Why you need index.htm

An apology. I started this page for my own reference, but published it in the hope that it may help others. The style is likely to be rather vague. The information contained here may be false or subject to review. My worst mistakes have arisen due to book learning.

I notice that some Free Web users are having problems starting their sites or getting them running. Some of them do not understand about index.htm. I hung on for months without starting my geocities site http ://www.geocities.com/kelada2000. I then noticed that cdroms generally have a page named index.htm , used to link to other pages. I tried this. I started a page in windows notepad, saved it as index.htm, linked four more pages to it and uploaded them to geocities. At first I couldn't see my pages because geocities had supplied a template page for use in their wizard and called it index.html . I renamed that page and my pages appeared online - I had myself a web site. The moral is - you should start your site with a page named index.htm or index.html. Html trumps htm and index trumps any other word. Some people use words like default, main or home, but it is likely the search engine will not find these and you would have to include them as part of your web address.

I don't get on with WYSIWYG or wizards, as they are slow and I don't understand them. What I do is to write a template file in notepad, view it in Internet Explorer and edit it by viewing the source code in notepad, from within Explorer. This enables me to work quickly, and to incorporate filters, transitions and images. Unfortunately, this way of working does lead to a plain site with no changes of font, and, as a beginner, I make many mistakes. Having said that, some of the later editing of this page has been done within Netscape Composer, and it has served well. Composer appears to be intolerant of Microsoft dhtml code.

Problems with the Free Web server

I've noticed several problems, and those who's sites are more technical than mine have noticed others.

I'm not the only one to lose tags. In principle it might be possible not to use a head and body except, possibly, for one thing. DHTML has a feature called outerText which, if used, removes anything not in the head. If there is no head, surely the page would be lost? I'm a beginner but even I have used innerText, another dhtml feature.

For those of a technical bent. Note how I dropped the silver and blue Roland S-50 logo into the Roland page, using my own method, which appears to work and is an improvement on Microsoft's pixel count. Done my way, you can vary the text from smallest to largest without distorting or displacing the logo. Note the curious width and height settings - one pixel. This is to overcome a shortcoming in Internet Explorer.

Note that I only put fades on the local character and Chesnut Sunday pages. These parochial pages have few or no links. If you put a fade on a page which contains a dozen links, your viewer is likely to be driven barmy by viewing your fade a dozen times.

Floating a column of text in the centre of the browser window

On my geocities site:-
http://www.geocities.com/kelada2000 - the Yahoo pop-up occupies the right-hand quarter of the screen, unless clicked out. I wished to find code which would allow me to retain the format of the page, even when crushed by the pop-up. I hit on the following code which I am trying on both my infinites.net site and my geocities site. 

<DIV align="center">
<TABLE>
<TR>
<TD>
<TD WIDTH="500">Body of text and images go here.
<TD>
</TABLE>
</DIV>

That code gives me a 500 pixel column that floats at the centre of the page, even when the browser width is reduced.

Here is a simpler method that may work:-

<TABLE WIDTH=500 ALIGN=CENTER>
<TD>
YOUR TEXT AND IMAGES GO HERE
</TABLE>

The <TD> tag is essential or funny things can happen to your layout.
The Freeweb editor is likely to add <TBODY> and <TR> tags to this code.
For a table to replace the <BODY> tags it would need to be 100% width in order to accept a full-screen background.
An advantage of using a fixed width is that you can position your images where you want them by using hspace and vspace. I find that fixed width sections look better with a small font size.

I used this code on my Old Hampton Wick page:- 

<table><tbody valign=top><tr><td width="50%">my first list went here, separated by line breaks</td>
<td width="50%" style="text-align:top;padding-left:10px">my second list went here, similar to first</td></table>

The table was within a division, with margins and border.
I used it to present two lists of page links.
As a beginner I was unable to find a style to replace the tag:-
<tbody valign=top>

Images don't work on Freeweb?

When we upload images or files from a pc to the web, they may not appear on the web site.
Here are three possibilities:-

 

These things are important because the internet is based on Unix.

Pre-sizing of images

We are told that it is web etiquette to state the size of our images in the html, so that the browser can format the text without them. If all images are the same size, it is tempting to set the size using internal style, in the head of the document. If we do this, the size will be applied to the small graphics that make up the Freeweb banner, and it will fill the screen, obliterating our page.

An alternative is to use the windows notepad replace feature to replace <img with <img width="mywidth" height="myheight". Thus each image is sized separately but automatically. If style is used, it would be necessary to use class to identify the images. I have done this on my Thames Path page. I replaced <img with <img class=small and used internal style in the form img.small in the head of the document.

