I’d like to thank those readers who have been sending comments
and questions. Issues of general interest will be addressed periodically
in these columns.
Q: Looking thru our stats I see an often-visited page is something
called robots.txt. What is it?
A: This is simply a document that instructs SEs (search
engines) how to respond to the pages on your site. SEs dispatch “robots” (also
sometimes called “spiders”) to visit sites and collect
data. The robots.txt file tells them which files or folders they should
access and which they should ignore. Additionally, specific robots
can be instructed not to catalog the site at all. (All sites should
place a robots.txt file in their root directories; failing to do so
will generate a lot of errors in the user logs.)
Q: Is it better to have a site that’s dynamic [generated
from a database backend] or static [composed of HTML pages]?
A: This depends on the sort of site desired. A company “brochure” site
or informational site with text that changes infrequently can be served
well by static pages. Development costs are typically lower, and static
design can give greater latitude in customizing the appearance of each
page. Static pages can also be preferable for SE ranking and bookmarking
purposes.
For a site using data that changes from minute-to-minute -- or even
daily -- a database backend is necessary. Examples include e-commerce
sites, or sites like Egged
Buses or Ben-Gurion
Airport, where visitors require constantly updated schedules. Also,
some sites receive data, such as orders, which must be entered directly
into a database.
Many large sites use a combination of static pages for their basic
information and dynamic pages that generate time-dependant data.
Q: I want to make my site useful for visitors, so should I
offer a bulletin board or chat room?
A: These can be very valuable methods of encouraging
a strong virtual community with regular return traffic. But make sure
your site is well developed and getting a good amount of traffic before
including this sort of feature. There’s nothing as sad as a bulletin
board with just three stale messages, especially if those messages
are weeks or months old. The same caution applied to guest books, too.
And once you do implement any of these features, be sure to monitor
your feedback regularly; you’ll need to purge the inevitable
spam and other unsavory “contributions”.
Q: Why is the site design process so expensive/lengthy?
A: Both price and schedule vary widely among design
firms. Much depends on the extent and type of services offered:
- Some bare-bone “packages” involve simply cutting and
pasting your content into pre-designed templates. These deals will
often include hosting on the designer’s own server. Advantages: rock-bottom
cost; minimal time invested in communicating with the designer. Disadvantages: servers
can perform erratically, resulting in lost e-mails, site down-time
that can frustrate prospective visitors, and damage to search engine
ratings; text usually has minimal typographical styling, making it
harder to read online; basic appearance is “cookie-cutter” with
no branding – visually indiscernible from countless other sites;
little-to-no consultation or support. Bottom line: a
lot of sites start out like this, but then wind up getting redesigned
from scratch and relocated to a more dependable hosting provider.
- At the other end of the spectrum, producing a site can involve:
extensive consultation, advice, and support; design of visual identity
(logo, etc.); a discovery process that examines what competitors
are doing; mapping out a comprehensive marketing plan; a strategy
for SEM (search engine marketing); database design and implementation;
and, of course, construction of the site itself.
Most sites require a design that falls between these two extremes.
Take the time to shop around for the designer whose services best fit
your individual needs.
Resources:
