Part 2 : Tools and Learning

What software do you use to manage your sites?

Having learnt all aspects of web designing the hard way, I look upon most software programs as luxuries. I design on a text editor, the lowly Notepad that comes bundled free with Win9x. Today I prefer to layout the page in a WYSIWYG editor (my choice is Macromedia Dreamweaver) but still do fine-tuning with Notepad.

For FTP, I used Kermit for long, then the UNIX shell which came bundled along with my ISP account. Only recently have I shifted over to WS-FTP.

For graphics, I use PaintShop Pro because my needs are very simple. For higher end graphics needs, I outsource to someone with special expertise. To animate GIFs, I use GIF Construction Set from Alchemy Mindworks.

I prefer MSIE as my browser, but check out pages on Netscape Communicator too.

What web hosting arrangement do you have?

My sites are hosted on three different servers. I have a virtual server account which offers me web space (around 25MB is enough for my needs), high speed connection to the Web, multiple POP email accounts, FTP and Telnet access, unlimited autoresponders, and *unlimited* (read high volume) daily data transfer. As and when I need some new features or add-ons, I order them from the same host, or rarely change hosts (done it just once, and it was a near-disaster!).

And what are the most successful traffic-building techniques for your sites?

There isn't any one. Many in concert have worked. Search engine positioning was helpful at one phase. Getting listed in specialist directories worked. Signature files on my emails sent to different forums, and on all outgoing email drew some visitors to the site. My e-zine periodically attracts readers to my websites. There are many more, but these have been the top techniques in my experience.

Once you decided to "go online", how did you go about learning the skills necessary to produce, manage and promote a website? What were the most useful learning techniques or resources?

I learnt EVERYTHING online. From free resources, tutorials, guides, ezines - and a few carefully chosen books. Because, I'd decided right at the beginning that I wasn't going to LOSE money on the web. The best technique - try everything out yourself - ONCE. Then track your performance, and decide if it should be repeated.

The most useful resources - discussion groups, ezines (email newsletters) and a few select books (they are often outdated by the time they get to press). Most of them are free or inexpensive.

Today with the proliferation of such free sites and services, some of which aren't much use, I'd rather begin by identifying and joining the best service that would COLLATE such information for me, and teach me how to go about acquiring and growing such skills - rather than hunt down the best teaching site for each specific topic.

And looking back, would you have gone about things differently?

Not really, no. I've made mistakes and learnt from them. Sure, I'd have loved to never have made mistakes. But then, as I watch my baby girl learn to walk, I realize that without falling down she'd never walk to the other end of the room!

Experience comes from wisdom. Wisdom comes from bad experience.