Titles

As you probably know, you have the opportunity to give each of your webpages a "title". That's what appears in the bar at the top of the browser window. This can be made through the web editor of your choice or, if you are hand coding, by using a <title> tag in the head section of your code. When creating a title, make sure it fits the following basic guidelines:

• Makes sense- don't title your webpage "Albatrosses" if it's about cats.
• Is not too vague- "Webpage" isn't enough
• Is not too long- "My really cool webpage about cats that took me a very long time to make" is probably not a good idea
• Doesn't start with "the"- starting a title with "the" or "a" will mess up alphabetical order if a user bookmarks the page.

It is very important that each page in your site has a title. There are two main reasons for this; the first is that the first place many people look for information on a webpage is in that title bar. "Untitled" doesn't offer much information. The other reason is that if someone were to find your site in a search engine, it is possible that all they would see was the title. Untitled does not make your site sound particularly interesting or useful.

Domain Names

Since you are paying to get a domain name, you want it to be something that will bring you more business or visitors. Have a look at these samples and how they might be fixed:

http://www.nebraskcattleraisingassociation.com

• Excessively long domain names don't tend to stick in people's minds- if you make a site for Nebraska Cattle Raising Association, the sample domain name is not a good idea. Try shortening it to something like www.necattle.com or www.necattleassoc.org.

http://www.frenchcompany.com

• Put it in the appropriate top-level domain- many people are tempted to get a ".com" name because it is instantly associated with the Internet. However, many ".com" names are taken and it might be difficult to find a name appropriate for your site. If you are a business, consider at the new top-level domain: ".biz" or if you are based outside of the United States, try a country code domain such as ".ca" for Canada or ".fr" for France. This sample could be helped by changing it to "Fr", http://www.frenchcompany.fr.

A domain name is an extremely important part of your website, make it something worthwhile.

When naming your files for a website, it is important to be sure that all browsers on all operating systems are able to read them. It is fairly simple to keep your names straight if you remember a few things, take a look at these samples and solutions for common naming problems

how to write a letter.htm

• No spaces- that is one of the biggest problems people have with filenames. In Windows 98, the most common operating system on the Internet, you can have spaces in file names. Many people are tempted to do the same on web pages. Spaces cannot be used in a file or directory in a web page, ever. The sample show here will not work; use letter.htm.

letterinstructions.htm

• Keep them short- make sure that all of your file names and directories have names that are 8 characters or less. On some older computers, long file names are not readable. "letterinstructions.htm" will work on most computers, but use letter.htm to be sure.

INDEX.htm

• No caps- some servers are case sensitive, some aren't, play it safe, and make all directories and files entirely lower case. This sample could be fixed by changing it to "index.htm".
  

Links

Try clicking on this link: Washington Post. Notice that it doesn't work, this is called a broken link. The reason that it does not work is because it links to "www.washingtonpostt.com" when it should go to "www.washingtonpost.com". This type of error is very common in websites and should be avoided. A broken link does not do anybody good, if a website goes away, delete the link, if you move a page in your site, fix the links on all pages linking to it. The same goes for pictures, because in the HTML file itself all there is for the picture is a filename. If you move or delete a picture file but don't remove it in the pages themselves, people will see a little red x, like this:

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