Write your own web site!

by Dave Watterson & Debbie Slater

Create pages of pictures and text on your computer, send them to space reserved for you on your Internet Provider's computers which are always on and always connected to the net. Switch off your computer. Anyone on the Internet will still be able to read your pages.

If you have access to the Internet your supplier (BT, Virgin, freeserve, AOL etc) usually gives some free space on their machines where you can put up a web site. If not go to www.brinkster.com and sign up for their free webspace. There are many others who offer free space but most pop up annoying adverts when people visit your site.

What your ISP (Internet Service Provider) gives you may be known as "freespace" or "home pages" … and you can put whatever you want there in the way of words, pictures, links, sounds etc. so long as they are within the law and do not break copyright. The only catch is that your page must be in HTML format - easy and fun to learn - but for a simple site you can avoid even that technicality (see below). If you don't fancy doing it yourself maybe one or more society members could set up and run your web site, enjoy doing it and become fresh committee fodder!

What You Need: some time, no money!

In most cases web site space is provided free by the company which links you to the net. It does take a little time to prepare the pages of information on your site but the tools to do so need not cost a penny. In fact with a Windows machine you can:

• write a website in Word and "Save As..." HTML document; prepare pictures and logos in Paint and send files from your computer to your ISP's one using Internet Explorer.

But for more than the simplest websites it is helpful to have a few special tools:

• a dedicated web design program - we suggest Coffee Cup.
• an image manipulator - we suggest Irfan View.
• a file transfer program - we suggest Ipswitch WS_FTP.

We suggest these programs because they are all free for personal use ... and can be downloaded from the Internet. Most shareware websites will have them.  Our favourite is www.tucows.com but try a search on Google to find many more.

In most cases the web site space is provided free by the company which links you to the net. If yours is an exception go to www.brinkster.com and sign up for their free webspace. There are many others who offer free space but most pop up annoying adverts when people visit your site. It does take some time and effort to prepare the pages of information on your site but the tools to do so need not cost a penny.

What would you say on your site?

1. Decide who your ideal reader is and write for her/him.
2. Get all your main info on the first page: venue, usual meeting night and time, subscription costs and an email address to contact. Make links to other pages with details like your programme, list of the committee, map etc. Be friendly rather than formal. Keep the graphics few and small. Some readers may not be familiar with the Internet ... explain if they need to scroll to see the whole page or to click a link. The net is world wide so indicate which country your town/village is in. Now that Satellite Navigation and GPS systems are commoner try to include the postal code for your venue.
3. Don't be paranoid, but think before listing anyone's name and address - it is often better to list a name and email address. Set up a special email address just for film society enquiries - use www.hotmail.com or www.yahoo.com. Any publicly visible email address will be found by advertisers who send junk mail (known as "spam") to that address.

Links

Add lots of useful links to other web sites. If you can persuade them to link back to yours it will give you a higher ranking on many search engines thus making it easier for people to find you.

If your BFFS Group has a site do link to that.

Always link to:

• the official BFFS site (www.bffs.org.uk/).

Others worth linking to are:

• The Internet Movie Database (www.uk.imdb.com)
• British Film Institute (www.bfi.org.uk)
• IAC - The Film & Video Institute - for film makers who find your pages (www.theiac.org.uk)

• Official movie sites for films in your programme (find those in the Internet Movie Database).

Websites come and go, so do check your links regularly. There are programs which can do much of the work for you automatically, we like xenu.exe which is free from the usual shareware websites.

Points To Watch

Your free webspace will have an address like http://freespace.virgin.net/debbie.slater/FrontPage.htm but you can get a simpler address by buying a domain name and become: www.boafs.org.uk for example. Lots of companies offer this service at a range of prices. We happen to like http://oneandone.co.uk and www.lowcostnames.co.uk. These companies often allow you to publish an email address like info@www.boafs.org.uk and arrange that any mail which is sent to that address is automatically forwarded to one your own regular mailboxes.

