Web Development and Graphics

Tips from Grace Sylvan

Here are a lot of links of sources I've used for clip art for program and web development, and web development pointers. I've expanded the list, so that if one site is down, you likely will find something good at another. Most of these sites are rated 'G', but some may be 'PG'.

Icons, Clip Art, Pictures, etc

• Kids Domain's Clip Art Collection pages have lots of clip art and icons for kids. We've got our original clip art and a whole page of links to other sites.

  Drawing Tips

• Silly Billy has online lessons for how to create computer art, and how to write your own book. He visits schools helping them create their own multimedia books with HyperStudio.
• The Digital Education Network has Graphics Den, with lessons on how to use a computer graphics program to create unique digital art. Each lesson takes you from start to finish of a digital project.
• The Pixel Foundry

• Kids Domain's Clip Art Links has a large collection of clip art and web page sets.
• The 216 Colors of Netscape (that do not dither!)
• Jay Boersma has a neat web page with graphics, textures, backgrounds and sounds, including WebPaper.
• Colormaker - how to easily choose and set custom colors for your pages, includes many links to sites with textures, colors, etc
• Royal Frazier's pages on GIF Animation has all the information you need to make your own animated gifs.

Web Development

• Builder.Com - a wealth of information to help you turn your beginning web site into a top notch site. Tips for everything imaginable.

  This is Mac software:

  • I've tested World Wide Web Weaver - it's great, supports many of the current html options.

• The World Wide Web FAQ has up-to-date information and links
• The Bare Bones Guide to HTML has formatting info, etc, that's quick to read
• The High Five Page Awards (for pages with interesting good graphic design)
• Jeffrey M. Glover's Top Ten Pages: Ways To Improve Your Netscape Browsing Experience, Ways To Improve Your Home Page, Ways To Tell If You Have A Sucky Home Page.
• Everything there is to know about World Wide Web Robots, Wanderers, and Spiders, like how to protect private pages from being automatically indexed.

  Make sure to check your pages with one of these:

• You can check your pages with WebLint, look for the WebLint Gateways for sites that run WebLint.
• Doctor HTML will also examine your html and make sure it's good.

Once you have good pages, you want to people to come to them. Be smart and jot down which sites you have told about your site - there are HUNDREDS of sites to chose from. You can start with one of the promotion sites below - but once you are done, check out another one later. Be sure to have your list so you don't duplicate submissions, but you'll probably find sites on every one of these services - there are so many sites on the web! Take a little time each week to promote your site... the effect will snowball as more and more people find your page and spread the word.

Submit your site to the major search engines first. Then use those engines to seek out other sites that might be interested in yours. Let them know about your site in a friendly and informative way. You might set up a links page so that you point to them and they point to you. You also should add a reference to your web area (with some information) to your signature, so that when you post to newsgroups or mailing lists, others will be made aware of your site. Keep your total signature to 4 lines or less.

• Before you start having your site indexed - make sure it will be indexed the way YOU want it to be - see Submit-It's Tips for Announcing Web Sites to Search Engines.

• Another site with a GREAT Search Engine Tutorial for how to make your web pages cataloged properly in the search engines is Northern Webs. They also have a freeware META MEDIC to help you fine tune your meta tags!

  Submit Plus- submit your site free to search engines, etc

• VirtualPROMOTE - Promote Or Die!
• FreeLinks: The Ultimate Web Site Traffic Builder has links organized by category - both general links and topic specific ones.
• The best way to promote your site once you have done the search engine submission is to let other sites with similar interests know you exist (and give people a site worth visiting, with some original content and new additions from time to time). A short honest note about why you think your site would be of interest to the other can go a long way. While it's only one link, a link on another site that has good traffic can make a big difference. Just be sure you site is _ready_ to be linked to, you might want to wait until it has been established for a couple months and you've had the chance build it up some before starting this campaign.

  Advertising Information:

• The Family Sites Banner Exchange - if you're running a family oriented site, you can join in other family oriented sites in a banner ad exchange. This network will show a banner ad for your site on someone else's family oriented site every time your site displays one. This can help promote your site, but you need to get your hit count up by the methods suggested above - because your ads are shown on other sites based on the amount of ads your site displays.
• The Internet Link Exchange is a free service that allows you to promote your site by displaying banner ads. They do have children and family categories for site promotion.
• Web Site Advertising on the Internet has information about services that pay for advertising.