Monday, May 10, 2010
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Tracking Your Online Successes & Failures
Tracking the visits to your web site is essential to long-term success on the web.
Step 1: Make sure your web host has a web statistics package included. Preferably you'll want to know the number of pages visited by hour, day, month, year; how many pages viewed per visit; who is the referring web site or search engine; pages people entered the site at and what pages they exited the site from; keywords or search terms used in the search engines to find you.
Knowing the number of pages visited gives you a goal to shoot for...if 500 people visited in December you'll want to boost your marketing efforts to raise that number for January.
Knowing how many pages were viewed per visit lets you know if your content is interesting and if your navigation menu is allowing people to easily access all the pages on your web site. i.e. if you do not give people access to all the pages on your site via a navigation menu on each and every page they will not "surf" around, they will exit the site after reading one page. I find this on many sites, they offer a great deal of options on the homepage but once you are inside the site there is either no menu or a limited menu.
Knowing the referring web site or search engine is very helpful. It allows you to know which web-alliances are working best for you and re-focus your marketing efforts for next month.
Knowing the pages people enter and exit from is important. If you see a large number of exits from one page, you're going to want to take a look at it and make sure they are not exiting it for a code error. View this page from someone elses computer or a public library computer to see how others see the page. A good example of this happened a my web site, I added a Georgetown section several years ago and neglected to give people a way to get back to the Redding section of the site. Thus, people entered the Georgetown section via a link on the homepage, saw only Georgetown information and likely exited the site saying to themselves "History of Redding?? this site is all about Georgetown!" I was able to pick up on this via web statistics and correct the error.
And lastly, knowing the keywords used to find your web site can help you in several ways- you get an idea of what the search engines are finding appealing about your site and if keywords you thought you should be ranked highly for are not it gives you the que to improve your pages and add better content.
Step 2: In addition to web statistics signing up for a service like Google's Webmasters Toolkit is extremely helpful when it comes to traffic patterns. The Webmaster Tools show you search terms people are using to find you and what your ranking is for those search terms. These two are big when it comes to tracking successes and failures - in that - they help you see where you have succeeded and failed in the real world. I access the Google toolkit often to see where my traffic is coming from and what is generating the traffic. I also check the web sites that are linking to my site to determine my marketing strategies for the coming month...Google provides this information too (for free).
What I may be typing about here may seem foreign to you (now) but that is the whole point of my posting this information...it's not rocket science all you really need is someone to point it out to you. By reviewing your web statistics and web traffic reports you can get an idea of how you are doing on the web. Most importantly you see where you need to improve.
In addition to these reports you should also be monitoring the news that relates to your topic(s). I've stated this before and will state it here again...now-a-days when people read something in print they often go online to see what else is out there on the topic. It's a good opportunity to become a source of information when they do and key reason to learn HTML in order to post content quickly and capture an audience on Saturday that may not have existed on Tuesday.
Step 1: Make sure your web host has a web statistics package included. Preferably you'll want to know the number of pages visited by hour, day, month, year; how many pages viewed per visit; who is the referring web site or search engine; pages people entered the site at and what pages they exited the site from; keywords or search terms used in the search engines to find you.
Knowing the number of pages visited gives you a goal to shoot for...if 500 people visited in December you'll want to boost your marketing efforts to raise that number for January.
Knowing how many pages were viewed per visit lets you know if your content is interesting and if your navigation menu is allowing people to easily access all the pages on your web site. i.e. if you do not give people access to all the pages on your site via a navigation menu on each and every page they will not "surf" around, they will exit the site after reading one page. I find this on many sites, they offer a great deal of options on the homepage but once you are inside the site there is either no menu or a limited menu.
Knowing the referring web site or search engine is very helpful. It allows you to know which web-alliances are working best for you and re-focus your marketing efforts for next month.
Knowing the pages people enter and exit from is important. If you see a large number of exits from one page, you're going to want to take a look at it and make sure they are not exiting it for a code error. View this page from someone elses computer or a public library computer to see how others see the page. A good example of this happened a my web site, I added a Georgetown section several years ago and neglected to give people a way to get back to the Redding section of the site. Thus, people entered the Georgetown section via a link on the homepage, saw only Georgetown information and likely exited the site saying to themselves "History of Redding?? this site is all about Georgetown!" I was able to pick up on this via web statistics and correct the error.
And lastly, knowing the keywords used to find your web site can help you in several ways- you get an idea of what the search engines are finding appealing about your site and if keywords you thought you should be ranked highly for are not it gives you the que to improve your pages and add better content.
