W E B M A S T E R

EXPERT SOLUTIONS

by Michael Morgan,
    Jeff Wandling,
    Rich Casselberry


C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S



Chapter 1  How to Make a Good Site Look Great

Chapter 2  Reducing Site Maintenance Costs Through Testing and Validation

Chapter 3  Deciding What to Do About Netscape

Chapter 4  Designing Faster Sites

Chapter 5  Designing Graphics for the Web

Chapter 6  Reducing Maintenance Costs with Server-Side Includes

Chapter 7  Extending HTML's Capabilities with CGI

Chapter 8  Six Common CGI Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Chapter 9  Making a User's Life Simpler with Multipart Forms

Chapter 10  Integrating Forms with Mailing Lists

Chapter 11  Contests and Registration

Chapter 12  Forms for Batching Processes

Chapter 13  What to Know About Live Communication

Chapter 14  How Server Push Improves PlainChat

Chapter 15  Performance Tradeoffs: keeping Chat Messages in Memory

Chapter 16  How to Index and Search the Information on Your Site

Chapter 17  How to Keep Portions of the Site Private

Chapter 18  How to Query Databases

Chapter 19  How to Build Pages On the Fly

Chapter 20  Preserving Data

Chapter 21  Recursive CGI

Chapter 22  How to Build HTML On the Fly

Chapter 23  How to Build CGI On the Fly

Chapter 24  User Profiles and Tracking

Chapter 25  Getting Paid: Taking Orders over the Internet

Chapter 26  Shopping Baskets

Chapter 27  Multipage Shopping Environment

Chapter 28  Fully Integrated Shopping Environment

Chapter 29  Fulfillment

Chapter 30  Developing Web-based Bulletin Boards

Chapter 31  Hypermail and Generic Bulletin Board Environments

Chapter 32  Classified Pages

Chapter 33  How to Add High-End Graphics

Chapter 34  How to Add Sound

Chapter 35  How to Add Video

Chapter 36  The Third Dimension: VRML

Chapter 37  Evaluating the Server Environment

Chapter 38  Evaluating Your Web Staffing Needs

Chapter 39  Essential Tools, Gadgets, and Resources

Chapter 40  Site Security

Chapter 41  How to Keep Them Coming Back for More

Chapter 42  Processing Logs and Analyzing Site Use

Chapter 43  How to Apply These Lessons to to the Intranet

Appendix A  Glossary

Credits



Webmaster Expert Solutions

Copyright 1996 by Que Corporation.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Making copies of any part of this book for any purpose other than your own personal use is a violation of United States copyright laws. For information, address Que Corporation, 201 W. 103rd Street, Indianapolis, IN 46290. You may reach Que's direct sales line by calling 1-800-428-5331.

ISBN: 0-7897-0801-9


HTML conversion by :
    M/s. LeafWriters (India) Pvt. Ltd.
    Website : http://leaf.stpn.soft.net
    e-mail : leafwriters@leaf.stpn.soft.net


PresidentRoland Elgey PublisherJoseph B. Wikert
Publishing Manager Jim Minatel Editorial Services Director Elizabeth Keaffaber
Managing Editor Sandy DoellDirector of Marketing Lynn E. Zingraf
Acquisitions Manager Cheryl D. Willoughby Acquisitions Editor Doshia Stewart
Product Director Mark Cierzniak Production Editor Caroline D. Roop
EditorsElizabeth A. Bruns, Susan Shaw Dunn, Lisa M. Gebken, Judith Goode, C. Kazim Haidri, Robert V. Hall, Sydney Jones, Susan Ross Moore, Kathy Simpson
Product Marketing Manager Kim Margolius Assistant Product Marketing Manager Christy M. Miller
Strategic Marketing Manager Barry Pruett
Technical Editors Kyle Amon, Justin Bell, Todd Brown, Brian Cooper, Tracey Erway, Dan Gildor, Gene Homicki, John Kolodziejski, Geoff Mulligan, Larry Pearson
Technical Support Specialist Nadeem Muhammed Acquisitions Coordinators Jane K. Brownlow, Andrea Duvall
Software Relations Coordinator Patty Brooks Book DesignerBarbara Kordesh
Cover Designer Barbara Kordesh
Production Team Marcia Brizendine, Jason Carr, Erin Danielson, Jenny Earhart, Joan Evan, Bryan Flores, Jessica Ford, Trey Frank, Amy Gornik, Bob LaRoche, Michelle Lee, Darlena Murray, Julie Searls
IndexerChris Cleveland



To my father, who did his best to teach me common sense.
-Michael Morgan
I'd like to dedicate this book to my parents John and Jenny Wandling.
-Jeff Wandling


Acknowledgments

Somewhere there is a book that is produced by a single author, with no help from anyone else. Webmaster Expert Solutions is not that book. I am obliged to my clients who allowed their sites to be used as examples: GSH Real Estate, First Jefferson Mortgage, and Nikka Galleria. Bette Emmett of Cornerstone Associates, another client, helped track down the Shelley quote that opens Chapter 36, "The Third Dimension: VRML." Twenty years ago Bette and her husband, Don, gave me some of my first lessons in writing, analysis, and critical thinking. My debt to them goes far beyond this book.

I am particularly appreciative of my wife, Jean, my daughter, Sarah, and my colleague, Christopher Kepilino. Jean organized our effort and kept track of the thousands of details without which this book could not have been produced. Sarah reviewed many of the chapters and some of the CD-ROM material. Chris was an indispensable "man Friday." He wrote many of the Perl programs and most of the HTML. He shot the screen shots and organized the code for the CD-ROM. In many ways, this book is as much his as it is mine. Thanks, Chris.

