Advice4WebMasters

& Put Function over Form!
In other words, make your first priority creating a good work, and as a later priority, make it pretty. Don't do like GM or Ford who put pretty/profits over appropriate function. As the folks at Google like to say, "Don't be evil!". If you want to make money, then making money must be your last priority, otherwise you will go the way of AltaVista who was once the best and most popular search engine in the world, til they started putting loads of sponsored ads above the organic links. Spend a couple years developing websites built around hobbies you enjoy. Provide the information which other people who share your interest would love to be able to find easily.
PS: If you were to host your site at one of the free webhosts like yahoo or geocities, you could regret it several years later if the site becomes popular because all the inbound links you've accumulated over the years will goto URLs you don't own.
PS: Register a domain name from GoDaddy (why spend more than $10/year?) which is memorable and fits your theme. Most of the .com names for real words are taken, so if you feel it's important to have a .com, you could makeup a catchy word which is available as a .com. Be sure to make it both visually catchy and verbally catchy. If you feel it's better to have recognizable real words in your domain name, try 2 or 3 real words with or without hyphens. If it seems impossible to get an appropriate .com, then go for a .us, .info, .biz, or any of the dot others.

@ Choose your Tools!
If you really want to be a webmaster, learn to write your own code so your site won't look like the usual canned site. If your hobby/work is so demanding that you don't have time to learn HTML, you may have to go with website building software. Sorry, I can't recommend any, don't touch the stuff. :-)

µ Make Your Site Pretty!
Purchase and learn to use Corel's Paint Shop Pro. It's very cheap in price but not cheap in function. If you feel you shouldn't divert attention away from producing your hobby/work related content for your websites, perhaps you should download images from the net for now until you feel you can spare the time.

^ Which Browser Should You Optimize For?
Recently, this webmaster backed up all files and then tried the beta version of Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft's effort to catch up with Firefox. The zoom feature is cool, probably even useful. Deleting history and cookies is much easier. Tabs are great, they're fancier than Firefox's. Navigation forward and back is much easier. Firefox includes SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), Explorer does not. On the other hand Explorer has VML (Vector Markup Language), Firefox does not. Which browser is better? I would say it's a tie. Unless your site specializes in using features only available in Firefox, optimize for the number 1 most popular browser (Explorer) and check the second most popular browser (Firefox) for compatibility.

¿ Use Your Visitors' Screen Resolution!
Set your screen resolution the same as your target audience. If you're a power user at some fortune 500 company, but your website needs to cater to everyone, you should probably optimize for 800 x 600 screen resolution and actually run that resolution on your machine. You can always bump it back up to 1600 x 1200 when it's time to play or do what ever it is power uses do with their time. This webmaster prefers to go with 1024 x 768 and run the ads in the right column and at the bottom of pages. Approximately 80% of visitors see the ads in the right column and virtually all visitors see what's most important: the organic content.

" Unique IP Numbers!
I probably shouldn't let this little secret out because there is a coming shortage of IP (Internet Protocol) addresses. An IP number is a unique address on the Net. With virtual hosting, many domains can share an IP number. But if a domain with the same IP number as your domain is a big spammer, and the IP number gets blacklisted, as well it should, unfortunately your domain's email addresses will also be blocked by spam filters, and if search engines block that IP number you can forget about anyone finding your site. Now, if you choose a reputable webhost who doesn't allow such behavior as spamming and other violations, you can use virtual hosting without a worry, and virtual hosting can be less expensive.

There is another issue. I used virtual hosting for years before I even understood what it is. But then, I switched my most popular site from virtual hosting to a dedicated IP (same as unique IP) and instantly my revenue from Google ads doubled! I can only guess the reason: Perhaps Google's computers can more reliably track and give credit for ad clicks when a certain IP number is identified as always just one domain.

4 Renaming or Moving Pages!
The first rule of renaming or moving pages is: Don't. If other webmasters are finding and linking to your pages, the last thing you want to do is to break those links. But if your reasons for renaming are compelling, use the 301 redirect method. A 301 redirect not only sends traffic to your new page, but it will enable search engines like Google to transfer PageRank from the old address to the new address!

21 Avoid HTML extensions in URLs!
After years of publishing HTML pages, this webmaster had a compelling reason to change all pages to SHTML. This involved renaming hundreds of pages. As explained above, this is something to be avoided if possible, certainly it would be a bad thing to repeat the renaming ever again. Since it is possible that someday it may be desirable to rename to .ASP or some new extension the future may come up with, I used a little trick to avoid extensions altogether: Name all files "index" and place them each in their own folders! Each and every file is then named index.html, index.shtml, index.asp, etc. A page about "cats", for example, would be named index.shtml and placed in a folder called "cats". A link to the page would be like this: "http://www.advice4webmasters.com/cats/". Then if ever the page needs to be renamed to index.asp, inbound links will still be good.

"0 Shallow Folder Structure!
The work of managing your sites can be much easier if you avoid folders within folders ad nauseam. Also, shorter URLs are easier to remember at a glance. A few years ago a TV station in Britain contacted me about mentioning one of my pages in a TV show they were producing. It would have been nice if the URL they showed on TV was shorter and didn't have the .htm extension. Plan now for these possibilities.

$ Earn More Money in the Long Run!
Don't even bother with putting ads on sites which receive little traffic, ads this early in the game will only extend the time it takes for other webmasters to recognize and approve of your site. When traffic begins to come your way, refuse to maximize profits! Instead, maximize website quality by placing ads only at the bottom of pages! Quality sites will attract more traffic. Be patient, it takes several years before other webmasters find your sites, recognize the quality of your content and site design, and link to your sites. But when this happens, these links from other sites will give you PageRank at Google and other search engines. On that topic, don't pay anyone to register your sites with search engines! Just register with Google and forget the rest. The other search engines will find you in their efforts to try and catch up with Google.

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