Step 2: In addition to web statistics signing up for a service like Google's Webmasters Toolkit is extremely helpful when it comes to traffic patterns. The Webmaster Tools show you search terms people are using to find you and what your ranking is for those search terms. These two are big when it comes to tracking successes and failures - in that - they help you see where you have succeeded and failed in the real world. I access the Google toolkit often to see where my traffic is coming from and what is generating the traffic. I also check the web sites that are linking to my site to determine my marketing strategies for the coming month...Google provides this information too (for free).
What I may be typing about here may seem foreign to you (now) but that is the whole point of my posting this information...it's not rocket science all you really need is someone to point it out to you. By reviewing your web statistics and web traffic reports you can get an idea of how you are doing on the web. Most importantly you see where you need to improve.
In addition to these reports you should also be monitoring the news that relates to your topic(s). I've stated this before and will state it here again...now-a-days when people read something in print they often go online to see what else is out there on the topic. It's a good opportunity to become a source of information when they do and key reason to learn HTML in order to post content quickly and capture an audience on Saturday that may not have existed on Tuesday.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Content is King
Yes, I know...the several months of silence has been due to the arrival of Liam, our second child. At first it wasn't so bad but then all the wheels fell off at once.
This post is on what site content you should consider (once you start a web site) based on who you are and what you want to accomplish with your history site. This is fairly straight forward...
1. If you have a building filled with history that you want people to visit: the focus of the site should be an index of what you have available to the public. The index will be most effective if you break it out into categories. Be sure to give the web visitors a taste of what you have using photos and short but descriptive paragraphs. Your goal is to drive people to your door so be sure to make your contact information and address visible on each and every page of your site.
Once you have an index of your collections posted online let the World know.
a. Newspaper articles are great traffic boosters, just ask the reporter to forward you the story prior to release...this helps cut down the mistakes and misquotes.
b. Showcase your collections by displaying some at the local library, community center, bank(s), etc... Be sure to have your web address displayed too.
c. Showcase your photos in calendars, either print your own or partner with a bank or real estate office. Be sure to have your web address displayed on every page.
2. If you wish to become strictly an online source of information you will need to digitize your collections of historic documents and photographs. It is not an easy task and will take a considerable amount of effort but in the end it is worth it. The reason why digitizing is important is- Search Engines, digitized content can easily be filtered and ranked by their robots, PDFs or scanned images take the Search Engines longer to filter thru and thus suffer in the rankings. Because you wish to be an online source of information you need to take steps to make the information you have as accessible as possible and that task starts with digitizing (i.e. transcribing print material).
As an online source of information the traffic you generate will come from partnerships you create. Don't believe anyone who tells you they can get you to the top of the rankings, even if they say they use "safe" or "legitimate" tactics. The only way to the top is good, relevant content for the keywords that people are actually using to find sites like yours. To find out what these keywords or terms used by actual people you can use wordtracker.com or keyworddiscovery.com. It will cost you a fee but it is worthwhile. Why rank #1 for "locomotive" when everyone is searching on "trains"?
Once you have your content posted live keep track of it. Use web statistic programs and Google's Webmaster's Toolkit to track which pages are most popular with your visitors and what search terms are being used to find your web site. This will help you to focus on what is important to the general public when you create new content. New content is essential to the success of your web site, do not get complacent once you achieve a high ranking, you need to maintain that ranking and the best way to do that is with new content on the subjects you are promoting.
In the next post I'll discuss more about tracking your online successes and failures.
This post is on what site content you should consider (once you start a web site) based on who you are and what you want to accomplish with your history site. This is fairly straight forward...
1. If you have a building filled with history that you want people to visit: the focus of the site should be an index of what you have available to the public. The index will be most effective if you break it out into categories. Be sure to give the web visitors a taste of what you have using photos and short but descriptive paragraphs. Your goal is to drive people to your door so be sure to make your contact information and address visible on each and every page of your site.
Once you have an index of your collections posted online let the World know.
a. Newspaper articles are great traffic boosters, just ask the reporter to forward you the story prior to release...this helps cut down the mistakes and misquotes.
b. Showcase your collections by displaying some at the local library, community center, bank(s), etc... Be sure to have your web address displayed too.
c. Showcase your photos in calendars, either print your own or partner with a bank or real estate office. Be sure to have your web address displayed on every page.
2. If you wish to become strictly an online source of information you will need to digitize your collections of historic documents and photographs. It is not an easy task and will take a considerable amount of effort but in the end it is worth it. The reason why digitizing is important is- Search Engines, digitized content can easily be filtered and ranked by their robots, PDFs or scanned images take the Search Engines longer to filter thru and thus suffer in the rankings. Because you wish to be an online source of information you need to take steps to make the information you have as accessible as possible and that task starts with digitizing (i.e. transcribing print material).
