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Awesome Solutions
For Webmasters - Issue 4 Awesome Solutions For Webmasters Issue #4 - March 26th, 2002 Awesome Solutions For Webmasters
is an e-zine published by If you are receiving this, it
is because you ==========================================================- TURNING FOOLS INTO WEB DESIGNERS! ==========================================================- In this issue: 1. Jonathan : Want to keep people away from your website? 2. How to Keep People Away From Your Website, Part 1 3. Cool Tool : CoolKill 4. Free Advertising 5. Final Quote ==========================================================- 1. Jonathan : Want to keep people away from your website? Hi again! The Cool Tool for this issue is CoolKill, an exceptionally useful tool if you ever have problems with programs crashing or freezing up on you. CoolKill can help you 'kill' them. The article, How to Keep People Away From Your Website, includes different No-nos for websites. The <sarcasm> </sarcasm> tags are included, so that you can know when I'm being sarcastic. :-) If you are convinced that I'm wrong about these No-nos, please let me know and include website addresses that use the things that I say you shouldn't. I'll take a look at it, and if I'm convinced that it can really work on a good business website, I'll mention your website here and let everybody know. For those of you who might have
missed out on earlier issues, you can visit the Awesome Solutions
For Webmasters archives. Enjoy! Jonathan Harbaugh ==========================================================- 2. How to Keep People Away From Your Website, Part 1 Having a problem getting visitors to your website and keeping them there? Here are a few things you may be doing.
You have to remember that not everybody has fast internet access. People with modems might not consider it worth their time to wait for 20-30 images to load. Make sure that your images are all optimized to be as small as possible in size. I was at a site recently, where I thought the server was really slow at loading images. Well, it was actually trying to load a 900kb bmp image! An image like that with a graphics editor could be reduced to much less than 100kb.
When I first set up a small homepage in Geocities back in about '96, I thought it was cute to put "This Homepage is Under Construction". It wasn't much of a problem, considering it was a personal site, and the year was 1996. Nowadays, something like that is an immediate turn-away for people. They don't want to check out an 'Under Construction' website. Why waste their time when they don't know what links might be dead or not?
Counters were popular a few years ago. Counters are still used on some personal homepages, but should never be used on a business website that wants to look professional. Either your visitor will think that you receive very few visitors, in which case.. why should I be here? Or, the numbers will be high, and most visitors will scoff at the numbers. If you are going to use counters, make them invisible.
Suppose you go on vacation. People won't know that you are on vacation, they'll just think that you aren't doing anything with the website. Unless you update your website every day, don't tell your visitors.
Unless your purpose is to scare people, or it's a personal website, avoid all Midi files. Remember some people are using computers in public places, and although a person may have headphones, a Midi file can be quite annoying. On one occasion, I fell out of my chair. I hadn't noticed that my speakers had gotten turned up, way up. I had some humor page open up, and *BAM* this loud cheesy music started playing. But for a few seconds, it didn't sound like loud cheesy music. It sounded like a farm full of pigs being attacked by dinosaurs. Please, for the health of your visitors, avoid Midi files. If you are totally set on using Midi files on your website, then have the decency of giving people a way to turn it off.
==========================================================- 3. Cool Tool : CoolKill I don't remember where I first got CoolKill. I think a friend sent it to me over IRC (Internet Relay Chat). Due to the name of the program, I was a little suspicious about opening it. (I updated Norton Antivirus with the latest definitions, just to be safe.) Then I opened it and installed it. Wow. This utility has a feature that is very rare. In fact, I have yet to find a utility that can compete with this one when it comes to 'killing' programs. (If you do know of a program 'killer' that is better than CoolKill, please let me know). What do I mean when I say 'killing' a program? You know how you can hit CTRL+ALT+DEL, and a Close Program Menu box will appear and allow you to End Task for any of the programs listed. So you select a program, hit End Task. Sometimes you have to wait awhile. Sometimes you can't even end the task from here! CoolKill is basically the same as CTRL+ALT+DEL, but much, much better. It sits minimized in your system tray. To use CoolKill, you right-click on the icon. (The icon is a skull wearing some cool glasses). You have three options. You can hit About, which pops up a small window that tells you the version number of CoolKill, who created the program(OutLoud Software), and an email address that you can contact OutLoud Software at(outloud@walla.co.il). The next option is Exit, which I'm sure you can figure out what that does. The final and important option is Kill. When you get the menu, that has About, Exit and Kill on it, don't click on Kill. Instead, move your mouse over Kill(without clicking on it). You should now be seeing a list of all the programs and processes running on your computer. Even hidden ones that CTRL+ALT+DEL doesn't show! To kill a program, you simply move your mouse over the program, and click on it(left click, this time). Bingo, the program is gone. You don't have to waste anytime waiting for it to close. So next time you are having a problem with a program or Internet Explorer gets 'stuck', head over to CoolKill which can be found hanging out in the system tray. Download it now. It's under one megabyte in size. http://www.prowebsitemanagement.com/cooltools/coolkill.html (The reason that I have the program for download on my website is because the download site that most websites link to, is on Geocities, and there is no page there now.) ..GOT A COOL TOOL? Send me the description and
url(if any) to: All Cool Tools featured in Awesome
Solutions For Webmasters ==========================================================- 4. Free Advertising That's right, free advertising on my website! All subscribers have an equal chance of winning. And the subscriber who is now a lucky winner of free advertising is.. [email removed]... Ok, [email removed], all you have to do is send an email to webmaster[at]prowebsitemanagement[dot]com with I WON! in the Subject line. Be sure to read all the details,
rules, mumbo-jumbo, etc at ==========================================================- 5. Final Quote : To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer. - Paul Ehrlich
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