Thomas Homepage - Homepage Information

[ Index Chapter 7 ]

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7. Special Features
7.1 The Webcounter
7.2 The Guestbook
7.3 Advertise Your Page

[ The Webcounter ]

If you want to count all visitors of your personal homepage you have to put a counter on your site. This is very easy. First, you have to find a site that provides counter service and put that as a link into your homepage. One site you can go to for this service is the web-counter page at "http://www.digits.com/". All you have to do is fill out a form from the web-counter creation page to create your counter. Once it was been created, you include an inline image entry in your HTML code which calls the counter program on the Web-Counter server and returns a numerical image to your site.

Second, you have to add the HTML code for your counter to your webpage. Some webpage editors, such as the Homepage Wizard, does not support the counter code. In this case you have to put the code in with a text editor into your HTML page. You will find some help files for different web-editors at the Web-Counter page.

If you use the Homepage Wizard you have to do the following: After putting in the counter-code with a text editor you use Publishing Wizard to publish your homepage by running the Publishing Wizard manually and not from within Homepage Wizard. The Homepage Wizard works with ".hpp" files and only creates the .htm file as it's getting ready to publish. If you're going to use a separate editor, don't ever go back to Wizard. To publish your site, start up the separate program "Publishing Wizard". However, keep in mind that whenever you call that page back into the Homepage Wizard to modify it, you will lose the counter code and all other modifications.

Sometimes the Web-Counter server returns an "BUSY" image whenever a large number of requests are waiting for images. The count for your page was updated correctly but the image of the count would have taken too long to have been displayed.

[ The Guestbook ]

If you want to know a little bit more about the people visiting your homepage add a guestbook to your webpage. Visit the world famous guestbook server LPage at "http://www.lpage.com/wguestbk/" to create your own guestbook. You just click the Register button on the guestbook page, fill out the form appropriately, and you will be supplied with the HTML codes to copy and paste into your homepage. After putting in the guestbook-code with a text editor you use Publishing Wizard to publish your homepage by running the Publishing Wizard manually and not from within Homepage Wizard. The Homepage Wizard works with ".hpp" files and only creates the .htm file as it's getting ready to publish. If you're going to use a separate editor, don't ever go back to the Wizard. To publish your site, start up the separate program "Publishing Wizard". However, keep in mind that whenever you call that page back into the Homepage Wizard to modify it, you will lose your modifications for the guestbook-code.

[ Advertise Your Page ]

If you want traffic on your homepage you have to advertise your URL in the Internet. If you don't advertise your page in any way, don't expect your web-counter to get above the 10 mark for a long time. To advertise your page for free with all the major search engines, such as Yahoo, Lycos, Alta Vista, and so on, go to Submit-It! at http://www.submit-it.com. Submit-It! helps you submit your URL to a wide variety of search engines and directories on the Internet. Fill out one master form; submit to your choice of search engines and directories; and save your information for later use. This will increase the traffic on your page greatly.

If you want to add your URL to search engines that aren't included in Submit-It!, then go to the separate serach engine you want and choose "Add URL" or "Submit URL" somwhere on the page.

Thomas Kuhn 100046.1437@compuserve.com
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