As an online source of information the traffic you generate will come from partnerships you create. Don't believe anyone who tells you they can get you to the top of the rankings, even if they say they use "safe" or "legitimate" tactics. The only way to the top is good, relevant content for the keywords that people are actually using to find sites like yours. To find out what these keywords or terms used by actual people you can use wordtracker.com or keyworddiscovery.com. It will cost you a fee but it is worthwhile. Why rank #1 for "locomotive" when everyone is searching on "trains"?
Once you have your content posted live keep track of it. Use web statistic programs and Google's Webmaster's Toolkit to track which pages are most popular with your visitors and what search terms are being used to find your web site. This will help you to focus on what is important to the general public when you create new content. New content is essential to the success of your web site, do not get complacent once you achieve a high ranking, you need to maintain that ranking and the best way to do that is with new content on the subjects you are promoting.
In the next post I'll discuss more about tracking your online successes and failures.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Learning HTML or Hiring a Professional
Should I learn HTML or hire a professional? If you're a techno-phobe this is an easy question to answer. The rest of you should at least consider giving it a try. Why?
1. Because being able to update your own web site is extremely cost effective
2. You can add and/or edit content at anytime
3. Errors can be corrected immediately
4. If a hot topic arises you can create content and add content that day (no waiting)
5. It's not that hard
Technology makes it so easy to create HTML in a Word processing format these days you almost don't need to know it all that well...seriously, I have only accessed the "edit HTML" tab in this Blog twice (to make sure my links were set correctly).
Some examples of ways you can set up a site without traditional HTML software is:
1. Blog. It's Free, they give you templates and you can even add content via email or your mobile device if you want.
2. Get a web hosting account that offers online templates. This will run you $60 per year if you use the compamy I use (1and1.com). 1and1.com has a web site generator that walks you through the process of creating a web site. The $60 also gives you 2 domain names and tons of storage space. I use the "Linux Home Package".
3. If you want a great way to work off an online template and maximize search engine rankings, SBI web hosting, is the way to go. This will run $300 per year but the tools that come with it are worth much more than that. If the town you are promoting has a lot of web sites vying for the same keywords, this can help you move up the rankings fast.
Okay. Maybe you don't want online templates, you want to learn HTML. The best way to do that is to check your local community college for courses on HTML (Macromedia Dreamweaver)and Adobe Photoshop. This is much better than buying a book like "HTML for Dummies" because a). you can ask questions and b). in most cases you design in class...hands on is necessary to really understand what all those tags mean and do. A course in Adobe Photoshop is important if you want to have photos on your site that take seconds not minutes to download. A course in Photoshop will teach you how to make a 2 MB photo into a 60KB photo without loosing too much image quality.
Now let's say you know a little about HTML and Photoshop and want a site that looks like my History of Redding site: here is a ZIP file of the pages and graphics. You can edit these pages and graphics to fit your town, all I ask is that you let people know where you got the template and link to my site.
The last piece of software you will need is an FTP (file transfer protocol) program. Google the keywords: Coffee Cup FTP. This is a free program that allows you to transfer the HTML pages you have created/edited from your hard drive to the web hosting server.
Too much work? Hire a Professional
As a web designer I can tell you with confidence that the best way to find a good one is to: ask your friends, co-workers, clients, etc...
If you don't know anyone who has had a web site created for them:
1. use google.com to see if there is one locally. Search on: "web design+your town+your state".
2. check the local phone book...but keep in mind most of us don't advertise there.
3. visit www.elance.com. this is a tool/service we designers use when we have too much work. you describe what you want and receive 100's of bids to do it. you will need to project manage the design process.
When you do find a designer(s) be sure you have a clear idea of what you want the site to look-like, how it should function and who your target audience will be. By providing the designer with this information your price estimate will be realistic. Get at least three price estimates and request links to sites they have designed.
By the time you select a web designer you should have a document ready that contains:
1. Designs you like. i.e. links to web sites you like. These sites don't have to be about the topic you are focused on. If you like the look of internet.com list it.
2. Description of how people will navigate the site. i.e. "I would like a top horizontal bar with 4 links and a side vertical bar with many, many topic links."
3. Content for each page you wish to have designed.
4. Keywords or Keyword phrases you want to target for search engine position. If this matters to you.
In addition to this document you should have a good idea of what photos you have available or would like to use in the design.
If you have taken the time to prepare for the design, the process should flow along pretty smoothly...they forward you web links to show you their designs, you approve or disapprove, they go back to the drawing board, again forward you web links of their revisions and before long you have a web site.
1. Because being able to update your own web site is extremely cost effective
2. You can add and/or edit content at anytime
3. Errors can be corrected immediately
4. If a hot topic arises you can create content and add content that day (no waiting)
5. It's not that hard
Technology makes it so easy to create HTML in a Word processing format these days you almost don't need to know it all that well...seriously, I have only accessed the "edit HTML" tab in this Blog twice (to make sure my links were set correctly).
