Web Publishing Resource Center:

Website Placement, Promotion, Optimization, and Validation

These are resources available on the Web to assist you in placing, promoting, optimizing, and validating your web page or site, as well as to information on domain registration, and Web law and copyright issues.

Placing Your Web Page
Promoting Your Web Page
Optimizing Your Web Page
Validating Your Web Page
Domain Registration
Web Law and Copyright

Placing Your Web Page

Following are resources you can use to locate a free or affordable presence provider for your web pages.

Finding Free Web Space

Free-WebHosting.info. Includes user reviews and rankings of the best free Web space providers.
The Free Site: FREE Web page services. Covers more than just free web space, but many other Web freebies as well.
FreeWebSpace.net. A searchable guide to free Web space providers.
Free Web Space Finder. Another resource that allows you to search for free Web space providers based on specified criteria.
Free Web Hosting Sites Review from FTPPlanet.com. Displays user reviews and ratings for free Web hosting services.
Free Web Space Forum at GIDForums. Read and post messages on free Web hosting.

Budget and Other Web Space Lists

Epinions.com's Web Host Reviews. Reviews and rankings of the best Web space providers.
HostRecord.com. Web hosting search, reviews, articles and discussions. Search for web hosts based on parameters set by you. Also compiles a record of reviews, positive and negative, about web hosts. Before signing up with a web hosting company, be sure to check their record at HostRecord.com.
Budget Web Index by Alex Chapman. Lists budget hosting companies, as well as VARs, and design consultants.
Web Services: Hosting by Yahoo. Yahoo keeps moving this bippy around. Hopefully it'll stay put for awhile.
Presence Providers by NerdWorld. Another list of presence providers, with quite a few "budget" providers listed.
Web Host Directory. Includes a searchable index of web hosts, plus web hosting and web design discussion forums.
Top Hosts: The Complete WebHosting Resource. Allows you to do a search for the web host that best matches your criteria. Also includes Top Ten rankings.
CNET.com's Internet Hosting page. Includes guidelines for choosing the right hosting service and reviews of hosts.
Host Find. Includes a search engine for finding the right web host or hosting package.
HostIndex. Includes a search engine for finding the right web host, as well as a monthly ranking of the most popular web hosts (voted on by visitors), and free domain name registering.
HostCompare.com. This is another list of lists of web hosts.
FindMyHosting.com. Use preset searches to search for plans and providers that match your needs.
Web Hosting Ratings. Provides over 3,000 user reviews of Web hosting services and plans.
Top 10 Webhosting Services. Rates hosting companies based on past user feedbacks, lab benchmark testing, and their usage with each web hosting company.
Cheap Web Hosting Directory. A buyer's guide to cheap Web hosting. Search to find a low cost Web hosting plan. Web hosting ratings and reviews.
Web Hosting Choice. An advertisement-free guide to choosing the right web host for your personal or business site. Lots of good info, not schewed in favor of sponsors or advertisers.
HostByte Marketplace. Search for the Web host that fits your needs, including shared Web hosting, e-commerce hosting, reseller hosting, colocation, and more. Also features articles, reviews, industry news, hosting specials, and customer ratings and reviews.
Top 10 Web Hosting. Includes rankings/listings of Web hosting plans, plus PHP/MySQL, reseller, JSP, ASP, and e-commerce plans/services. Plans are ranked according to price, quality, performance, and features.
Top 10 Cheap Web Hosting Directory. Reviews and ratings of cheap, reliable Web hosts with superior quality and support. Also provides listings of Webmaster resources and tools.
Web Hosting Stuff. Over 5,884 hosting plans listed in 9 web hosting categories. Search hosting plans based on hosting category, pricing, diskspace, bandwidth, web hosting features, etc.
ResellerConnection: The Premier Resource for Web Hosting Resellers. This list focuses on hosting companies that offer "reseller" accounts (sometimes called "virtual server" accounts). Besides allowing you to search its reseller index, also hosts a number of reseller discussion forums, which are a great way to get the inside skinny on the reseller game. If you're thinking about becoming a reseller, this site should be your first stop.

For additional helpful Web hosting resources, see our Budget Web Hosts page.

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Promoting Your Web Page

Web Site Promotion Resources/Info

Website promotion and traffic generation tips. Includes coverage of using keywords, doorway pages, meta tags, and more to improve your search engine rankings and boost your traffic. Also includes a rundown on what NOT to do.
Search Engine Watch. The main section here that relates to web developers is the Search Engine Submission Tips, an excellent collection of tricks of the trade.
Promotion World. A web site promotion webzine.
Announce your site to the comp.infosystems.www.announce newsgroup. This newsgroup is limited to announcing non-commercial Web sites. Be sure to read the newsgroup charter first before posting any announcements.
Announce your site to the Net Surfer Digest e-mail newsletter. You can find out about it and how to subscribe to it at http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/index.html. Any announcement that you would like to have considered for inclusion should be e-mailed to pressroom@netsurf.com.
Internet Scout Project. Its aim is to "provide timely information to the education community about valuable Internet resources." It is composed of two services, Scout Report and Net-Happenings. Over 100,000 people receive the weekly Scout Report. Over 25,000 people receive Net-Happenings daily. Net-Happenings is also available as a newsgroup, comp.internet.net-happenings.
Find lots and lots of search engines where you can submit your site at Yahoo's omnibus listing of search engines.

Banner Exchanges and Web Rings

123 Banners -- a fairly straightforward banner exchange network that doesn't allow you to specify which kinds of ads get displayed on your page.
Exchange-it! -- accepts ads only from Web sites with content suitable for children.
CyberLink Exchange -- lets you create banner ads with multiple click-points, so one banner ad can link to several Web pages.
Adendum: Free Banner Advertising -- gives you 2000 free banners starting out, 500 banner credits for each month of membership, and 2 banner credits for each 3 banners you display on your site.
For many links to other banner exchange networks, see Yahoo!'s Banner and Link Exchanges category.
WebRing -- used to be at Yahoo! Probably the biggest listing of Web Rings on the Web.
RingSurf -- another large listing of Web Rings.

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Optimizing Your Web Site

META Tags, Keywords, and Search Engines

META Tagging for Search Engines by the Web Developer's Virtual Library. Covers how to use the META tag to snag search engines.
Designing Page Content for Search Engines by the Web Developer's Virtual Library.
How Search Engines Work by Danny Sullivan. A good rundown on what different search engines say about their own indexing criteria.

Natural/Organic SEO

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Validating Your Web Page

W3C HTML Validation Service. An HTML 4.0 validator from the horse's mouth, the World Wide Web Consortium.
Doctor HTML by Thomas Tongue and Imagiware. Check your page for spelling errors, image bandwidth and syntax, document, table, and form structure, dead links, and command hierarchy.
Dr. Watson by Addy and Associates. This is a free service that will validate your Web page on the Internet. It is hip to HTML 3.2, and Netscape and Microsoft extensions up to version 4.0. It also can check your links and your spelling.

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Domain Registration

List of Accredited and Accreditation-Qualified Registrars at ICANN. Network Solutions is no longer the exclusive registrar of domain names (although they're still in charge of the central database of domain names). ICANN has now approved many additional domain name registrars, opening up competition in this space. Users can now "shop and hop" to find a better deal.
ICANN: The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The non-profit corporation formed to assume responsibility for the IP address space allocation, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management, and root server system management functions.
The Generic Top Level Domain Memorandum of Understanding (gTLD-MoU). Learn all about the promised new top level domain name system. This has been in the works so long, I'm beginning to wonder whether it will ever happen.

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