Kraig Larson at White Dog Internet Design designed Bob's Cycle site, which appears in this book. He also served as a patient tester for an early version of the shopping cart system that is described in Chapter 27, "Multipage Shopping Environment." You can find more examples of Kraig's work through his site, http://www.visi.com/whitedog/.

Finally, many thanks to Jim Minatel, Doshia Stewart, Mark Cierzniak, Caroline Roop, and the rest of the editorial staff at Que. These people all worked behind the scenes to bring this book into being. They are a talented and patient crew-it has been my privilege to work with them.

Notwithstanding the contributions of these folks and many others, any errors or omissions in this book are my responsibility.

-Michael Morgan

Thanks to my cohort Michael Morgan, for all the work he did and the effort he made at the eleventh hour. I am in his debt. Thanks to Erin O'Rourke at Free Range Media for turning me onto the book and Andrew Fry to accommodate time off to write. Thanks to my friends at Free Range Media; I think you're all a great group of people. I will miss you.

I could not have gotten this far if it wasn't for the staff at Que: Jim Minatel, Doshia Stewart, Caroline Roop, Mark Cierzniak, Jane Brownlow, Susan Ross Moore, and the rest of the staff. Thank you for giving me the chance. I really cannot say enough good things about those people.

I appreciate all the comments and encouragement from my friends Christina Jost, Mark Sherman, Christopher Macis, Rick Woods, Jeff Payne, Jim Hearne, Bob Hayes, Martin Rood, and Peter Wilson, and the folks at Dealernet for letting me use their equipment.

-Jeff Wandling


About the Authors

Michael Morgan is founder and president of DSE, Inc., a full-service Web presence provider and software development shop. The DSE team has developed software for such companies as Intelect, Magnavox, Du Pont, the American Biorobotics Company and Satellite Systems Corporation, as well as for the Government of Iceland and the Royal Saudi Air Force. DSE's Web sites include the prestigious Nikka Galleria, an online art gallery. DSE's sites are noted for their effectiveness-one of the company's sites generated sales of over $100,000 within 30 days of being announced.

Mike is a frequent speaker at seminars on information technology, and has taught computer science and software engineering at Chaminade University (the University of Honolulu) and in the graduate program of Hawaii Pacific University. He has given seminars for the IEEE, National Seminars, the University of Hawaii, Purdue University, and Notre Dame.

The author of over 20 technical papers and presentations on various aspects of information technology, he is the co-developer of the Project Unit Costing Method, which allows project managers to construct justifications for information technology projects based on cost savings and cost avoidance. He is also the inventor of GAELIC, the Gallium Arsenide Experimental Lisp Integrated Circuit, an ultra-high-speed processor optimized for artificial intelligence applications, and the co-inventor of MEND, a Multiple Expert iNtelligent Diagnostics system. Mike is the co-manager of the CGI archives of the HTML Writers Guild, and is a member of the Help Team for Matt Wright's Script Archive. In those capacities, he works with programmers around the world helping set up advanced solutions on the Web.

He holds a Master of Science in Systems Management from the Florida Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Wheaton College, where he concentrated his studies on computer science. He has also taken numerous graduate courses in computer science through the National Technological University. Mike is a member of the IEEE Computer Society.

Mike can usually be found in his office at DSE, drinking Diet Pepsi, and writing Perl and C++. He lives in Virginia Beach with his wife, Jean, and their six children.

Jeff Wandling fell into the Web by accident. He started out calmly with a computer science degree but then got hooked on the Internet by way of some Xerox'd SunOS manuals, a cheap Sun 3/50, and a bearded UNIX mentor named "Bob" (and keys to labs, MUDs, and UseNet).

Since then he has skipped a lot of classes but finally graduated. He has lived on the foothills of Mount Baker, and on the shores of Puget Sound. He worked for a while at SPRY and then at Free Range Media designing some pretty cool stuff on the Web (way back when imagemaps were hot).

He wishes he could call himself a Perl guru. It's still his favorite thing in life.

perl -e 'print"eat, sleep, hack perl\n";'

Lately, Jeff has been wandering aimlessly on this binary blacktop we call the info highway. He consults under the trade-name "Spin-Off" and is hoping to finally get his own dedicated net connection this summer. Jeff is currently writing his next book, a novel based on a true story about love and betrayal on the Internet.

Jeff can be contacted at jdw@spin-off.com.

Rich Casselberry is the network manager for Current Technology in Durham, New Hampshire (http://www.curtech.com/). He lives in southern Maine with his fiancée Kandi, two cats (Mitz and Zeb), and a miniature dachshund (Prince).

Prior to working at Current Technology, Rich was a UNIX system specialist for Cabletron Systems for four and a half years. It was there that he first learned about the Internet and networking. Rich graduated from New Hampshire Technical College in 1992 with an associate's degree in Computer Engineering Technology.


We'd Like to Hear from You!

As part of our continuing effort to produce books of the highest possible quality, Que would like to hear your comments. To stay competitive, we really want you, as a computer book reader and user, to let us know what you like or dislike most about this book or other Que products.

You can mail comments, ideas, or suggestions for improving future editions to the address below, or send us a fax at (317) 581-4663. Our staff and authors are available for questions and comments through our Internet site, at http://www.mcp.com/que, and Macmillan Computer Publishing also has a forum on CompuServe (type GO QUEBOOKS at any prompt).

In addition to exploring our forum, please feel free to contact me personally to discuss your opinions of this book: I'm mcierzniak.que.mcp.com on the Internet, and 76245,476 on CompuServe.

Thanks in advance-your comments will help us to continue publishing the best books available on new computer technologies in today's market.

Mark Cierzniak
Product Director
Que Corporation
201 W. 103rd Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46290
USA