Okay. I'll admit it. Most of my web sites are somewhat clunky by modern standards, but at least you can get around on them. In this post, I will address certain issues that trigger negative responses in many consumers.

1) Your URL. If you want to be professional, please get a URL that reflects this. URLs such as http://geocities.freeweb.net/~thegreatwizzo.htm indicate to the consumer that you haven't taken the trouble to construct a "real" web site. It's just as easy to obtain a real domain as it is to put up a free site. Go to a domain registration service, such as DirectNIC or GoDaddy and you can register a real domain, such as thegreatwizzo.com, and in a few days, you can have it up and running. Typically it takes about 72 hours for a web site to actually propagate around the net, but once it is up, it's yours. Typically, on DirectNIC, the cost for a year of registration is $15.00, and the cost of bannerless hosting is $15.00 per year. So for $30, you have gotten out of the "free internet" URL's and you are actually playing with the big boys.

2) MUSIC -- some of you are not going to like this, but please bear with me. I do not recommend having background music on your web site. Why?
a) It can be very annoying.
b) It can cost you sales. If a customer comes on your web site, and he or she is looking for a magician for a trade show or some other commercial application, your music may be a kind the client dislikes immensely.
c) Royalty issues -- if the piece is not in the public domain, you run the risk of a visit from ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and/or RIAA. You can't legally use someone else's music without paying for it.
d) If you must use music, at least have an off button somewhere on the page, so people can turn it off. Most browsers have this feature, but it's not nice to make people use things they don't have to use. Be kind to your potential clients.

3) Typefaces -- Don't use little bitty type. Some people can't read little bitty type. Some types of print don't increase in size when you tell the browser to increase them. Don't make your client work to read your priceless prose.

4) Speaking of priceless prose -- make sure you have someone else proofread your web page. If you have misspelled a common word, then it makes you look like a moron. You can't read proof on your own work. Spell checkers can help, but only if the mistakes are not words that are also spelled correctly. For example, if you have used the word "form" instead of "from," the spellchecker will let this pass.

5) Content -- don't make claims you can't back up.

6) Have an e-mail contact button or line on every page of your web site.

7) One other thing -- avoid using colored type, unless it is absolutely necessary. A lot of buyers are colorblind, and if you use blue type on a light blue background, it may look invisible to them.

8) Once you have constructed your site, view it with Netscape, IE, Opera, AOL and Firefox. These are all quite common browsers. Sometimes what looks good on one browser looks awful on another.

9) Pictures -- if you have a lot of them, put them on separate pages to speed up downloading, or consider the use of thumbnails. If you want to see how I use them, go to the cups and balls museum web site and check it out.

10) Your index page -- keep it very simple. Don't have more than one picture on it. You want it to load fast!!!!

11) Navigation bar -- these are handy. They give the viewer a chance to find your material without having to go through endless lists.

I'm posting this primarily because I have visited a lot of web sites lately. I see web sites that belong to magicians who make big claims as to their professionalism, but their web sites make them look like amateurs.

I learned most of these lessons the hard way.

Re: Spelling Checkers -- jrbobik sent this in:

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

Ewe may have scene this bee four, butt its steal a good reminder.


Seriously, even if your spell checker passes a document through completely cleanly, when you read proof on your own copy, you will see things the way you thought you wrote them. This is quite dangerous. You won't see what is actually on the paper (or the screen).

I must be extremely careful, myself, because I have an eye condition that introduced a certain amount of dyslexia into my vision. Because of some eye surgery, I have a distorted retina and cornea in one eye, so from time to time, some letters look strange, and sometimes I see half of one line of type in line with half of another line of type. I have become accustomed to it now, but I do need to check everything I type very carefully, before I save it or hit the "Send" button.

Some of my readers have already responded with news that they have registered domain names. It is a moment's work, but it pays off in the long run. I've had one of my domains for almost 8 years now. Several are more than 5 years old.

So, what good is your own domain?

Well, your own domain is like a house. It gives you credibility.

Here's a little tip:

Don't provide links to other people's sites without asking them first.

Why?

Some hosts allow only a certain amount of bandwidth per month. For many hosts this is unimportant, up to a point. They figure that if you use, for example, free web hosting, that your web site won't be publicized very much. Then suddenly, they find that their servers are being tied up because someone has posted (for example) a very funny political cartoon, and literally millions of people are accessing it. This can result in several Gigabytes of data flowing from the server over a very short period of time, and it causes a traffic jam.

Steven A. Mills send in some ideas, as well, so I'll give them to you here, along with some of my own.

He suggests that you keep the number of pictures per page at a minimum. This is not a bad idea. He also suggests that you use a compressed format, such as J-PEG, which is usually abbreviated .jpg.

If you take a large picture, such as one that is actually 1280 px by 960 px and specify in your HTML code that it is to be displayed in an area 320 px by 240 px, you don't save any download speed at all. The picture still occupies 228K of space and takes quite a while to download on a dialup connection. If you reduce it to 320 x 240, it only takes up about 18k. That's less than 1/10 of the space and time. Try to limit your pages to about 40k of information on dialup connections.

If you have a program such as Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop, you can compress these pictures quite a bit without losing appreciable clarity.

Because the cups and balls museum is so graphics intensive, I chose another solution, which I recommend for all of you. Have two sets of pages. One set of pages is for people with a dialup connection, the other for people with a high speed internet connection. The pages for the dialup connections use "thumbnails," which are very small versions of the full sized pictures. When the reader clicks on a thumbnail, it calls up the full sized image. A typical thumbnail will take up about 2K or so of space.

If any of you have any questions about how to do this, PM me, and I will be happy to explain it in detail.

And thanks, Steven!