Preloading images

Say you have a plain index page, with text, and linked to a page with a large image. It may be possible to preload the image into cache memory, while the viewer reads the first page, before the second page is loaded. This can be done by including the image in the html for the index page but presizing it to one pixel, using this code:-

<img src="myImage.jpg" height="1" width="1">

Can't find site in search engine

Our sites are of absorbing interest to us but others may find them boring. I put hours into my site, including cycling here and there, taking photos and having one bike stolen. I have history all around me, yet few people find my site and most view only one or two pages. One or two neighbours find the site interesting. We can, though, try to improve our chances.

The search engines will principally look for pages named index.htm. They will find your page. This may take a month and they may not want it! They will check links to other pages, originality of content, relevance of content and unnecessary duplication of information, among other things. Your page should be reasonably verbose, so that the search engine can find interesting words. It may ignore so-called keywords. Search engines are programmed to reject subterfuge calculated to trick them. You should have a reasonably verbose page description - see my template - and should start your page using verbose and interesting language. These are the things that the search engine will place in the browser listing.

If possible, avoid automated site submission. Addpro and Addme are good ones but search engines do not like them and put you to the bottom of the pile. The correct way is to submit by hand. The best sites are Google and Yahoo:-

submit site to Google

submit site to Yahoo

Yahoo will require you to join up and log in.

On submitting your site, you will be asked to copy some text, to ensure that you are not a robot.

Having followed the procedure, you will be sure that you have been taken up by the two major search engines. They may reject you but, at least, they will consider you. Notice, I am being verbose.

Listing will take several weeks because there are paying customers ahead of you.

You can go to your site because you know its' address. Then, when your pages are listed, you will be able to find them by searching for phrases that you know are contained in your pages. The trick is, will other people find your site? in order that they should, there must be something, within the wording of your page, which other people are likely to enter into the search engine. Even then, you cannot be certain of an advatageous listing because there are other people ahead of you. You should not be too pessimistic about this because you should be advertising your site to people by word of mouth.

Success and failure

Following the usual three-week wait, my geocities site started appearing at the bottom of page two in the browser. This is the lowest position acceptable to a commercial site but ok for an amateur and beginner like myself.

Suddenly, it shot high in the list, sometimes even into first place, then disappeared into oblivion. I can only suppose why this should be so.

White Space

It can be useful to have an area of white space at the bottom of each web page. It gives a look of completeness and allows your viewers to scroll your text past any banners at the base of the screen. WYSIWYG code writers often add this code as standard. The required code is:-

<p>&nbsp;<p>

The code adds two paragraphs separated by a non-breaking space. This may not work when viewed with Netscape. One possibility here is to use F11 to view the page full-screen. Note that the freeweb server may prefer the following code, which is more correct:-

<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>

If you behave yourself like this, the Freeweb server may even give you your margins back.

Criticism

I was pleased to receive the following constructive criticism of my site, which I felt, looked old-fashioned:-

*******************************************************

Well, in my opinion looking old fashioned doesn't matter - personally I don't worry about that, I put more store on accessibility (i.e. making sure that partially sighted users can read it clearly, and that the code is all standards-compliant). You could do a lot to improve this - for example you have some text which is very pale and doesn't show up against the background, and you need to make sure that you give "alt" text for pictures, etc. for users on dial - up who have pictures turned off, or users with text - speaking browsers. On the home page there are a few problems specifically with layout. I've only looked using Firefox so far, but I find that when the window is re-sized the picture of Kingston Bridge overlaps some of the text. In some circumstances it also overlaps the animation. You should always check your site in different sized windows. The "Fireworks" and "Puzzle" rectangles look like buttons, but do not act as buttons. There are lots of different font sizes but it is not at all clear what the structure of the page is - which are the headings, subheadings etc? This needs to be clear to the user. The "Richmond Open House" and "Kingston Open House" pages are much clearer. The title on the "Hampton Wick" page (with the air ambulance) overlaps the text. I've tried this in Internet Explorer and in there the title is correctly positioned (and also has a nice shadow). This suggests that you've used a non-standard way of decorating the text and locating it, which works in IE but not Firefox. Prompted by this, I've just checked the main page in IE, and I see that it is rather better there. But surprisingly, the photograph has completely disappeared. I've looked at your source code and I see you make a lot of use of an element called "comment". This isn't a valid element in HTML4.01, and this explains a lot of the differences between the IE view and the Firefox view of the site. Another thought: you've used a mixture of HTML style attributes like "bgcolor" and CSS styles. It would be best to get all your styling into CSS if you can.

