The Top 10 Distinctions to understand when building a website.

Originally Submitted on 2/17/97.

Creating a home page or full website is as much an investment in your own training and skill set as it is a marketing step. The purpose of this Top 10 List is to expand your thinking and help you to get your arms around the key elements of website design. Of the 10 distinctions (distinctions, by the way, are simply word pairs with a difference that's worth understanding), the first of the two words is the "stronger/better" distinction and the one to really understand.

1. Resource Center vs Billboard

Many home pages and websites are simply electronic billboards or brochures. This is better than nothing, but the successful/attractive websites have rich content that serves the visitor. Best solution is to make your website both a resource center and a billboard -- do both. If you're not sure what content/resources to put on your website, think about putting up articles, books, tip sheets, top ten lists, symptom/solution ideas, links to other resources, etc. However, choosing which content to add to your website becomes more obvious once you've gotten the next distinction, which is...

2. Specialty vs Niche

A specialty is a skill set or unique talent. A niche is the people that you market it to. So, a specialty is about you. A niche describes who buys from you. For example, my specialty is phrasing, distinctions, articulation, etc. My niche? I have several: coaches, folks interested in building their vocabulary, spiritual/advanced personal development types. So, I format/craft/use my special skills to serve each of these niches differently -- yet it's all the same skills to me! I just package it differently to meet their buying and usage needs. In the Web, it's important that you come to understand your specialty (what you're REALLY good at) and your niche (who you MOST want to serve). Most folks have identified the subtle difference, which means that they've kinda assumed that the words specialty and niche were synonymous. Obviously, they are not. It's fine to have a number of specialties and a number of niches, even if it means having 2, 10 or even 50 websites or domains. Ah, that brings us to the next distinction...

3. Domain vs Website

A domain is like having your own ZIP CODE or vanity license plate, but on the Internet. topten.org is a domain name. ibm.com is a domain name. If you're going to have a real presence on the Internet, you'll want to get your own domain name, like greatcoach.com or marysue.com. Once you have your own domain name, youcan do lots of stuff like add autoresponders, email routers, and other fun stuff to help your visitors get the most out of your site and become customers faster. You get a domain name (in the U.S.) from a quasi-governmental agency called InterNIC. You can even go to their site to search and see if your domain name idea is available. The exact location is: http://rs.internic.net/cgi-bin/whois In order to actually "order" a domain name that is available, you have to go through an Internet Provider like webvalence.com or any of the other 10,000 internet providers. You pay two fees: one is a $50/year fee to InterNIC (tho you pay the first 2 years in advance, so it's $100 bucks up front), and a monthly fee to your Internet Provider to "host" or manage you domain name. (Yes, it's confusing, but that's how it works.) Most Internet Providers charge $50 a month or so to host your domain name, but that usually includes a basic website to. So, a website is the CONTENT (those HTML and GIF files!) that you put up on the Web, and you usually put up this content under your own domain name, although you can put your content under someone else's domain name, but that means you're a subset of their name, and it's not nearly as cool as having your own domain. It's worth it to get your own domain. You'll be a real world citizen! So, a website is the content and the domain is your address, like the website is your furniture and the domain is your street address. Make sense? Good! Because now we go to the next distinction...

4. Website vs Home Page

This one is a bit confusing. A website is like a book; a home page is either a one page summary of the book or the books table of contents. In other words, if you have a web page or two about yourself, with your picture, links, resume/services, etc. what you really have is a Home Page, which is a real "junior" website. When you start adding more pages full of content, information, ordering instructions, etc., it becomes a website. This because folks can DO something at your site, vs just read about YOU (which, of course, is totally fascinating, but there ARE nearly 6 billion people on this planet....) Most folks start with a Home Page and progress to a Website. It's an evolutionary process and quite fun. Also, the term Web Page (vs Home Page) refers to a single page on the web which may be your home page or just one page of a big Website. Speaking of getting big, here's our next distinction...

