WE HAVE a PARTNER Now!
Introducing Mr. Jan
Morell, who is our new partner at Artmaker Studio. He is a
true gem. He is proficient in html,
dhtml, 3D art, forms, infobots, manipulating cgi scripts,
javascripts, and more. And he's a
nice guy! He is very helpful to all of our
clients who are now having us host their
domains. There just about isn't any question
he doesn't know the answer to, or
can find out quickly.
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JAN's COLUMN
Hi everyone, my name
is Jan, and I am a member of
the Artmaker team.
You might find me if you are
looking for support for your
Artmaker domain, or if you
are looking on the Icon Designs
site for some design support.
Icon offers a complete array of services, including page and graphic
design, custom
scripting, storefront design
and setup, 3D graphics, animation
and site promotion.
Recently we have added several free
services in addition to our contract
services including a Greeting Card
Factory, a Free for All links page, a
reciprocal Banner Exchange and a free
site evaluation.
Our most recent project for InstantPC
is a complete site redesign and
upgrade, and will be online within the
next few weeks.
We are always working to improve and
expand our services to the internet
community. Stop by anytime and see
what is developing.
_______________________________
Visit Jan at /Icon
and see his work. You can see his
3D collection of art and much
much more there. To email
Jan, email him at
Interactivity on the Artmaker Site
Now there are many ways
to interact with Artmaker on the site. There is a wonderful
search feature. You can see it on the front door at Artmaker, and
there is another one on Jan's front door. It works within the site,
just like Alta Vista does for the www. For instance, if you typed
in the word "angel" you would see pages where that word appears.
A number of the pages from
"Angels Sighted in Hawaii" would come up. This is a site we are having
on the Artmaker site for Sheila, Hawaiian Angel. Go there and check
out her beaufitul gifts of ceramic and other kinds of angel statuary.
They are exquisite and perfect for just about anyone you wish to give a
gift to, and what's more, they are all very nicely priced. Very affordable!
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Domain Hosting News
We are very excited
that we signed our 11th patron for a domain yesterday!
This is great and we now feel that this thing
is going to go over really well. Since we do not charge what others
do, we feel that anyone who wants their own domain can now have one. Just
for a basis of comparison, go and check out some other prices. Try
Mindspring for one.
I'm not going to quote their URL because I
don't want them to get mad at me! But its easy to figure it out.
Some of our clients are not finished enough
with their sites to be able to show them at this point, but here is a list
of the ones that are up, or at least partially up. Please feel FREE
to visit them and send email to them. They would be happy to reply
to you. http://www.electron2.com
http://www.lucidaspect.com
just to name a few. Stay tuned for a more complete list later on.
Give an AWARD!
Create a beautiful, small award to give to sites that you are interested
in.
Could be to personal sites, or business sites,
or educational sites, whatever. Make up some criteria, and put all
of this on line, and ask people to apply for it. Make a real effort
to check out the sites and give that award. This accomplishes SO
MUCH! You get a huge system of links that way. Ask your winners
to link the award back to your first page. Find out which news groups
don't mind if you put your ad in there. There are so many! Go to
alt.marketplace and you will find them all in those message headers. But
don't put the exact same ad in each one. Be creative, and write something
different for each one of those news groups. Avoid html and pictures
as they don't like them usually. If you paste the same message over
and over in many newsgroups, you will get flamed" for "spamming".
Flamed is when somebody tells you off big time on line, and spamming is
when you do unethical stuff like I mentioned above regarding news groups
and keywords. Submit your site to every single search engine or free directory
that you can find. Go here to get started, and read read read! This
site is just packed with valuable information. http://www.virtualpromote.com/
You can also start there to add your link to many places. This is
going to take a lot of work, but it will pay off. I'm not going to recommend
bulk email because it is a "no=no" at our servers. I do think there
is a place for that though, and hopefully the internet community will soon
lift its ban on that.