Sorry to sound negative, just trying to give some comments that might be helpful. Ignore me if you prefer!

*****************************************************************

One thing I knew about was the mixing of html attributes and css style. I've noticed that strange things can happen under these circumstances. I hadn't considered the use of other browsers. I installed the three - Netscape, Firefox and Opera - and have reservations about all three. nonetheless, I was able to modify my pages to make them readable on all four browsers. In doing so I weakened the performance on IE6.

I have a problem - all my work has to be done offline, then uploaded using a floppy disk. I am unable to try other browsers online. One problem here is that different browsers may use different margins, bearing in mind the now well-known loss of margins in the Freeweb server. I found that I had to increase the width of some of my fixed-width tables and there were problems with text flow.

One potential embarrasment was that my comments showed. I was using <comment> whereas I should have used the older form <!--

People continue to point out that my code is flawed. I thank them for taking this trouble and make these excuses:-

Wikipedia and Statcounter

Here in the UK, at least, the Wikipedia, online encyclopedia offers us an excellent way of publicising our material. We can find a page related to our subject and edit the links section to provide a link to our content. This should be of benefit because it means we will be linked to by people browsing our specific subject. It also benefits the encyclopedia by enhancing their content. In my case, I am supplying up to date photos, relating to their pages. I recently fell foul of their mediator, who accused me of spamming, though this matter may now have been resolved. It does appear that my Wikipedia links have been copied by an information service, which is flattering. One advantage of using Wikipedia is that you can effectively choose your audience and results are instant and guaranteed. Of course, your content needs to relate to theirs. I receive regular visits to my Brooklands Race Track page via Wikipedia. If you are linking a page like this, do include your statcounter code on that page, so statcounter can spot it and record the hits. I made the mistake of only including the code on one or two pages. Statcounter is intelligent and will analyse your hits, rather than just record them. You may notice that on this site, one of my counters records thousands and one hundreds. this is because one records page turns and the other, individual site access. Statcounters work by accessing a numeric graphic via a url. Each time a hit is recorded, the number on the graphic is incremented.

20/Feb/2007
In the preceding article I have advocated that you link to Wikipedia but it is not without hazards. Wikipedia have now banned my site permanently and removed my links. In their rules, Wikipedia do not permit persons to link to a site under their control. I did not initially know this, as I was not a member and was not aware of the rules. It could be wise, then, if you get someone else to make your link, though Wikipedia break their own rules by encouraging commercial sites to link. A hazard of linking to Wikipedia is that your links may be diverted to adult sites, making your site inaccessible via Wikipedia. My main page was diverted to an escort agency. In spite of this, I regard Wikipedia links as an excellent way of accessing up to date information and placing that information easily and quickly. Your Wikipedia links may be taken up by answers.com so, even if deleted by Wikipedia, should still stay on the web. If you link to Wikipedia, the search engines will favour that link over your previous rating, presumably due to the prestige of Wikipedia. In my own case, my rating dropped from second page to oblivion. Also, should Wikipedia drop your link, the search engine may still point to your site via Wikipedia, thereby rendering your site inaccessible via the relevant search. When you link to Wikipedia, you are improving their ratings at the expense of your own. You are working for Wikipedia unpaid and your efforts enhance their content. I am presently looking for further outlets and will report as soon as possible. Talking about ratings, are you aware that statcounter only shows your last 100 hits? That is my understanding. If you wish to keep track of a page, it may be a good idea to download your statcounter archive, every now and then. I did this but could not find a spreadsheet that could read it. I mention this because I lost track of my Brooklands page, which was popular under Wikipedia till they pulled the plug.

2/Mar/2007Wikipedia is a good idea badly implemented. It might be improved with a more readable, less bitty format. The intrusive blue words could be quietened down and linked to a mouseover prompt. Editors could be given a quota of links. Pages could be better planned and more uniform. Rules and procedures could be made more accessible. A forum could be set up. At the moment the search "wikipedia forum" renders a page on forums. There is little information on wikipedia which could not be derived adequately elsewhere. A free for all section could link to interesting new information and alternative views. The in-house working slogan "wikipedia is not a democracy" has been well earned. Wikipedia has sought to favour commercial users, who's websites offer a clean appearance and which load quicker than free sites. In doing so, it has driven away new information and fresh brains. Wikipedia has achieved it's goal of stifling progress. Interestingly, wikipedia is said to have it's origins in the pornographic market where the punter is delivered only what the provider wants him to view.