Some examples of ways you can set up a site without traditional HTML software is:
1. Blog. It's Free, they give you templates and you can even add content via email or your mobile device if you want.
2. Get a web hosting account that offers online templates. This will run you $60 per year if you use the compamy I use (1and1.com). 1and1.com has a web site generator that walks you through the process of creating a web site. The $60 also gives you 2 domain names and tons of storage space. I use the "Linux Home Package".
3. If you want a great way to work off an online template and maximize search engine rankings, SBI web hosting, is the way to go. This will run $300 per year but the tools that come with it are worth much more than that. If the town you are promoting has a lot of web sites vying for the same keywords, this can help you move up the rankings fast.
Okay. Maybe you don't want online templates, you want to learn HTML. The best way to do that is to check your local community college for courses on HTML (Macromedia Dreamweaver)and Adobe Photoshop. This is much better than buying a book like "HTML for Dummies" because a). you can ask questions and b). in most cases you design in class...hands on is necessary to really understand what all those tags mean and do. A course in Adobe Photoshop is important if you want to have photos on your site that take seconds not minutes to download. A course in Photoshop will teach you how to make a 2 MB photo into a 60KB photo without loosing too much image quality.
Now let's say you know a little about HTML and Photoshop and want a site that looks like my History of Redding site: here is a ZIP file of the pages and graphics. You can edit these pages and graphics to fit your town, all I ask is that you let people know where you got the template and link to my site.
The last piece of software you will need is an FTP (file transfer protocol) program. Google the keywords: Coffee Cup FTP. This is a free program that allows you to transfer the HTML pages you have created/edited from your hard drive to the web hosting server.
Too much work? Hire a Professional
As a web designer I can tell you with confidence that the best way to find a good one is to: ask your friends, co-workers, clients, etc...
If you don't know anyone who has had a web site created for them:
1. use google.com to see if there is one locally. Search on: "web design+your town+your state".
2. check the local phone book...but keep in mind most of us don't advertise there.
3. visit www.elance.com. this is a tool/service we designers use when we have too much work. you describe what you want and receive 100's of bids to do it. you will need to project manage the design process.
When you do find a designer(s) be sure you have a clear idea of what you want the site to look-like, how it should function and who your target audience will be. By providing the designer with this information your price estimate will be realistic. Get at least three price estimates and request links to sites they have designed.
By the time you select a web designer you should have a document ready that contains:
1. Designs you like. i.e. links to web sites you like. These sites don't have to be about the topic you are focused on. If you like the look of internet.com list it.
2. Description of how people will navigate the site. i.e. "I would like a top horizontal bar with 4 links and a side vertical bar with many, many topic links."
3. Content for each page you wish to have designed.
4. Keywords or Keyword phrases you want to target for search engine position. If this matters to you.
In addition to this document you should have a good idea of what photos you have available or would like to use in the design.
If you have taken the time to prepare for the design, the process should flow along pretty smoothly...they forward you web links to show you their designs, you approve or disapprove, they go back to the drawing board, again forward you web links of their revisions and before long you have a web site.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Before you build it, review & brainstorm
Site revisions are time consuming and expensive, to avoid them make sure you spend time reviewing other web sites and brainstorm ideas with others prior to the design of your site.
This is something that seems logical but many get so excited about having a web site of their own they jump the gun. When you don't plan out where you are going, you'll eventually reach a point where you get lost...or in my case, run out of places to add new pages. Before my second redesign I did not have navigation topics for several new pages, I only had links to them on the homepage and site map page. Once people went into the interior of the site, the chances of them finding the new content was slim. To avoid this come up with as many navigation topics as you can think of. Even if you don't have content for these site sections initially, it gives you a place to put content when it becomes available.
Navigation topics, for example, are: Audio Files/Oral History, Books about your town, Church Histories, Donation page, Early Families, Early Settlement, Famous People, Early Manufacturers, History of Schools, History of Town Incorporation, Town Parks, Photos of Town, Maps of Town, etc....
You can view my web site http://www.historyofredding.com/ for an example of what I'm getting at. It may seem like a large number of topics but in reality I could use more...once you post information, more comes in (at least that's how its been for me). If you don't have information but can foresee a topic(s) that would be of interest in your community, add it. But just don't place an "under construction" sign on that page, write a note that welcomes people to email or send you any information that they may have on the topic. I add notes like this to all my pages (even if I have content) and you'd be amazed what comes in.