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THE MAKING OF A LOGO
Jan and I made my
fantastic logo by working together,by trial and error. There
was this uncomfortable negative space between
the art and the maker. I didn't know what to do with it, so Jan accidentally
let the top word drop into the bottom word, and it kinda caved in.
It was perfect! Then I added the little fairies trying to hold it
up with one on the ground supervising, and it worked so well!
Art Projects for Artmaker
I'm working on a big
animation right now. This is for a guy who wants to make a
screensaver out of an animation. There is this middle aged lady in
coveralls walking along, picking flowers, and then she comes to a curved
bridge. After she crosses it, a fairy moves down and turns her into
a beautiful young princess! The sky is darker on that side of the
bridge, and stars can be seen as well as a castle in the distance. If you
would like to see just a little preview, go to see a still image at /preview.JPG
Its huge, so be prepared to wait!
I'm not going to use that princess though,
she will look more like the moon child looks with the stair rail.
No java though.
To find out all about Artmaker's graphics,
visit here: /fantasy.html
EXTRA EXTRA READ ALL ABOUT IT!!!
One new and wonderful
thing is that beginning March 1, 1998 we will be submitting our
domains, when they are completely ready, to over 600 search engines and
important directories! This is great news! We will not be doing
this for money or other compensation at all other than FREE for our own
domain patrons.
Site Promotion - Little Jewels of Information...
I read a great deal on this subject,
and I can barely remember where I read or heard some of these ideas, but
I will say that some of these ideas are my own, and some are things that
I have gleaned from my many readings about this subject.
Some quick ways to get the traffic going:
Make good use
of META tags. Those are little things that you put in the
head of your html documents to show the spiders of the search engines how
to find you.
For instance, here is an example of how that
would look:<BASE HREF="/"> <HTML> <HEAD><TITLE>Domain
Hosting - 250 MB - Secure Line Server - Free Domain Registration!</TITLE>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Mozilla/4.04
[en] (Win95; I) [Netscape]">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="content-type"
CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META NAME="author" CONTENT="Artmaker
Studio, designer, producer, multimedia, world wide web, graphic artist,
web designer, web host, member of HWG, member of LOTH, member of the Garden
House">
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Domain
hosting and Free Domain Name Registration. You will have a secure line
for ordering, free domain name registration, T3 connection, unlimited bandwidth,
unlimited autoresponders,unlimited email aliasing, search your site capability,
and more! Support is one feature that is most outstanding.
Your questions and needs will be attended to promptly and efficiently.
We also provide stunning graphics for the internet community.">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="Domain
Hosting, daily sign-ups, less than 24 hours, 250 MB sites, domains
hosted, Web , Virtual accounts, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email
aliases, hosts, on-line manual, cgi support, formmail.cgi, shopping
carts, SERVER, domain servers, secure line , virtual ftp, serving
both businesses and individuals, yourname, free domain name
registration, graphics, business logos,fantasy paintings, web design, 3D
logos, Photoshop pictures made here, PhotoImpact paintings, Checkwriter
software, CoffeeCup software, HTML Assistant Pro 97 software, free download,
now hosting electron2.com, xaltHim.com, eonprod.com, vrworldmall.com, seaair.com,
and more."> </HEAD>
Now this is a very extensive
one, its the one that is on my site. You see that we have
gotten very creative with this idea. But if you go to Infoseek and
type in Artmaker, no doubt you will get the first page in there somewhere,
and you will see that first paragraph in the "description" for a summary.
Please give feedback
to this newsletter. Write to
webmaster and let us know what you thought. Suggest
topics that we might cover also! Vote to say whether or not you would
like this newsletter to come to you in html format or not. We will
also be archiving these issues on the artmaker site.
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ANOTHER ART PROJECT WE DID TOGETHER
Jan and I have
found out that when we accidentally happen to work on a graphic together,
it works! Some kind of magic happens. I asked him to
assist me on MoonChild's java applet graphic. She was standing up
there but there was something missing. I showed it to Jan -- all
this was done on line because we have never met really - and he said, well
let me see what I can do. Anyway, to make a long story short, he
made that wonderful golden stair rail. That was a perfect prop
for her. You can see this at /MOONGIRL.HTM
and then click on her logo to go through
to her site, where you will see the Moon Child's lake applet. You
need to have java enabled in your browser.