5. Search Engines vs Links

Search engines (like WebCrawler, Yahoo, HotBot, InfoSeek, Alta Vista) are like the card catalog at your local library. Basically, you can go to one of more of these search engines and type in a couple words that you're interested in and you'll quickly get back (within 10 seconds) a list of all the websites that have what you're looking for. Why are there so many search engines? Each ones searches a bit differently. Is there one mega search engine? Yes, kinda. It's called a meta seach engine and located at www.search.com. But most folks use www.hotbot.com or www.yahoo.com. Hotbot will give you back TONS of stuff; Yahoo is really well organized and you'll be able to find what you're looking for more easily. When you have a web address (called a URL), you can get yourself listed on any of the search engines by going to that search engine and following the instructions. Or, you can go to www.submit-it.com and be walked through a process of getting listed on about a dozen big search engines for free. Or you can pay them or www.webpromote.com $100-$500 for them to get you listed on LOTS of search engines, electronic yellow pages, etc. It's important to do this if you're "going for it." At least get a listing on Yahoo and via the submit-it.com service. So, what's a Link? A Link is what you call it when another WebSITE puts YOUR URL on their home page, so that visitors to their site can quickly link to your site. Cooperating companies or colleagues often do this; Ford and GM probably wouldn't! You can also put a link to another website on YOUR website, so that visitors to your site can go to another, related site. You usually don't have to ask to do this type of link. But, of course, you'll need to ask and convince the OTHER website to put a link from their site to yours. Links are really good and really make the Web a web. Search engines are great because they're like a really big yellow pages. Both are very important to have, but the first step is usually getting listed on a dozen search engines. Changing subjects for a minute, here's the next distinction...

6. Internet Presence Provider (IPP) vs Internet Service Provider (ISP)

This distinction is important to get, but easy. An ISP has lots of modems so its customers (you) can call a local number and patch in to the Internet. So, NETCOM, Pipeline, even AOL are ISPs in a sense. An IPP doesn't have a way for you to call in via your modem; you have to have an ISP to do that. However, both an ISP and an IPP have 24-hour a day, full time, dedicated connections to the Internet. This means that either an ISP or IPP can host your domain name (as discussed above). So, most ISPs are also IPPs. But IPPs are not ISPs because you can't call into the IPP via your modem. So, why the heck ARE there IPPs when it would appear that the ISP can do it all? First, because it's really easy for someone to become an IPP -- they need just a single line installed, a decent computer and some software and PRESTO! they can host domains and websites on the internet. An ISP, however, has to put in dozens/hundreds of phone lines, modems and other stuff to handle all their customers' needs to connect and get service. (Being an ISP is NOT pretty.) Why would someone work with an IPP to host their website if they could go through an ISP? Two reasons: service and customization. An IPP is designed to work with customers who want a website, not customers who just need a way to get on the Internet. The latter customer requires lots of attention. Secondly, an IPP is also a bit more of a consultant and can help you craft your website, not just host it. This is really important, because if you've ever called an ISP for web design advice, they'd probably laugh or refer you to a web designer and wish you well. So, does this mean that a person who wants both their own website AND a way to dial into the Internet would have both an ISP and an IPP. Yes, probably. It's still not very expensive, however, to have both. Figure $50 a month for the IPP and $20 a month for the IPP and you're all set! (AND. you have someone you can call to get help as you EXPAND your website. Remember, the IPPs have to work harder than the ISPs in order to keep your business. Also, we're seeing a trend now toward IPPs specializing to serve specific types of customers. For example, Class On Call is an IPP that serves the unique needs of trainers, coaches and educators. We've developed class listing/registration and program management software that (believe me) no other IPP or ISP has even thought of yet. Our customers NEED this level of programming and so they come to us. Feeling like an Internet Expert yet? Ok, now here are a couple of distinctions regarding file types...

7. GIF vs JPEG (or JPG)

A word processing file usually ends with .txt or .doc. This means that the computer file is full of text. A web page ends in either .html or .htm. This means that it's a text file with lots of codes in it so that fonts, layouts and graphics "look" right on the visitors web browser, like Netscape or AOL. Most Web pages end in .htm or .html. You create these HTML pages usually a special software like PageMill, or Front Page or HOTMETAL or any of a dozen similar software applications for the Mac or PC. These are called HTML Editors and they are basically just souped up word processing programs, like MS Word or WordPerfect. In fact, MS Word and WordPerfect are now adding in the special codes that the HTML editors use so can will be able to create HTML pages right from your MS Word program and have them come out really nice and be super easy to do. OK, so what's a GIF or JPG file? Well, just text file end in .doc or .txt, and HTML files end in .htm or .html, files that contain a photo, logo or illustration usually end in .gif or .jpg. GIF and JPG files are recognized by the web browsers which allows your picture or logo to appear on the screen, next to the text in your HTML files. All web browsers read/recognize both .gif and .jpg files. Usually, photographs are best created as .jpg files because you can make the files pretty small which means that they'll download a lot faster. Logos or special type faces are saved as GIF files. Just because. How do you "save" or create a GIF or JPG file? One of two ways. First by taking an already existing picture or printed out logo or illustration and slapping it on a scanner which is basically a souped up copy machine that kicks out a computer file instead of a piece of paper. When you can something, you can choose to save it as a .gif or .jpg file (or other formats, too). Really simple. Or, if you want to create a logo in your own computer using a draw program like Illustrator, Canvas, Claris Works or other, you just save the drawing/logo as a .gif or .jpg file. Easy. Note: Some graphics programs can save what you just created as a .gif or .jpg file. All they can do is save it as a PICT or TIFF file. But you can get a free ware/share ware file converter software what converts from a PICT or TIFF to a .gif or .jpg file. It's an extra step, but it works fine. OK, now that you know how to create graphics files, how the heck do you get these file (and any html files your created) from YOUR computer to the computer of your ISP or IPP? Ah, too easy, as you'll see in our next distinction...