Now before I babble on some more, what I'm saying here is think up all the topics you "could" cover before you start working on the design of the website. Once you have your list of topics down on paper share them with others to see if they come up with a couple more.
Now you are ready to explore what you want your web site to look like. A logo is a good place to start, logos can make or break a web site. You can make your own but with services like http://www.logoworks.com on the web you get a professional logo for a fraction of what it would cost ten years ago. Keep in mind you don't need a logo but it does help the overall look.
From what I've seen on the web, there aren't a large number of local history sites that can be considered "visually appealing" so when you're looking for a design idea do not think you have to review local history sites and local history sites only. A good source of web sites to review in bulk is http://www.coolhomepages.com/ that's the one I frequent when I get designer's block and I'm sure there are others like it on the web now...google it.
You are going to want to look for two different layouts: the homepage and the interior page. With a homepage and an interior page look selected, you are ready to get started. Next you'll have to decide if you are designing it yourself or hiring someone else.
I'll discuss that topic and more next post but here are some ideas that have worked for me:
The homepage is mucho importante! This is your front door and it needs to scream: "Come on inside" You can do this by:
1. Welcoming the visitor with a short note about why the site exists,
2. Add a "spotlight" section that showcases a topic your local newspapers are writing about. People will read the newspaper article and then hit the internet to see if there is more on the topic, this is one way to help those people find you.
3. Add a "recent update" section. This shows visitors your most recent additions and also allows you to direct them to topics you feel are important.
4. Place town data and demographics on the homepage. Many have found my site while searching for the "population of Redding". It is well worth placing on the homepage.
As far as choosing a navigation bar, this is personal preference. I like having both a vertical bar and a horizontal bar. The top "horizontal bar" has: Home Site Map Real Estate Recreation four important pages at my site, I placed them there so people could find them easily on every page. The reason I like having a "vertical navigation bar" too is because it gives me as much space as I want to add topics of interest. In other words, I'd run out of space with just a top "horizontal bar". The vertical navigation bar allows me to show visitors all the pages on the site and the horizontal navigation bar gets then to the important topics (according to my site stats) fast.
The interior page layout is easy once you have a homepage designed. In short you go from three (3) columns to two (2). In my example you'd remove the column holding the "spotlight", "town data" and "events". So you are left with:
1. the logo/top header area
2. the top horizontal navigation area
3. the content area (2) columns: left= vertical navigation bar, right= content
4. bottom area: copyrights, phone, email, etc..
More on design software (i.e. doing it yourself), selecting a designer, selecting a web host next post.
This is something that seems logical but many get so excited about having a web site of their own they jump the gun. When you don't plan out where you are going, you'll eventually reach a point where you get lost...or in my case, run out of places to add new pages. Before my second redesign I did not have navigation topics for several new pages, I only had links to them on the homepage and site map page. Once people went into the interior of the site, the chances of them finding the new content was slim. To avoid this come up with as many navigation topics as you can think of. Even if you don't have content for these site sections initially, it gives you a place to put content when it becomes available.
Navigation topics, for example, are: Audio Files/Oral History, Books about your town, Church Histories, Donation page, Early Families, Early Settlement, Famous People, Early Manufacturers, History of Schools, History of Town Incorporation, Town Parks, Photos of Town, Maps of Town, etc....
You can view my web site http://www.historyofredding.com/ for an example of what I'm getting at. It may seem like a large number of topics but in reality I could use more...once you post information, more comes in (at least that's how its been for me). If you don't have information but can foresee a topic(s) that would be of interest in your community, add it. But just don't place an "under construction" sign on that page, write a note that welcomes people to email or send you any information that they may have on the topic. I add notes like this to all my pages (even if I have content) and you'd be amazed what comes in.
Now before I babble on some more, what I'm saying here is think up all the topics you "could" cover before you start working on the design of the website. Once you have your list of topics down on paper share them with others to see if they come up with a couple more.
Now you are ready to explore what you want your web site to look like. A logo is a good place to start, logos can make or break a web site. You can make your own but with services like http://www.logoworks.com on the web you get a professional logo for a fraction of what it would cost ten years ago. Keep in mind you don't need a logo but it does help the overall look.
From what I've seen on the web, there aren't a large number of local history sites that can be considered "visually appealing" so when you're looking for a design idea do not think you have to review local history sites and local history sites only. A good source of web sites to review in bulk is http://www.coolhomepages.com/ that's the one I frequent when I get designer's block and I'm sure there are others like it on the web now...google it.
You are going to want to look for two different layouts: the homepage and the interior page. With a homepage and an interior page look selected, you are ready to get started. Next you'll have to decide if you are designing it yourself or hiring someone else.
