Poor Richard 10
#010/14-June-98
POOR RICHARD'S WEB SITE NEWS
Geek-Free, Commonsense Advice on Building a Low-Cost Web Site
Editor: Peter Kent
Top Floor Publishing
IN THIS ISSUE
- Beginner's Column:
- Always Check Your URLs
- Capitalizing Your Domain Name
- Promoting an Email Newsletter
- The Host Find Web-Hosting Directory
- Cleaning Text Files with TextSoap
- Link-Directory Management and Bookmark Programs
- The Myth of Highly Targeted Advertising -- Part 1
- Poor Richard's Web Site in the Press
- Reading Back Issues
- In Future Issues
**** IF YOU FIND THIS NEWSLETTER USEFUL ... FORWARD IT TO FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES ****
Beginner's Column: Always Check Your URLs
Here's a tip I wish I'd used more often, one that most people will probably ignore, and in fact one that I'll probably ignore now and then, too ... and regret having done so.
Whenever you send out any kind of email or paper document that includes a URL, carefully check the URL first. That may seem obvious, but all too often we type a URL that is so _obviously _ correct there's no need to check it ... only to discover a little later that however obvious it may have seemed at the time, the URL was misspelled. I received a newsletter just the other day with a bad link in it -- and I've done it myself a couple of times. Haste makes waste -- and embarrassing mistakes. But we're all in such a hurry these days that we often assume the best and discover later, to our acute embarrassment, that we screwed up. I know I'll be tempted to send something out quickly some time in the future; I just hope I'll remember to take my own advice and spend a few moments to check check each URL. Here's my mid-year resolution; I plan to copy each URL into my browser and press Enter _before_ I send out a document.
Beginner's Column Capitalizing Your Domain Name
In the last issue (see http://www.poorrichard.com/newsltr/009.htm ) I suggested that you capitalize your domain name to make it easier to read. I now write TopFloor.com, for instance, instead of plain old topfloor.com. I suggested that you do this for your URLs (http://TopFloor.com/) and your email addresses (PKent@TopFloor.com).
A reader pointed out that there may be some email servers that would have a problem with this. Not many, in fact he doesn't know of any, but RFC 821, the document that describes how the SMTP mail protocol should work, allows for the fact some mail servers may differentiate between email addresses with different case. Such an email server would not regard PKent@TopFloor.com as the same as pkent@topfloor.com, so mail sent to PKent@TopFloor.com wouldn't get through to pkent@topfloor.com.
Is this a real problem? No, and here's why. It's highly unlikely that your mail server works in this way. So it's just a matter of checking to see if you _can_ capitalize any way you want. Simply send an email to yourself using the capitalization you want to work with; if it gets through, everything's fine, and you can start using it in your printed materials.
Promoting an Email Newsletter
I spent an few hours recently promoting this newsletter. I wanted to get the word out a little more, so I began by registering the newsletter at various sites. In fact I was surprised at just how many directories of email publications I found.
First, a quick tip. When you add your email publication to a directory you have to provide all sorts of information; the name, a description, how to subscribe, and so on. You don't want to have to type all that over and over again; you don't have to. A little while ago I mentioned a product called ShortKeys (see http://www.poorrichard.com/newsltr/004.htm#work for more information). This is a Windows program that allows you to automate typing. You type a few characters, and ShortKeys substitutes a much longer piece of text. On the Mac there's a similar program, called TypeIt4Me.
ShortKeys: http://www.shortkeys.com/
TypeIt4Me: http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~r-ettore/
I used ShortKeys to save hours of work during this registration process. I simply set up a few shortcuts like this:
I Type... ShortKeys substitutes...
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about This is a free email newsletter ...etc.
contact prwebnews@topfloor.com
sub subscribe-prwebnews@lists.lyris.net
unsub unsubscribe-prwebnews@lists.lyris.netI'm sure you get the point. So, onto the list. The following list contains a range of places to register an email publication of some form, but not all are suitable for all types. Some are just for mailing lists distributed using the listserv software, some are for discussion groups rather than newsletters, and so on. Here they are, then, in no particular order.
