Designing Your Own Home Page

DESIGNING YOUR OWN HOME PAGES
&
HOW TO GET TRAFFIC TO YOUR SITE

[GuestBooks] [WebCounters] [WebTrackers]
[Alternative URLs] [Miscellaneous Additions & Utilities]
[Free Home Pages]

GuestBooks

The following sites allow you to create your own guest books. Sign up now!

Lpage	Dreambook	Piett
Guestbook Central	Internet Want Ads Guestbook

Web Counters

Web counters (and being listed on search engines) are probably the most essential addition to any serious web site as they will tell you how many visitors you have had and lets face it, you could have the world's greatest website in your opinion but if no one visits it, then it is rather a waste of time.

On the other hand, some counters are so slow to load they can miss your visitors as they have clicked on to another page before they have been counted. I have tried to list a 'good' selection below but what suits you best, will probably be found out by 'trial and error'.

Personal experience has found, through using a variety of options that the ones which do not include a banner along with the counter are best and fastest but again this very much depends on their server and how much in demand they are.

Nedstat	Excellent counter and tracker combined and its fast and accurate ! This one does not show the figures but a small icon on your page. After you sign up for the free counter, return to the index page and sign up for the free tracker. To see what it records, click on the icon below.
LE FastCounter	An offering from Link Exchange, so it should be good.
All Star's Starcounter	Easy to set up, with variety of digit displays to choose from. Most importantly, it does not display advertising along with the numbers.
PR Tracker	Counter and tracker combined.
Free Counters	Well thought off, basic counter
Pagecount	A good reliable service but you also display a banner
Sports Counters	From Pagecount, details as above but different URL.
Cyberblits	I know nothing about this one. If you try it, let me know please.
J Count	Java based animated counter
Sprynet Counter	They say it will be available again shortly)
Vortex Counter	Another to choose from !
FXWeb Counter	Apparently this one is fast and reliable.
Webcounter	Also gives basic details about your visitors.
I Count	Reliable and quite fast. This home page uses ICount
X-plosion Counter	Displays small supplier logo
Link Korea	Gives option to add a date and clock too.
Count4All	Lots of styles to choose from
Homepage Counter + Clock	Can only try it and see if it suits you.
Hit Counter	Simple and straightforward
Russian Counter	??
Aaddzz	Another that offers many styles.
Page Doctor	Pagedoctor offer lots of styles of counter and other extras like free graphics etc.
Pandawa	Lots of styles to chose from and can include a clock.
Cam's Dynamic Counter Applet	This is a counter with a nice twist. When someone enters your site, the counter increments as they view.
WebRight free Counter!	Lots of styles to choose from.

Web Trackers

After adding the necessary supplied code to a web page, the tracker will then record some or all of the details below for each visitor you then have to that page -

The visitor's ISP, how that visitor got to your page i.e. the referral page or search engine etc that got them to your site, the visitor's operating system (windows 95 etc), the country of origin, the time of the visit etc etc.

Net-Trak	Net-Trak is in my opinion the best tracker available and although it is not free, it only takes a one off payment of 5 US dollars to register. The information collected is the most comprehensive & the service is very reliable and fast. It offers amongst other things the last 100 hosts and last 100 referrer URLs which in my opinion is the most important thing from a tracker.
Nedstat	Excellent counter and tracker combined and its fast and accurate !
ShowStat	ShowStat Tracker. This is a relatively new service.
Web Tracker
Websidestory	Also has listing for top 1000 sites. This home page uses WebsideStory (HitBox) as its tracker.

Free Alternative URL's.

For many of us, this is an absolute essential for our website. As a practical example take this site. The actual supplied URL you would have to type in if you were accessing it that way would be :-

http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/babbage/125/

and I personally think that is far too long to expect anyone to type in when there is an easier option. If I join the 'come.to' service my optional URL which is far easier to type in and remember will be :-

http://surf.to/anujcool

I think you will agree that this is a far more favourable option. HOWEVER, one word of advice ---- If you are submitting your website to search engines, always use your longer ISP URL because some search engines use a spider to automatically search your site and if you use your shortened URL then the spider will report an error and not record any of your pages !

Come.To Service	Alternative URLs - come.to, surf.to, travel.to
VisitWeb	Alternative URL - http://visitweb.com/********
VisitWeb	Alternative URL - http://******.base.org

Miscellaneous Additions and Utilities.

World Travel	An unusual addition for your website. If you sign up, you can then add a classified ads page. Options are available for different countries etc.
Scorecheck	Will search to see where your URL is on Search Engines.
Oaknet Publishing	This is an auto mail responder which is excellent if you get lots of e-mail.
HTML Checker	This examines your website for bad links and HTML.
Bad Link(s) ?	Submit your URL and e-mail address and they will respond by e-mail with errors on your page.
Andatech	Helps to make animated banners.
Creative Connectivity	Choose from pre-created backgrounds then enter the text on your banner.
Make A Banner	A simple system for making a banner.
Did-It	Searches, then notifies you which Search Engines have indexed your URL.