I'll discuss that topic and more next post but here are some ideas that have worked for me:
The homepage is mucho importante! This is your front door and it needs to scream: "Come on inside" You can do this by:
1. Welcoming the visitor with a short note about why the site exists,
2. Add a "spotlight" section that showcases a topic your local newspapers are writing about. People will read the newspaper article and then hit the internet to see if there is more on the topic, this is one way to help those people find you.
3. Add a "recent update" section. This shows visitors your most recent additions and also allows you to direct them to topics you feel are important.
4. Place town data and demographics on the homepage. Many have found my site while searching for the "population of Redding". It is well worth placing on the homepage.
As far as choosing a navigation bar, this is personal preference. I like having both a vertical bar and a horizontal bar. The top "horizontal bar" has: Home Site Map Real Estate Recreation four important pages at my site, I placed them there so people could find them easily on every page. The reason I like having a "vertical navigation bar" too is because it gives me as much space as I want to add topics of interest. In other words, I'd run out of space with just a top "horizontal bar". The vertical navigation bar allows me to show visitors all the pages on the site and the horizontal navigation bar gets then to the important topics (according to my site stats) fast.
The interior page layout is easy once you have a homepage designed. In short you go from three (3) columns to two (2). In my example you'd remove the column holding the "spotlight", "town data" and "events". So you are left with:
1. the logo/top header area
2. the top horizontal navigation area
3. the content area (2) columns: left= vertical navigation bar, right= content
4. bottom area: copyrights, phone, email, etc..
More on design software (i.e. doing it yourself), selecting a designer, selecting a web host next post.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
The How & Why I Started This Blog
In the past nine and a half years I have gone from a high-stress corporate position to a home office, and I gotta tell ya... it is heaven! My passion for local history has everything to do with this change of lifestyle, as odd as that may sound. The intent of this blog is to let others in on my experiences with the hope that they see how easy it is and perhaps start a local history site of their own.
In 1997, I began to realize there was more to my hometown than streets and houses, I found myself in the history section of the local library quite a bit. Next, I started requesting access to church basements and newpaper archives to expand the search for history. It finally got to a point where much of my free-time was spent looking for new information, the problem was, in most cases the materials were rare and I could not take them home. At that time the internet bubble was still alive and well so I decided to explore the cost of developing a web site dedicated to the history of my hometown: Redding, Connecticut.
After a brief search I found a designer in Farifeld, Connecticut and headed down there to discuss my hopes and dreams. My hopes and dreams were going to cost me $2,200.00 and future dreams would run $35 an hour. I didn't have that kind of money to spend at the time but I did have enough to purchase Microsoft Front Page...I would learn HTML and create the site myself!
I did and as lame as it was (look wise) it was a web site and I spent countless hours re-typing copies of the documents I had found in libraries and basements into Front Page. All in all this took me 3 months, which was aided largely by a scanner. When it was time to go live, I had about 20 pages covering topics like: Early Settlement, Early Family Names, Town Incorporation, Photos of Town, Farms. The hit counter grew everytime I visited it, which was often, but others were slow to find it. [Things moved a little slower back then when it came to searchbots.] Eventually I entered the rankings of Yahoo and Lycos and people started emailing me about the site and its contents.
The surprising thing about a local history web site is visitors...most come from outside of the town you are focusing on. Some people used to live in town and long to come back, so they come looking for pictures and stories, others have found an ancestors name on your pages and want to know if their is more information available. Visitors that e-mail you about the site really make the long hours worthwhile, they offer praise, new material and sometimes a J-O-B. Two months on the world wide web and I was offered a position as a web designer...a job I really didn't have any formal training for. The timing was right though and I gladly accepted their offer as it was a 35% pay raise.
My days of commuting were over for good but as I came to find out, working from home has a downside...dealing with co-workers who don't. A constant stream of phone calls and emails came in day after day, "whatcha working on?", "I need a report on your projects", "how we looking for next billing period?", etc... It got old real quick, I was creating more reports on what I was doing than web sites. What I came to realize was life would be much easier if I didn't have to answer to anyone else so I purchased a puppy and gave my 2 week notice.
My puppy, Bailey, became the best co-worker I'd ever had. Every morning we'd get up and go for a 5-6 mile hike (the morning commute), I'd feed him and get a cup a coffee for myself before heading into the office to start work. At twelve noon on-the-dot Bailey would get up, stretch and gently grab my shirtsleeve, pulling my hand off the mouse, we'd then head out for our lunchtime "commute" a mile or so stroll, then it was back to work until five or six when we'd head out to the woods for the evening commute before dinner.
Life was good, I had my own web design company, was newly married and had little responsibility outside of house and car payments. I filled free-time between client projects with history updates. The site continued to grow with the help of people all of the world sending photos and content via email and in some cases snail mail but it needed a new look now that I was designing sites for a living and my own site reflected my "skills" poorly. I had switched from FrontPage to Dreamweaver and Photoshop on the client side so it made sense to convert the history site as well.
