Web Authoring & Promotion

Here you'll find everything for your web site authoring and promotion needs. There are software download sites; graphics, HTML and CGI script locations; places to list your site, and lots more.

| Software | Authoring | Promotion |

If you don't know what you need or what's available, the following sites will help you find the software and utilities to make your web site development as painless as possible.

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There are several online sites that provide free or low-cost services that help you create or improve elements of your site. Following are just a few of them.

Clip Art

Image-O-Rama: In addition to a huge archive of images, as a bonus there is a pull-down menu on this page with links to other graphics archives, HTML tips, and other great stuff..
Jelane's Free Web Graphics: I've been trying to get the time to assemble sets of page graphics for you to use as is on your sites but haven't had the time. Jelane has done it, and beautifully! No matter what your taste, there is a set to suit you.
Realm Graphics: If you need graphics for your home page, you gotta visit this site.
Pambytes Free Web Graphics: Pam Gibson has created custom images that span the full range of web needs, including coordinated image sets.
Ventana's Clip Art Archive: Clip art, backgrounds, buttons,and lines. Also includes links to many other clip art sites.
netCREATORS Icon Page: FREE Animated Gifs - FREE Graphics - Clip Art, GIF Animations, Backgrounds, Icons, Bars, Bullets, Buttons, Cartoons, Midi and more!
GIF Wizard Picture Search: Find that special picture to complete your page. Find it in the picture catalog and then cut it down to size using GIF Wizard.
Barry's Clip Art Server: Pages and pages of clip art. You'll find categories here that are very hard to find elsewhere (like military, tractors, cartoons, scanned sketches, and more).
The Backgrounds Archive: These are backgrounds for use in WWW pages, animations, graphics... wherever you need a seamless tiled background.
Button World: Very artistic, unique buttons of various sizes for use on your personal web pages. Just add text and you're done.
Jim's Place Graphics Page: This site has a good archive of graphics, plus links to other archives, web authoring programs, and other helpful links.

Clip Art: Online Tools

: These are Internet sites that provide specialized online image services, from creation to compression and uploading.

Image Creation Software, Tools and Tips

Xara: Xara offers a variety of graphics programs to help you create a dynamite internet site with little effort. My primary interest is in their Xara 3D and their suite of fonts, but take a look around and see their other products.
Paint Shop Pro: Paint Shop Pro is your best bet for creating and editing graphics for your Homepage. This is the program to use to make your graphics transparent so they will look nice against your background. Select a download site here.
ULEAD Graphics Utilities: A full suite of nifty graphics programs and utilities to make your site come alive.
RGB Color Chart
Photoshop Ticks on Trips: Great special effects tricks for Photoshop.
Transparent/Interlaced GIF Resources: A good how-to on efficient use of GIF graphics in your Web pages. Examples, comparisons, coding, and links to utilities to accomplish these tricks.

CGI and JavaScripts

Includes page counters, statistics trackers, tutorials, and other information pertaining to adding scripts to your site or using off-site tracking services.

Sound

Best Midi Collections
Midis

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Website Promotion

Search engines have 'robots' that visit your site and extract information from your page title, opening paragraph, META tags, and some scour your entire page. They then build a summary of your site that will serve as your entry based on what their robot collected. If you get nothing else right, pay attention to this part. Make SURE you have fine tuned your META tags before submitting to any of the search engines or your entry will be lost in the abyss. If you don't know what I'm talking about, see the Web Authoring section.

Directories

Think of Directory Listings as online Yellow Page ads. They include your URL, title, and a brief description of your site or page. Directories don't have spiders so they use the text you submit for the index summary. It's very important that you find and select the best category for your listing, so it pays to do your own search in these directories to see the results you get when searching for certain words or phrases. That will often help you decide what to include in your write up.

Multiple Submission Sites

Multi-Submit: Submit your URL to many search engines and directories from this handy frame-based submission site.
Link-O-Matic: Free For All Links Page Directory And Link Posting Service: Add your link to 500 sites. Enter your information once and their engine handles the posting. Try it FREE.
"get the word out" Submission Service: This is a "fee" service, but there are some good resources and tips here that warrant a look-see.
Promote-It!
The Get Noticed Promotional Database: Free multiple submission site.
Central Registry - Free Registration Services !!!: Sites selected on the 7th & 21st of each month. If not selected, you need to resubmit request (after the 8th or 22nd).
Search Registration Database

Classified Ad Sites

Free Classifieds All About Free Classifieds: Links to sites that accept FREE classified ads!!!
List of Free Classified Listing sites
Mother of All Classified Links!: Just about every category you can think of is covered. You're sure to find some great places to advertise.

Free-4-All Link Sites

Get-it Network Free Link Page - Help & Info

Banner Ad Programs

The Internet Link Exchange: The Internet's premier banner exchange program. If you don't join ILE you're missing the boat. 'Nuff said.
SmartClicks -- Free Targeted Web Advertising: SmartClicks got its name from the way it monitors which sites are generating your traffic, 'learning' as your statistics grow. By doing this they can serve your banner to the sites that will be more likely to have visitors interested in your content. Very nice if it works. I haven't tried them yet (it's definitely on my agenda!).
LinkBuddies: Free Banner Link Exchange: I haven't been able to evaluate this site's benefits. However, it has some nice features. Banners are 468x60 so animated graphics are more effective; you can have up to 5 accounts per site to get a variety of banners (perhaps one for each primary service); and their Top program gives you a 4:3 display rato. I'm reserving judgment on this one until the rest of their features are implemented.
TradeBanners: Resource Marketing, Inc's banner exchange program.
Ad Swap: Free banner exchange. You earn half a credit for every banner ad displayed on your site, and another half if the banner ad gets clicked. With every full credit, your banner ad gets automatically displayed once on another member site. Banners are 40x400, under 8K, and can be animated.