8. FTPing vs Attaching a file to an email

OK, so you've created a website on your computer, but now you want to get the files over to the computer of your ISP or IPP, whose computer is connected to the internet 24 hours a day. There are 3 ways to do this. First, you could save all of your html and gif/jpg files on a diskette and US Mail them to your ISP or IPP. (They won't like this, but they'll probably still let you.) Or, you can address a regular email to the webmaster over at your ISP or IPP and attach all of your html and gif files to this email. What the webmaster would do then when he/she receives all of these attache files is to simply move them from his/her computer over the computer that stores/hosts all of the customer's websites/pages. Takes about 5 minutes for the webmaster to do this. However, MOST ISPs/IPPs really want you to transfer your files yourself into the special area they've created for you on their computer. In order to get your files to go right into the exact right place on their computer, you use a special FTP software program that gets you inside their big computer and helps you to zero in on the right directory or folder that was created just for you to put all of your files in. This 'transfer' software is usually free and is called FTP (PC) or Fetch (mac). works like a charm and your web pages are IMMEDIATELY available to anyone wanting to visit your website. So, you'd transfer these files over via FTP when first creating your site, but also you'll be transferring new files or just the files that you've updated. FYI, you'll have a mirror of your website, on YOUR computer, given that you're just copying these HTML and GIF files from your computer to the ISPs/IPPs computer. Netscape lets you look at and navigate through the HTML/GIF files on YOUR computer whenever you want to. You needn't be online. This way, you can check out how your website will look to others before you transfer the files over to the ISP/IPP. (The command for this in Netscape is Open File. The hypertext links worth the same online or off. Wow, think of what you can do now! Ok, so now you want to know how to make your site interactive, right? (Yes, you do...) Here's a distinction that will help...

9. CGI vs Hypertext Link

You know how you can just tap highlighted words when you're surfing and go easily from one page or one website to the next? This is possible because of something called hypertext links. Basically, it's magic. But, all it does is move you from one page to the next, so it's kinda interactive but not really. What if you wanted to create a website that let a visitor take a quiz, or automatically/immediately sign up for a free e-newsletter subscription, or order a product or add stuff to your website, like we do here at Top Ten Lists? Ah, how, you're getting into the land of CGI programming, formerly the home of geeks and goblins. But now, CGI programming is getting a pretty/user-friendly front end/user interface. In any case, some type of interactivity and 'processing' (like taking a quiz on line and getting your score immediately) is pretty tricky. Our Top Ten List setup took scores of hours of CGI programming by Marty Crouch. So, you can do almost anything with CGI programming, depending on your budget! A good CGI programmer has access to already-created CGI scripts that he/she can simply adapt/customize to meet your needs, thus saving time and expense. And, there's a new breed of this user friendly CGI programs which work with a database by File Maker Pro or Oracle. The point here is that you can do almost anything you want, via CGI programming. Speaking of doing anything you want, here's our final distinction and it's a biggee....

10. 1 billion customers vs 100 customers

It's being said that over 1 billion folks will be connected to the Internet by the year 2000. Given that you can be accessed by that many folks, does it make sense to merely put up on the web what you current offer in terms of product or service, or does it make sense to look at these 1 billion folks and find a way to serve them. Another way to ask the question is, "How could I reinvent/change my product/service so that it would appear to 1 billion customers worldwide?" Big question, worth asking and delving into. You may find yourself substantially changing what you offer or how you deliver it. Or, you may get into an entirely different business, given the potential for new customers at virtually not marketing expense. In any case, it should expand your thinking and that should lead to more money if that's your goal. Keep thinking on how to serve 1 billion people and I'm pretty sure you'll make plenty of money.

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