Easier said than done! FrontPage and Dreamweaver do not play nice together. FrontPage tags are a little different and because it was designed to help non-technical types there are a ton of issues when you open it in Macromedia's Dreamweaver. The result was a complete re-do which took months. But it was well worth the effort, local history sites will be visited more often if navigation is made easy for the visitor and in my second site I made sure I expanded the list of topics and repeated the same navigation menu bar on each and every page. This resulted in increased page views and return visits.
After the redesign in 2002, I started paying more attention to site stats. By watching the site traffic reports on a weekly basis [instead of monthly] I began to see visitation trends that resulted from "current news topics" that tied to past events, people or businesses. This was a new concept to me but it was logical, people read about a history topic in the newspaper and then logged on to see if they could find out more about the topic online. If your going to make a local history site be sure to have some way to add information on your own, either via a blog or content management system. Relying on web designers for updates will at times lessen your ability to "strike while the irons hot" when a current topic pops up that you have historic documention about but haven't posted online.
Site traffic reports will also help you understand where people are entering and exiting your site from. This was important for me because after the redesign I found that a new section I had created for Georgetown, Connecticut which was meant to help people looking for topics relating to Georgetown (a sub-section of Redding) was confusing people who went to the Georgetown section from the Homepage...they never saw the Redding links and thought the whole site was about Georgetown and exited. Big mistake on my part, but with the help of the site traffic reports it was corrected.
From 2002 to 2004 history flowed like the Hudson, but then it happened..."honey, we're pregnant!!" Our daughter, Emma, arrived the day before Thanksgiving of 2004 and doubt I did more than answer emails about history for the next 4-5 months. The site went into hybernation and without fresh content the return visits started to fade. It was apparent that time needed to be spent to make up for what I'd lost over the winter so when spring arrived in 2005 I grabbed my digital camera and headed down to Redding. Photos are a huge draw at my site so fresh pictures are always a big hit, they were. As luck would have it at the same time a photos collection of the Georgetown section went up for sale on Ebay so I was able to showcase that part of town too. The rest of 2005 and 2006 were a blur, between work, family and history there were very few day I'd consider "down-time".
So that that brings us to 2007. This May my wife was looking over my shoulder one evening and said the site needs some life, it's too dark and stale. Now that's my baby she's knockin' so I wasn't too pleased initially but it got me thinking and a couple nights later I had come up with a completely new look. That was the easy part, the hard part was converting 200+ pages into the new format...I'm still finding pages I missed. While I was converting pages and part of the reason the site still has some pages in need of updating, my wife went into labor and we headed over to the hospital where she delivered our son, Liam. Seeing that we are now seasoned veterans in Baby 101, the "history blackout of 2004" is not being re-visited but I will admit it is still no easy task juggling life, work and hobby.
So that is where I am at on July 10th 2007 and above is [in a nut-shell] how I got here. In future posts I will write about topics relating to Local History Web Sites...creating them, making them better, things I've learned in the process of building mine, etc... Local History is a topic that is growing and I think once more people take a peek at what it has to offer, the more will come to enjoy it.
In 1997, I began to realize there was more to my hometown than streets and houses, I found myself in the history section of the local library quite a bit. Next, I started requesting access to church basements and newpaper archives to expand the search for history. It finally got to a point where much of my free-time was spent looking for new information, the problem was, in most cases the materials were rare and I could not take them home. At that time the internet bubble was still alive and well so I decided to explore the cost of developing a web site dedicated to the history of my hometown: Redding, Connecticut.
After a brief search I found a designer in Farifeld, Connecticut and headed down there to discuss my hopes and dreams. My hopes and dreams were going to cost me $2,200.00 and future dreams would run $35 an hour. I didn't have that kind of money to spend at the time but I did have enough to purchase Microsoft Front Page...I would learn HTML and create the site myself!
I did and as lame as it was (look wise) it was a web site and I spent countless hours re-typing copies of the documents I had found in libraries and basements into Front Page. All in all this took me 3 months, which was aided largely by a scanner. When it was time to go live, I had about 20 pages covering topics like: Early Settlement, Early Family Names, Town Incorporation, Photos of Town, Farms. The hit counter grew everytime I visited it, which was often, but others were slow to find it. [Things moved a little slower back then when it came to searchbots.] Eventually I entered the rankings of Yahoo and Lycos and people started emailing me about the site and its contents.
