4 FOLLOW EXCELLENT ENHANCEMENTS FOR YOUR WEB SITE :
1. Add a Search Engine to Your Site in 10 Minutes
Here’s a system you can use to add a search engine to your site with just a few minutes work. The system provides search reports, so you can see what visitors are searching for; automatically generated site maps (a “tree” showing the relationship of pages); automatically generated What’s New lists; and scheduled re-indexing. You can omit certain pages, or even parts of a page, from the search, modify a page’s ranking, and so on.
There is one catch. When a visitor to your site is using the search system, ads will be displayed on the results page. If that’s okay with you, visit http://www.FreeFind.com/ to see how it works and to sign up for service.
Here are two other similar services:
Atomz: http://Atomz.com/ And SearchButton.com: http://www.searchbutton.com/
2. Run Auctions at Your Web Site With Free Software
Have you considered setting up an auction program at your Web site? I ran into an open source program recently for managing auctions. “Open source” software is free software you can use it without paying for it. It’s software that is created by programmers who come together in a metaphorical sense, because often these programmers never meet each other, or even talk with each other on the phone. The interesting thing about Open Source is how it develops almost organically. Programmers add things that interest them—instead of having a long-term development plan, the program develops in an unforeseen direction, dependent on the whims of the programmers involved.
The program in question is EveryAuction, and you can find it here:
http://www.everysoft.com/auction/
3. Add “Viewlet” Content to Your Site Its Free
Viewlets are little Java-based animations that can be used to demonstrate a process of some kind. At the Qarbon.com site http://www.Qarbon.com/ you’ll find viewlets demonstrating how to use AOL menus and tools, how to work with Web browsers, how to use PowerPoint, how to work with Linux, and so on. (At the moment they’re mostly used for demonstrating software, but you could put any kind of images into them to demonstrate any process, really.)
As the viewlets are Java applets, they won’t work in all browsers, but they will work in most: Minimal Internet Explorer 4.0, Netscape 4.06, AO1 4.0 and later on MS Windows (unfortunately they won’t work in Mac versions of Netscape until Netscape upgrades its Java support for the Mac). Creating viewlets is very easy. Qarbon.com provide a special tool to help you drop images into the viewlet and add your own text callouts; you can use voice-overs, too
4. Set Up a Discussion Group on Your Site
Many Web sites use discussion groups (also known as a bulletin boards, message boards, and sometimes a Web forum) as a way for people to discuss your products or simply as a service to people a way to attract them to your Web site. For instance, setting up a discussion group for people interested in emus is one way to make your emu-lovers’ site stand out. A discussion group can be part of an overall package that makes a site popular with a certain group of people, just one more element that attracts people to your site and keeps them coming back. You can even set up several groups for different purposes; once you’ve set up one, it’s quite easy to set up another.
Here’s another way to use a discussion group. Set up a weeklong discussion with a celebrity or wellknown
person in your field. Your emu site might invite a successful emu farmer, a music site might invite a musician, a company selling software might invite the author of a book about their software, and so on. For one week, or however long this person is willing to take part, people can visit your site to pose questions and read the celebrity’s responses.
There are a number of ways to create discussion groups. FrontPage has a wizard that helps you build one. If you’re not using FrontPage, you might use a utility service to set one up there are a number of places that will allow you to build discussion groups at their sites, and link into them from your own so that it appears to be part of your site. Here are a few such services:
Cybersites, http://www.cybersites.com/
Delphi, http://www.delphi.com/
eCircles.com, http://www.ecircles.com/
EdGateway, http://edgateway.net/
EVine, http://www.evine.com/
Excite Communities, http://www.excite.com/communities/
FriendFactory, http://www.friendfactory.com/
InterClubs, http://interclubs.com/
JointPlanning, http://www.jointplanning.com/
Lycos Clubs, http://clubs.lycos.com/
Network54, http://network54.com/
Yahoo! Clubs, http://clubs.yahoo.com/
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