web site creation: good practice guidelines before, during and after marieke napier nof-digitise...

Web Site Creation: Good Practice Guidelines

Before, During and After

Marieke Napier

NOF-digitise AdvisorUKOLN

University of Bath

UKOLN is supported by:

[email protected]://www.ukoln.ac.uk/

Web Site Creation: Good Practice Guidelines - 19 February 2002

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ContentsHere 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– We’ve 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.htmwww.ariadne.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/metadata/intro.pdf (.cfm, .asp, .jsp)

www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue5/metadata/intro.htmwww.ariadne.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/metadata/intro.pdf (.cfm, .asp, .jsp)


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During….


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Web Site PromotionYou want:

• Your quality pages to be found in a timely fashion by users of search engines

• To encourage others to link to youTo ensure this happens you should:

• Have a domain and URL naming policy• Exploit the Robots Exclusion Protocol - see

<http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html> • 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 people’s pages, bookmarks, citations

• Mailing lists,– JISCmail - tailor your messages and don’t 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

Your Web siteYour Web site

Search Engines

Search Engines

1. 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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• Dublin Core (DC) • Resource Discovery Framework (RDF)• Issues with metadata• Spamming• Variations of Keywords• Search Engines that don’t support Metatags -

Excite, Fast, Google, Lycos

<meta name="keywords" content="SCRAN, scotland, scottish, scot, gael, scran, alba, past, history, image, identity, scran, ethnography, archaeology, scran, education, school, college, university, museum, gallery..">

<meta name="keywords" content="SCRAN, scotland, scottish, scot, gael, scran, alba, past, history, image, identity, scran, ethnography, archaeology, scran, education, school, college, university, museum, gallery..">

Metatags


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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

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: /partnersDisallow: /draft

/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.

Note that use of directories to group related resources will have many benefits: controlling indexing robots, mirroring and auditing software, etc.

Note:


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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 <http://www.cast.org/bobby/>

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

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


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ProblemsWhy isn’t my site appearing on any Search Engines?!!?

• URLs• Frames - <NOFRAMES> 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

domain:cultivate-int.org/domain:cultivate-int.org/

url:cultivate-int.org/url:cultivate-int.org/

host:cultivate-int.org/host:cultivate-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, etcLinks to your Web site are valuable as they:

• Drive traffic to your Web site• Improve ranking in citation-based search engines

such as AltaVistaPossible 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 <http://www.linkpopularity.com/>)


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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• It’s 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 <http://rssxpress.ukoln.ac.uk/>

Can this (slightly) heavyweight CGI solution be complemented by a lightweight JavaScript solution be used within your NOF-digi project?

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 can’t be found, or is broken and there is no-one with the interest, expertise or permissions to fix it


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We’ve 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 fileDue to frames interface or other robots barrier

• See <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue26/web-watch/>

SOSIG 7,076OMNI 5,830EEVL 3,865History 2,605Netskills 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 <http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue7/webwatch/>

Yes Never Domain PageGone Gone

65 16 11 12


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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

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)

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