Dreamweaver FAQ » Traffic

How do I create better URLs in my website?

janinewarner — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:57:52 +0000

Dear Janine,

While adding pages to my site, I have been organizing them via subfolders locally on my hard drive. This results in web pages URL’s appearing long and messy. Is there a way to enter a tag, style, or code to change the display URL on my website?

Thank you for your time,
Mike

Hi Mike,

Great question, here are few tips to help you create better URLs.

First, remember that browsers will open the index.html file in any folder or subfolder, even if you don’t type it into the URL. That means you can create shorter URLs by carefully naming folders and saving an index.html file inside each one. You can have as many index files as you want, just keep them in separate folders and make sure that you save all of the folders and subfolders in one main folder on your hard drive so that you can copy the structure to your Web server when your done.

The result is you can create a URL such as:

DigitalFamily.com/videos

if enter that URL into a browser, it actually opens http://www.digitalfamily.com/videos/index.html

Another tip, everything after the .com is case sensitive. Thus, if I had named that folder Videos, you’d have to type the V uppercase, so pay attention to that detail when you share the URL, and try to be consistent. I make all subfolders lowercase to keep things simple.

That said, everything before the .com is NOT case sensitive. So whether you enter: DigitalFamily.com or digitalfamily.com, you get to the same place, the index.html page at the main, or root level, of my site. I like to use DigitalFamily.com when I write the main URL because it’s easier to read.

Finally, search engines such as Google are known to use the URL as one of the many criteria for ranking search results. As a result, if you want to optimize for certain keywords, including them in the name of the files and folders in your site can help.

If you enter, DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver, you go to my dreamweaver section, and the fact that I used the word Dreamweaver in the URL is probably helping me with search results (at least a little).

I hope that helps you create great URLs and I wish you all the best with your website.

Janine

How can I collect info on the people ordering on my website?

malinda — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 22:09:02 +0000

Hi Janine,

Thank you for the interesting book. I am busy learning how to design a business website and I would like to collect info on the people ordering on my website. How would I do so, bearing in mind that I am a beginner to websites and computers in general?

Many thanks,
Shamen

Hi Shamen,

Thank you for buying my book. Collecting information on customers is not an easy thing for beginners to do on their own. My best advice is that you consider using an established service that has worked things out for you.

Here are two options you might consider:

1. Business Catalyst – Adobe acquired this company and integrated their services into Dreamweaver. Customer Relationship Management is one of their strengths, but you may find that this is a somewhat complex solution for a beginner, and they do charge a monthly fee.

2. Yahoo Store – This is one of the most popular eCommerce solutions. You can set up your online store through their service and take advantage of their wide range of options, but you will have to pay a monthly fee for their service.

I hope that helps and I wish you all the best,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

Do we need a host for our web site?

janinewarner — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:29:11 +0000

Dear Janine,

I am a new secretary at a new church and currently we do not have an office, so we are not connected to the Internet. I am looking at Dreamweaver so we are able to create our own web page but I am not sure how to then get the page up on the net? Do we need a web host? Can you recommend any? I would greatly appreciate any information you can share with me on this matter!!!!

My sincere thanks!!!
Terri

Hi, Terri,

You will need a web host to publish your site online. You’ll find a couple of hosts listed in the tutorial about domain names on my site. Both companies I mention are well respected and provide reasonably priced hosting as well as domain registration.

This article covers a few things to consider with you choose a Web hosting service.

I hope that helps and I wish you all the best,
Janine

Can you help me with my traffic counter?

janinewarner — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 07:32:04 +0000

Hi Janine,

You were so helpful before and now I have the church Web site almost complete, but I’m stuck in another corner. I added a hit counter on the front page. It took a number of tries to get it to appear correctly but that’s all it does. I opened the Web site from different computers and went back several times to see if the numbers would increase but it did nothing.

How do I activate the counter?

Anne

Hi Anne,

If you want to keep track of visitors to your site, my best recommendation is www.statcounter.com. They have free and paid levels of service and I know lots of professional designers who are using them.

In general, I don’t recommend counters that show the world how much traffic you have on the main page of your site. For one thing the numbers can be misleading to site visitors. More importantly, a service such as StatCounter will give you lots more than just the total number of visitors so you can learn a lot about where visitors come from and what they do on your site.

All the best,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.