part of your site available without a lot of drill down. Figure 1.12 shows the MCI home page, which includes a Search field at the bottom right. Many such pages are as simple as the one input field you see in the figure.
Outfitting your site with a search engine may be easier than you think. Some search-engine programs, such as ICE, are publicly available and fairly painless to install. Major server programs, such as Netscape Enterprise Server and Microsoft’s Internet Information Server, are coming bundled with search-engine software.
Comprehensive navigation options should be available to users on every page. At the very least, you need to provide links to every major content section of your site (see Figure 1.13). Additionally, you should think about providing links to important functional areas of the site, such as the Table of Contents and the search engine discussed in the previous sections.
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FIGURE 1.12 Making your site searchable spares users hours of effort trying to find the information they need.
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FIGURE 1.13 DIGEX provides links to all major portions of its Web Site Management site and also provides links within the content area you’re currently viewing.
People who visit your site frequently will appreciate a What’s New section so that they can quickly find out what has changed since their last visit (see Figure 1.14). This spares them having to go through the whole site to discover new content.
You can maintain your What’s New section manually, or you can have it generated on-the-fly by your Web server by using publicly available common gateway interface (CGI) scripts. These scripts check the files on your site for their last changed dates and display a list of files that have been altered within a specified period of time. The pages generated by these scripts don’t tend to be very descriptive, so it is best to maintain your What’s New section manually if you have the resources.
NOTE: Make sure you include a date with each item on your What’s New page so that visitors know just how new the information is.
 | You can also use software such as NetMind’s URL Minder to dispatch an email to visitors when something on your site changes. |
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FIGURE 1.14 The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) maintains a What’s New page to keep visitors apprised of recently added content.
Sign in, please! Guest books provide a record of visitors to the site. Signing the guest book is almost always voluntary, but links to the guest book page from the home page encourage visitors to sign.
A guest book uses HTML forms to gather information about the visitor and then archives the information on the server (see Figure 1.15). Try to keep your guest book form short. Users who are willing to sign may change their minds if they see that they have to fill out an extensive form.
 | You can use name and address information from your guest book to compile a mailing list for targeted marketing campaigns for your business. |
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FIGURE 1.15 Canada’s Maximum Internet encourages site visitors to leave name and address information.
You should always be gathering feedback on your site so that you can build on it and improve it. Putting a feedback mechanism on your site is a great way to collect opinions from people as they visit.
Feedback mechanisms can take two forms. A simple way to support user feedback is to place an email hypertext link on your pages. By clicking the link, users open a mail window in their browsers where they can compose and send a feedback message to you.
The second approach is to create an HTML form that asks specific questions (see Figure 1.16). This requires a bit more effort than setting up an email link, but it does provide the advantage of gathering responses to a standard set of questions.
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FIGURE 1.16 Visitors to international telecommunications giant Global One’s site can offer feedback by filling out an online form.
A mailing list gateway enables users to subscribe to mailing lists that will keep them up to date on changes to the site or on some other topic of interest. Figure 1.17 shows useit.com’s link that users can follow to sign up for a mailing list that notifies them when new articles are posted.
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FIGURE 1.17 Mailing lists are a great way to keep previous visitors apprised of new content.
Threaded discussion groups are very much like having Usenet newsgroups right on your site. Users can participate in discussions about the site or about topics relevant to content on the site by posting their ideas and opinions or by responding to posts by others.
If you are unsure as to how you can set threaded discussion on your site, you can check out some solutions available from various software vendors. Allaire produces a product called Allaire Forums to support browser-based threaded discussions (see Figure 1.18). By using Forums’ ColdFusion engine, users can read and post to any of a number of related groups.
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FIGURE 1.18 The ColdFusion Advisor site enables developers to ask each other questions through a threaded discussion forum.
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