In my travels to weekly newspaper web sites, I've noticed a few sites have forgotten to change the year in their dates. Most haven't yet changed the Copyright© notice to 1999 and some have forgotten to change the year for the current issue so that it looks like the current issue is a year old. In the same vein, weekly newspapers should consider putting a line on the home page that alerts readers to when the web site is updated (i.e., "Updated every Wednesday" if it is only updated once a week). If you update whenever there is breaking news, be sure to change the date then, too. Another effective service is to allow users to register to be notified by e-mail when the site is updated. E-mail software allows you to create an address book that will automatically send an e-mail update notice to all of the registered users with just one click. All you have to do is add the e-mail addresses when users register and change the e-mail notice to reflect the update.
Don't forget to publicize your online publishing efforts through offline methods such as print ads in your newspaper, your stationery, any outdoor advertising or broadcast advertising you do, or on merchandise you sell. While most readers find web sites through search engines, links on other sites or from friends, many do find web sites through offline methods, as well. This also goes back to your selection of a domain name -- make sure it's easy to remember so that a motorist passing your domain name on a billboard or sign can easily remember what to type in when he or she gets home or back to the office.
If you've developed a popular web site, chances are good that other sites will want to link to it. Most will simply point a link to a page on your site. Others, however, will frame your site inside their site to make your content look like their content. Recently, we experienced this when a local TV station placed links to our beach cams on its home page. Instead of just linking to us, though, the TV site's webmaster framed our live web cam pictures on his home page so that visitors to the TV site would see our beach pictures as they were updated (every 2 minutes). Not only did the TV station steal our work, it also stole our bandwidth by linking directly to the images on our server! Regularly check your referrer logs to see who is linking to you and then check those sites to be sure they are linking to you properly.
The Smart Browsing technology employed by Netscape in Version 4.x offers a potentially significant marketing tool for weekly newspapers. If neither you nor anyone else has registered your community's name as a domain name, you should seriously consider doing so. Why? Before Netscape's Smart Browser, you had to enter an exact domain name into the Open Location dialog box to go to a site. Now, however, Netscape automatically attempts to match any keyword(s) a user enters into the Open Location dialogue box with a domain name matching the keyword(s). That means a user who enters "ocean view delaware" or "Ocean View Delaware" would automatically be carried to "oceanviewdelaware.com" if that domain name has been registered. Otherwise, Netscape calls up the Excite search engine to perform a search for that term. Obviously, in highly competitive markets, owning the domain names of the local communities will provide a distinct marketing advantage to the name owners. Our recommendation: At just $35 a year apiece, register as many variations of your town's name and nicknames as a domain name as possible. Even if you don't use them all immediately, at least no one else will be able to gain an upper hand on you.
Making staff members' Bylines e-mailable is a great way to make communication between your staff and readers more conducive. Just add the staff member's e-mail address to the Byline and you will have a measure of interactivity that is impossible to match in your print publication.
Generating high quality photos while maintaining small image sizes can be best achieved by scanning in your image at a higher resolution, touching it up, and then resizing it to a smaller resolution. So, scan your image in at 300 dpi, do your touchup, and then save it as a JPEG file at 72 dpi. Except for special circumstances, the image size shouldn't be more than 25-30K. Using this method, you can often produce clear images smaller than 20K in size.
One of the great resources for weekly newspapers whose online publishing budgets don't include custom CGI applications is the CGI Resource Index. The CGI Resource includes links to download pages for hundreds of CGI scripts that will add interactivity, utility and functionality to your site. You will find everything from Counters to Discussion Forum to Chat to Shopping Cart and Classified scripts. Many of the scripts are free, and the ones that cost money are generally available for less than $200.
With all of the talk about how privacy is the No. 1 concern of Internet users, I continue to be amazed by the number of weekly newspapers that set up online forms to accept credit card payments that are not on secure servers. If you really care about your readers' privacy, never, ever ask them to send credit card information to you without a secure server. Secure servers are not difficult to set up or expensive and they will show readers your determination to protect their privacy.
Many weekly newspapers do not have their own domain names yet. Instead, they piggyback on another web site's domain name. This is puzzling considering that registering your own domain name can dramatically increase your web site's visibility and prestige for a small registration fee.
Your own domain name will be much easier for readers to remember when they sit down at their computers. Which of these web addresses would be easier for your readers to remember?
- http://www.otherdomain.com/yourpaper
- http://www.yourpaper.com
Keep in mind, too, that smart browsers such as Netscape allow users to merely type in the "yourpaper" part of your domain name to retrieve your home page.
In addition, your own domain name is much better suited to offline promotions as it can be utilized on a coffee mug, t-shirt or cap as "yourpaper.com". That will fit on almost any type of merchandise and will certainly fit much easier than "http://www.otherdomain.com/yourpaper".
Finally, search engines are more receptive to a unique domain name than to URLs from another domain name, and the use of your own domain name shows that you are serious about your web efforts.
Copyright© 1998-1999 Cyber Weekly Consulting