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DOMAIN HOSTING AT ARTMAKER NOW!
You might have gotten
an autoresponder when you subscribed to the newsletter! I
didn't realize that it still said 150 MB as the size for the domains.
It's now 250 MB. You might say "Oh my,
how would I use up that amount of space?" Well, let me tell you,
it is GREAT not to worry about how much space you are using! Jan
and I have probably put around 75 - 100 MB on there already. But
its wonderful not to worry. Records can be kept there also.
Things that our clients can do with their domains....
There are so many things
in there to see and do! A configurable guestbook you can block
out ugly words for instance, and allow html and graphics or not), an add
URL page, which is hugely popular on the internet today (add your URL there,
find the link on Artmaker's front door!
); make infobots to send autoresponders, have an order form in a secure
area, and on and on! But my clients think that the online support
that we give through ICQ and email is the best thing going. No sooner
do they have a question than we have answered it. We can actually
go into the files and repair things or install things for them. We
don't do that often though. We do help with forms, and other things
that may be unfamiliar to our clients. There is a very good faq on
line in their domains that they can refer to for many questions, and an
online manual also!
A demonstration-one-page shopping cart is
already installed on every domain which is easily configured to suit products.
And Jan has made a larger, more complicated one that he will set up for
patrons for a fee. See Jan's column for more on this.
SEARCH ENGINES
All search engines are
not created equal so go and visit each one so you know what it is
that THEY want you to do. Some people actually create different pages
for each search engine. They are the same except in the way they
treat this header information.
When writing META tags,
try to think what you would type in as a search word if you were looking
for your site. Ask a friend for some ideas on keywords. Make
that description a good, solid paragraph that will sound interesting to
someone who is looking for your site. Refrain from such statements as "We
are the best!".
Some WYSIWYG editors
(for What You See Is What You Get) such as FrontPage 98 and Composer)
will put the title UNDER the meta tags. You need to go into the source
file and move the title to the top item inside the <head></head>
environment! You can just cut and paste the title line in Notepad
very easily. The reason is that I have read that the title might
get overlooked and unreported if it is hiding under long meta tags.
Get very creative with
that title! Write a title that describes what you offer instead
of a title that says something like "Jane Doe's Home Page." Well
so what, right? That title is the thing that shows up FIRST during
a search, so make it a great one!
Another thing to do
is to have each of your keywords show up somewhere on your page.
And, if possible, in the title, and in alt
tags of images. Oh YES! USE that tactic! Put an alt tag
for every image. You can even put them into image maps. They
can now be seen in the newer browsers, MSIE 4 and Netscape 4. This
is a good tool and one you must not overlook. Like this:
<img src="whatever.jpg" alt="Whatever you
Need!"> or something like that. You can pack
your first page with your keywords like that. Relevance to
the search criteria is very important when search engines find YOU.
And that is greatly improved when the keywords appear several times, either
in the text, the title, and the alt tags. You can also put alt tags
in your links too. They don't show up but they will be heard if someone
is using a text reader to browse your page. Someone with limited
vision, for instance. Avoid having those keywords repeated TOO many times,
no more than 4 or 5 times and make sure they are used in valid ways of
using them. DON'T make invisible text that repeats and repeats the
same words. You could get removed from a search engine for doing
that kind of thing. And you get penalized for having the same word
appear too many times in your META tag for keywords. it used to be
that people would put the same word many many times. Those people
are being weeded out!
Don't name your pages
like this: index.html, index1.html, index2.html... or pictures1.html,
pictures2.html and so on. Search engines are getting so tired of
all the spamming techniques that people use nowadays, so they are on the
lookout for the offenders. This is one thing that they are looking for.
Even though there may be entirely different content on the pages,
they could see it as having multiples of the same page! Give each
page a unique name, and leave it like that.
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