The surprising thing about a local history web site is visitors...most come from outside of the town you are focusing on. Some people used to live in town and long to come back, so they come looking for pictures and stories, others have found an ancestors name on your pages and want to know if their is more information available. Visitors that e-mail you about the site really make the long hours worthwhile, they offer praise, new material and sometimes a J-O-B. Two months on the world wide web and I was offered a position as a web designer...a job I really didn't have any formal training for. The timing was right though and I gladly accepted their offer as it was a 35% pay raise.
My days of commuting were over for good but as I came to find out, working from home has a downside...dealing with co-workers who don't. A constant stream of phone calls and emails came in day after day, "whatcha working on?", "I need a report on your projects", "how we looking for next billing period?", etc... It got old real quick, I was creating more reports on what I was doing than web sites. What I came to realize was life would be much easier if I didn't have to answer to anyone else so I purchased a puppy and gave my 2 week notice.
My puppy, Bailey, became the best co-worker I'd ever had. Every morning we'd get up and go for a 5-6 mile hike (the morning commute), I'd feed him and get a cup a coffee for myself before heading into the office to start work. At twelve noon on-the-dot Bailey would get up, stretch and gently grab my shirtsleeve, pulling my hand off the mouse, we'd then head out for our lunchtime "commute" a mile or so stroll, then it was back to work until five or six when we'd head out to the woods for the evening commute before dinner.
Life was good, I had my own web design company, was newly married and had little responsibility outside of house and car payments. I filled free-time between client projects with history updates. The site continued to grow with the help of people all of the world sending photos and content via email and in some cases snail mail but it needed a new look now that I was designing sites for a living and my own site reflected my "skills" poorly. I had switched from FrontPage to Dreamweaver and Photoshop on the client side so it made sense to convert the history site as well.
Easier said than done! FrontPage and Dreamweaver do not play nice together. FrontPage tags are a little different and because it was designed to help non-technical types there are a ton of issues when you open it in Macromedia's Dreamweaver. The result was a complete re-do which took months. But it was well worth the effort, local history sites will be visited more often if navigation is made easy for the visitor and in my second site I made sure I expanded the list of topics and repeated the same navigation menu bar on each and every page. This resulted in increased page views and return visits.
After the redesign in 2002, I started paying more attention to site stats. By watching the site traffic reports on a weekly basis [instead of monthly] I began to see visitation trends that resulted from "current news topics" that tied to past events, people or businesses. This was a new concept to me but it was logical, people read about a history topic in the newspaper and then logged on to see if they could find out more about the topic online. If your going to make a local history site be sure to have some way to add information on your own, either via a blog or content management system. Relying on web designers for updates will at times lessen your ability to "strike while the irons hot" when a current topic pops up that you have historic documention about but haven't posted online.
Site traffic reports will also help you understand where people are entering and exiting your site from. This was important for me because after the redesign I found that a new section I had created for Georgetown, Connecticut which was meant to help people looking for topics relating to Georgetown (a sub-section of Redding) was confusing people who went to the Georgetown section from the Homepage...they never saw the Redding links and thought the whole site was about Georgetown and exited. Big mistake on my part, but with the help of the site traffic reports it was corrected.
From 2002 to 2004 history flowed like the Hudson, but then it happened..."honey, we're pregnant!!" Our daughter, Emma, arrived the day before Thanksgiving of 2004 and doubt I did more than answer emails about history for the next 4-5 months. The site went into hybernation and without fresh content the return visits started to fade. It was apparent that time needed to be spent to make up for what I'd lost over the winter so when spring arrived in 2005 I grabbed my digital camera and headed down to Redding. Photos are a huge draw at my site so fresh pictures are always a big hit, they were. As luck would have it at the same time a photos collection of the Georgetown section went up for sale on Ebay so I was able to showcase that part of town too. The rest of 2005 and 2006 were a blur, between work, family and history there were very few day I'd consider "down-time".
So that that brings us to 2007. This May my wife was looking over my shoulder one evening and said the site needs some life, it's too dark and stale. Now that's my baby she's knockin' so I wasn't too pleased initially but it got me thinking and a couple nights later I had come up with a completely new look. That was the easy part, the hard part was converting 200+ pages into the new format...I'm still finding pages I missed. While I was converting pages and part of the reason the site still has some pages in need of updating, my wife went into labor and we headed over to the hospital where she delivered our son, Liam. Seeing that we are now seasoned veterans in Baby 101, the "history blackout of 2004" is not being re-visited but I will admit it is still no easy task juggling life, work and hobby.
So that is where I am at on July 10th 2007 and above is [in a nut-shell] how I got here. In future posts I will write about topics relating to Local History Web Sites...creating them, making them better, things I've learned in the process of building mine, etc... Local History is a topic that is growing and I think once more people take a peek at what it has to offer, the more will come to enjoy it.
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