Web Helper

Google ~ Open Directory Project ~ Hotbot ~ Dogpile ~ Mamma ~ Ask.com ~ Alta Vista

The webmaster tools above were gleaned from years of searching the 'Net in desperation, looking for ways to teach myself about website publishing. If you've ever been curious about web authoring, but were afraid to try it, the sites above can be a great help. Read about my own webmaster's journey, below...

How Southern Muse began...
I started my page building years ago. My first site was Bugbones. It's still there, but I never did very much with it. I've written a blog (above, Glimmers of the Stone Age, humorously detailing the trials and tribulation of page design, in the eyes of a non-techie. Technological problems were always standing in my way: crashes, software upgrades that left me high and dry, changing HTML standards... the learning curve was terrible! Bugbones was supposed to be purely for fun! I do thank Angelfire and their WebMonkey tutorials for starting me off on the right foot, though. I learned basic HTML code there. Their FTP was easy to use, and their directory structure was easy at first. (Later, Angelfire's upgrade would nearly do me in! My browser simply wouldn't support their new templates.) As time went on, their ad requirements became aggressive, too. I wanted an ad-free site. Going ad-free was a big step for me. It meant buying a dot-com. I wanted my own name, no doubt about it. Southern Muse isn't a money maker, but for what it's worth, it's my presence on the Web.

Page design continues to be a learning experience for me. I've had to read, learn code, research, adapt, and constantly struggle to keep up. I've had to beg help from many on-line resources. My favorite, above all, is Google. So far, Google's method has been to find out what users really need, and provide it at a free or reasonable cost. You can't beat that! Everyone uses Google's beautiful search engine, of course. But webmasters have to be indepted to Google for Adsense (Google's way of helping you monetize your page); Picasa (free, easy, interactive photo albums); interactive maps that can be added to your page (Google Earth); and now, Blogger (free publishing via easy-to-use blogs). My only fear is that Google seems to have "backslid" slightly, regarding their admirable "Do no evil" philosophy. So far, many of their changes are optional. They now let you choose to display gaudy, assertive image ads instead of quietly dignified text ads, for instance. They seem to break their own Adsense policies by allowing ads on parked domains ~ though I have to wonder if that's not an interim measure, to protect themselves from further lawsuits from those who sign up between now and the time that they have their headaches worked out in court. Let's hope that's the case, and that the Internet will not become a world-wide Google-ad farm!

Another site that helped me over the years was HTMLjalfrezi. They had well-indexed, in-depth tutorials on almost anything a page designer needed to know. Their tutorials were fairly straightforward and provided good examples. The Web is changing and it's easy for a page to become obsolete ~ not just technologically, but socially. In today's traffic-choked, progressively more commercial environment, Southern Muse seems to be falling by the wayside. It's barely viable, in any sense: technological (some of the new w3c standards are beyond me); commercially (I didn't exactly pick a money-making theme, with my art and traditional stories); or socially (I have to borrow my shareable widgets, thanks; don't have the know-how to deliver them from my own domain). I do plan to continue my website publishing. I'll trim, tweak and hone my site ~ seek out new tools and technologies. Over the years, I've gathered quite a few handy web helpers. It is with gratitude that I present these sites that have been so helpful to me. Thanks!


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Web Helper: Search and Page-Building Tools