Note that some parts of the Internet are fussy about the case of words: they see Boafs and boafs as different addresses.

If you have information which dates (e.g. "Our next show is ...") be sure to update it.

Promote Your website

When your website is up, make sure people know about it. Add the address to all your leaflets, posters, even membership cards. Ask members to add it to the "signature" lines of their emails so that every message they send spreads the word. Show a slide with the address on screen at every show.

Make sure Internet search engines can find it.

• Submit your site's address to your favourite search engines - check their front pages for details of how to do this.
• Add META tags with keywords and descriptions to each web page.(More on META tags below.)

Keep pictures to the gif or jpg formats, keep them small so they download quickly and consider using a cheap service such as GifWizard which shrinks them by up to 50%.

Encourage any sites to which you link to reciprocate. There is little point asking film studios to do this but if you have links to local photographic groups, video makers, local history groups etc. they should respond in kind.

Content

When your site becomes more than a simple "electronic poster" you may want to find materials like film reviews and pictures to add to it. Most of these will be copyright so do not use them without permission. (Remember that anything on the Internet can be seen world-wide.)

As a film society you should register with www.image.net to get film promotion material. In some cases www.nostalgia.com has agreed to the free use of small images of their posters on film society web pages. The Google Search Engine (www.google.com) has a good Image searching tool.

The major newspapers of the UK and USA usually have excellent film reviews from which you might adapt your own notes. There are masses of review sites on the net. Among our favourites are: www.rottentomatoes.com and www.fwfr.com (four word film reviews) which despite their names are often insightful.

Going Further

• Keep pictures to the jpg format and keep them small so they download quickly.
• Buy a few issues of a magazine like .NET (Future Publishing, Bath) which is packed with ideas and tutorials for all levels of web skill.
• When you see a site you like click on the View menu and choose Source. That shows the code for the page and you can see how they did it.
• Add lots of useful links to other web sites. That makes your site more interesting and useful. Encourage other people to link to you - the more links there are the easier people will find you.

Nasties

Every computer should be protected by an up-to-date anti-virus program. If you do not have one, get one and keep it up to date. If you do have one make sure it is up-to-date and actually running!

META Tags ... well worth worrying about

We want to keep these notes non-technical but one issue is worth a look. Each web page is a set of instructions to the computer. Your web editor (or a simple program like Windows Notepad) will show you the code as well as what the surfers see.

Near the start of each page will be a section like:

<HEAD>

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=windows-1252">

<META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="Microsoft Word 97">

<TITLE>Anytown Film Society</TITLE>

</HEAD>

You should add two lines:

<HEAD>

<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="film society filmsoc fs club cine film flim fillum movie Somerset, Anytown, OutlyingVillage, AA3 2HG, foreign, arthouse flicks">

<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Anytown Film Society - where the world's cinema comes to Somerset, UK. Venue, programme, membership details.">

</HEAD>

The description is what will appear in some Search Engines when they list your site. The keywords are those by which many Search Engines will identify you. In this case if someone searched for "flim" and "anytown" they would see your website on the list. List every suitable keyword you can think of and include common mistypes too.

Picture Sizes

Make sure any picture you use is the size you want it to appear on screen. You can put a large picture on your website and instruct everyone's browser to show it small ... but it takes a long time to send a large picture so your page will be slow to appear. Often you will need to shrink a picture. In Irfan View use the Image menu and choose Resize/Resample to reduce a picture. Other picture editors have similar options.

Page Design

We could write a book about web page design ... but lots of other people have already done so. Practically speaking: design for a screen size of 1024x768 pixels (a pixel is a picture cell on the grid of light which makes up your screen). That is the commonest size and unlikely to upset anyone. Stick to the safe web colours which any computer can show (look them up in a search engine) and the two type fonts most computers have: Arial and Times New Roman. Keep the words to a minimum. Don't be afraid to use space - less often is more.