CSS Tabs

I have used css tabs on my home page. These are available in various types and can run horizontally or vertically. Download the software at highdots.com

The software enables you to set up various graphic tabs and lists, similar to those seen in Visual Basic and on professional websites. You can set them up within the user interface or edit the html yourself. They are not dissimilar to the links based on images that I have demonstrated above. On this page I have borrowed code from CSS Tab Designer 2 but kept their external style sheet instead of generating the html code. I chose a simple style that doesn't require gifs. As you can see, it was experimental.

Surviving Freeweb

I moved over to Freeweb from geocities, where I was bothered by the yahoo pop-up, which suddenly occupies 20% of the screen, at the right, and compresses the other 80%, thereby distorting the page. I looked for a free server, if possible in the USA, which would use some other pop-up. The first one I tried was slow to load, and the next in line was Freeweb. I considered myself lucky to find it and still do.

When I started my geocities site, it was to be based on text and was to cover technical matters - computers, electronics, remote control and satellite tv. I had in mind to name the site after my home village of Hampton Wick - probably a mistake. I ploughed away with no planning or knowledge of html or website building. Somehow I came to realise that I needed a page called index.htm and that everything would lead from that. I cannot imagine why this fact is not better known. I ignored the common wisdom that the opening page should be simple and added a mixture of text and links. With little effort, I was able to change this to two links, one technical and one informative. A neighbour had been kind enough to pass on a digital camera, so I started clicking away. My site is dependant on images and these take some time to download. I just assumed that the world is now on broad-band, which is not so. All of London, UK, has been ploughed up for cables, without asking if we wanted them. However, my neighbour mostly lives in rural France, where there are no cables.

Following the binary logic proposed in the 19th Century, websites fall into two categories - those that are informative and those that are intended to look impressive. I avoided the use of wizards and templates because they slow your progress and restrict the growth of your site. In general, I steer clear of WYSIWYG because their basis is to set up a table for layout. Once you start using that table, you may not be able to revise it.

Mine is a parochial site and I expect to get few viewers - it is, indeed, difficult to attract viewers from my own area because entering the words "Hampton Wick" yields so many sites before mine. I have not been able to get the links to my site that I would have liked, but have two tricks up my sleeve - first, I get a few viewers from the Freeweb forums and, more especially, I get a regular viewing from users of the "Wikipedia" online encyclopedia. I've covered this idea elsewhere. With Wikipedia, I can set links to my own site, hoping that my pages will augment the information already online. My Thames Path and London Open Days pages have been disappointing, but my Brooklands page is linked to on a daily basis. I show recent photos of the remains of the historic 1907 track and also link to pictures of the memorial to speed ace, John Cobb, surprisingly neglected. Recently - November 2006 - my London to Brighton veteran car run pages are attracting interest.

All went well with Freeweb, save for two things - the server has a mind of it's own and the system has been infiltrated by a pornography merchant, able to cut the rest of us out at will. I am able to use online computers at three sites - two London Borough, public library systems and two machines at a public information centre. These latter were at one time quite slow, but are now the fastest. Two further problems - my local library system has itself been infiltrated by a zombie, and the system server has blocked my geocities site with the warning that it is prohibited, possibly because it is carrying an algorithm, though more likely because it is blocking all geocities stuff.

What can we do about the Freeweb server? I've touched on this elsewhere. If you use the Freeweb online editor, it will strip out the head and body tags. Your page can run without these but should not do so. You will lose your margins and your background. Loss of margins is important because it is a feature of the Freeweb server that it does not provide the browser with default margins as most servers do. I have seen elegant sites on Freeweb, ruined because the text bangs into the sides and bottom of the screen. The use of WYSIWYG may make these faults difficult to correct, though it may be possible:-

OpenGL

OpenGL is an excellent system whereby those adept at using C++ can create 3D graphics and animations. Some have mentioned that it may flog the system hard. I noticed that the hard disk light flickered all the time that a 3D screensaver was running on an old 150Mhz computer. I read on the internet that using a 3D screensaver on a laptop can eventually burn out the cpu. I seem to think that Greenstreet mentioned that PowerText is hard on cpu power and can slow down other applications. The moral may be to use OpenGL only when you have to, such as when using Font Magic or PowerText to create a logo. This would not apply to MS Wordart. As both PowerText and Font Magic can create animations, cpu use could then become an issue. Perhaps we should use OpenGL to create applications but not to implement them. In my view, the safest screensaver is "Mystify", which is 2D.

constructive comment and corrections please to kelada2000@yahoo.co.uk

return to top of page