Yahoo! -- Don't forget the obvious; if you have a Web site associated with your publication, register at Yahoo! and other search engines. Try the following categories, and search for the word Newsletter to find other categories.
http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/Newsletters/
http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/Magazines/
Biodata Network
http://www.biodata.net/
Liszt -- This site also has some special free services. For instance, they'll host your newsletter at their Web site, so visitors to their site can read it, and say they may be able to find paying sponsors for your list.
http://www.liszt.com/
Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists -- Don't be fooled by the name; you can also register newsletters.
http://www.neosoft.com/internet/paml/
Archives of NEW-LIST@LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU -- This Web page contains the archives of a mailing list on which you can announce your newsletter or mailing list. Click on the new-list.format link for instructions on how to send out a message.
http://listserv.nodak.edu/archives/new-list.html
America Online -- This site doesn't look very active, but worth a try nonetheless.
http://ifrit.web.aol.com/mld/production/
Vivian Neou's List of Lists
http://catalog.com/vivian/
Reference.com
http://www.reference.com/
A1 Ezine Directory -- Some of this site's "Add" links are broken, so dig around to find one that works.
http://www.a1co.com/freeindex.html
ARL (Association of Research Libraries) Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters and Academic Discussion Lists -- This is both a paper and online directory.
http://arl.cni.org/scomm/edir/
Electronic Journal Access
http://www.coalliance.org/ejournal/
John Labovitz's E.Zine List
http://www.meer.net/~johnl/e-zine-list/
The Newsletter Library -- This is mostly paper newsletters, though they'll take electronic, too. They have expanded listings for a fee.
http://pub.savvy.com/
e.journal -- I wasn't able to get this to work; I got a server error each time I tried, but perhaps it'll be fixed soon.
http://www.edoc.com/ejournal/
Newsletter Access -- Basic listing for free, "value" listing for $19.95 a year. However, note that the basic listing doesn't include online information -- this was originally a database of paper newsletters -- so if you want to register here you'll have to buy the value listing.
http://www.newsletteraccess.com/
Low Bandwidth -- This site, in theory, incorporates Todd Kuiper's E-mail-zines List, a popular list that was closed recently. At the moment, though, it looks like his data hasn't been fully incorporated, as this is a relatively small list right now.
http://www.disobey.com/low/
The Open Road -- This site reviews ezines.
http://www.sideroad.com/openroad/
Directory of Scholarly and Professional E-Conferences
http://n2h2.com/KOVACS/
Mailing List WWW Gateway -- You can only register if your publication is distributed by one of a small number of specified mailing-list programs.
http://www.netspace.org/cgi-bin/lwgate/
ListTool -- Only for publications distributed by Listserv, Listproc, or Majordomo.
http://www.ListTool.com/
A couple more places worth knowing about:
Tile.Net -- You can't actually register here; it's a list of LISTSERV mailing lists, created with the LISTSERV list global command, but I wanted to include it as it's a great reference source if you're looking for mailing lists.
http://tile.net/lists/
Library of Congress: Lists of Newspaper & Periodical Resources on the Internet -- This is a good place to continue your research into online newsletters and places to register them.
http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/news/lists.html#per
Know of any more places to register an email publication? Let me know and I'll mention it in the next newsletter.
Does adding your newsletter to these lists help? Yes, to some degree. I did notice a flurry of new subscriptions after spending a couple of hours registering, in particular after my announcement message went out on the NEW-LIST@LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU list. I can't say I'm continually flooded with new subscriptions from these sources, but every little helps.
Of course there are other ways to promote a mailing list, many of which are similar to the ways in which you'd promote a Web site. If it has an associated Web site, it can be registered in the search engines. You can mention it in your print materials -- business cards, letterhead, catalogs -- you can promote it with press releases, and so on. This newsletter, for instance, will be mentioned soon in MS Mindshare Update, a newsletter that goes to 4,000 user-group directors. We'll be returning to the subject of promoting newsletters in a future issue.
The Host Find Web-Hosting Directory
When people ask me how to track down a low-cost hosting company, I generally tell them to check out Budgetweb. This is a large directory of hosting companies, with a form you can use to search the directory -- use a form to select the services you want, and Budgetweb will display the services that match your needs. (Budgetweb is at http://www.budgetweb.com/ of course.)
I recently ran across another good hosting directory recently, though, a site listing Web-hosting companies and providing information to help you pick one. It looks well worth checking out. This new site is Host Find: http://www.hostfind.com/
Of course if you're in the market for a hosting company, don't forget to read my report, "20 Questions to Ask a Web Hosting Company": http://www.poorrichard.com/freeinfo/special_reports.htm
Cleaning Text Files with TextSoap
I've discussed my email formatting problems in earlier issues (see http://www.poorrichard.com/newsltr/007.htm#=20 ), but I want to mention one more thing, a product called TextSoap. This is billed as an "Internet text cleaner." It's a $15 Macintosh program (there's a Windows version on the way), that can remove unwanted spaces, MIME-encoded characters, linefeeds, smart quotes, HTML tags, and various other things. The publisher told me he'd let me know when the Windows version is available, so I'll pass on the information. In the meantime, Mac owners may want to visit ...
http://www.unmarked.com/textsoap.html
Link-Directory Management and Bookmark Programs
I discussed bookmark programs in the last issue, in an article about managing large link directories (see http://www.poorrichard.com/newsltr/009.htm#link for more information). Well, I have a few updates.
First, some good news and some bad news about QuikLink. I'll start with the bad. Somehow the database that stores my QuikLink bookmarks became corrupted, completely unusable. I couldn't get QuikLink to start anymore, because each time it opened it tried to open the corrupted database, and would then crash. Of course I should have just moved the bad database and tried again, but I didn't realize that was the problem, so I completely reinstalled the program. Luckily I had a backup of the database.
And now for the good news. The irritating task-switching problem I described in the last issue has now gone. QuikLink no longer interferes with other programs while it's running, so it actually runs really well right now; the reinstallation must have fixed something. I'd certainly recommend QuickLink to anyone, as there doesn't appear to be any other program that can do what this program can do ... but I'd recommend that you make frequent backups of the database file!
By the way, you don't _have_ to have a sophisticated bookmarks system to work with large link directories. That's the way I like to do it, and I think it's the most efficient way. But you can, if you prefer, save your link directory as actual bookmarks, or Favorites if you work with Internet Explorer. Then you can create a Web page from the bookmarks. If you work with Netscape you'll find that the bookmarks are stored in a file called bookmark.htm. You can open this file in an HTML editing program or text editor, copy the pieces you want, then paste them into your link directory. If you're working with Internet Explorer, you can use a little Microsoft utility to create a Bookmarks file out of your Favorites (this utility also creates Favorites out of Netscape Bookmarks files). The utility is called the "Internet Explorer Import and Export Favorites Tool" and can be found here ...
http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/ieplatform/favtool/favtool.asp
And now for some other bookmark programs, suggested by readers.
I'll mention them in case you want to take a look, but from what I've seen they don't do what QuikLink will do, which is create a customized Web page from the bookmarks.
Linkman
http://members.xoom.com/ultimatum/
URLMenu
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/2468/urlmenu.html
For the Mac, you'll find these programs:
WebQuick
http://www.webquick.com/
URL Manager Pro.
http://www.url-manager.com/
The Myth of Highly Targeted Advertising -- Part 1
On several occasions recently I've been told that you _must_ target your advertising very carefully, that closely targeted advertising is _always_ better than broadly targeted or completely untargeted advertising. I've heard this several times from people selling banner-advertising. And I've got to tell you that it simply is not true. Beware the advertising sales people ... they're completely wrong about this issue!
That may sound ridiculous. It's common sense that you must target your advertising as closely as possible, isn't it? Well, maybe common sense is wrong sometimes. But you're just going to have to wait for the next issue of this newsletter, when I'll explain exactly why the idea of closely targeting your advertising can end up costing you a lot of money and dooming your advertising campaign to failure.
Poor Richard's Web Site in the Press
Poor Richard's still popping up in the press:
- Patrick Marshall recommended Poor Richard's Web Site in his Seattle Times column recently, recommending the book to help a reader register his Web site with the search engines, saying that the book would "guide you through this step as well as many others involved in getting a Web site up and running."
- Sheila Clark, writing in The Advocate-Messenger, Danville, KY, said "Kent combined just the right elements in his book, which ultimately supplies everyone from the novice to the expert with sound time- and money-saving advice. Kent explains everything in simple detail so his readers don't have to be computer whizzes to understand the concepts."
- MicroTimes, a Californian Computer paper, mirrors Clark's comments, saying that in Poor Richard's Web Site "you'll learn everything you need to know, not some complicated programming language."
For more reviews, and many readers' testimonials, visit ...
Poor Richard's Web Site is in many bookstores, and can be ordered by others; it can also be ordered on-line, through the mail, by fax, or by phone.
See ...
Order direct from the publisher, and you'll get a 100%, 1-Year Guarantee. If the book doesn't help you set up a low-cost yet effective Web site, send it back for a refund!
Reading Back Issues
If you need to refer to back issues of this newsletter, you can find them at the following location:
http://PoorRichard.com/newsltr/
In Future Issues ...
- A simple credit-card processing system for Web sites
- Getting the Word Out about your Web site
- Setting up an email mailing list for newsletters, bulletins, product announcements, etc.
- More on promoting newsletters
- Secure servers: why you want one, how they work, who has them
- Mail-merge programs and mailing list programs
- A quick way to inform Web sites when you change your URL
- Are people cheating at the award sites?
- Charging purchases to the buyer's telephone numbers
- Electronic press releases _do_ work!
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(c) Copyright 1998, Top Floor Publishing
All Rights Reserved
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