For example, a lot of my sites have to do with lung disease and sleep medicine. Accordingly, the Google-placed ads for my home page Lakesidepress.com are apt to sell equipment for lung disease or sleep apnea. Notice that this home page has a banner ad at the top and bottom of the page, and a rectangular ad at the bottom of the left hand column. However, my Golf Index has, appropriately, ads just for golf stuff (a top banner ad and two vertical ads in left column). If you have a popular site, or lots of sites, the cents-for-clicks amount can add up. You won’t become rich from Google-placed ads (well, you might, but unlikely) but you will receive something for your efforts.

To use Google-placed ads you must control your site, which generally means you are paying a service to host your web pages. Controlling your site means you place the ads where you want them; you can’t specify exactly what ads will appear but you can eliminate areas objectionble to you (e.g., no liquor ads or cigarette ads, etc.) You will likely NOT be able to use Google-placed ads if you are using a free web server — in that case, it is more likely the service is already placing their ads on your site when and where they want, and reaping all the benefits (that’s what happens if you have “free” web hosting).

To use Google-placed ads and generate income:

1) Have a web site or web sites that you control, i.e., a) you are paying for web hosting, and b) you can alter the code at will and upload a revised web page whenever you want.
2) Go to Google Adsense. Submit your websitesite URL as directed. MAKE SURE IT CONTAINS VALID CONTENT. Valid content doesn’t mean it’s true or false, only that there is real content and not just a bunch of links or a family photo album. If there is no valid content the site may not be accepted for the AdSense program. Also, note that you have to agree not to include incentives to click on the ads AND that there is no pornographic content. An absolute no-no is that you don’t click on the ads yourself; multiple clicks from any single computer (tracked by the ISP address), such as a relative’s, will be a red flag and could result in being kicked out of the AdSense program. You will also be asked to provide a bank account where the payments can be direct desposited.
3) Once accepted in the program, choose the ad type you wish from their extensive menu; this will generate the JavaScript code for the ad. Spend some time looking at all the options, which include color, shape and size.
4) Copy the Javascript code and place it in your web page as directed by Google. Generally you can place three ads per web site.
5) Upload the webpage to your server. You will quickly appreciate that (in most cases) the ads are relevant to your site’s content.
6) After a month or so, Google will email you that a payment has been made to your account.
7) An option is to sign on to Google Analytics, so you can track how many people visit your site.
8) Maintain your website(s) so that it stays fresh and continues to attract users. With both Google Analytics and the monthly income stream, you can trend the popularity of your web site.

The rest of this blog is about Option 4.

HTML is the ‘presentation part’ of a web page. It stands for hypertext markup language. HTML allows you to present text, pictures and graphics when your web page “loads” in the user’s browser. Everything presented by HTML resides between tags, each tag enclosed within brackets. See W3schools Tutorial on HTML and
About.com’s “What is HTML?”. In my home page www.lakesidepress.com, all the text is coded in HTML. The words appear because they are surrounded by HTML tags.

CSS is the ‘styling’ part of a web page. It stands for cascading style sheets, and is the way to show a myriad of style features such as font shape and size, font color, background color and images, etc. “Cascading” refers to the fact that you can place the style code “in-line” (right next to the text), in the header section of the web page, or in a separate file (good when you want the same style for multiple web pages). The style ‘cacades down’, with the code closest to the object being styled taking precedence. See W3schools Tutorial on CSS and About.com’s “What is CSS?”.

Note that you can actually style using just HTML, but the advantage of CSS is that you can style just once and have it apply to every similar element throughout the web page, e.g., every headline, or every paragraph. Then if you want to change, say, a dozen headlines and a dozen paragraphs from courier font to arial font, or from black type to blue type, then you would have to change it just once. In www.lakesidepress.com all the styling (text font, size, color) is coded with CSS.
In my demonstration web site on the Gettysburg Address I show the speech in two ways: first in plain HTML and next with HTML and CSS.

Using HTML and CSS you can build very sophisticated web sites. If you want to spruce up your sites by adding ‘interactivity’ then you should also learn some JavaScript. JavaScript is a programming tool that allows you to add “scripts” to your web site that can do all sorts of nifty things. When you see a Google ad on any web site, that’s JavaScript. When you ‘mouseover’ a picture and a new picture or text instantly appears, that’s JavaScript. When you see a pop up box after you hit a key stroke, that’s JavaScript. See W3schools Tutorial on javascript and About.com’s “Javascript 101. In www.lakesidepress.com the code that makes text appears when you ‘mouseover’ an image in the main panel (and disappear when the mouse moves away) is JavaScript. Also, the google ads that you see top and bottom of the page are coded via JavaScript.

You don’t need JavaScript to build web sites, but it’s a third leg for designing sophisticated, compelling sites. Think of HTML, CSS and JavaScript as the foundation for most web sites. They are the tools of both amateurs AND professionals. Of course professionals use many more tools, such as server side programming (e.g., asp.net, PHP). But if you’re just starting out and want to learn to control your own web sites, learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript.

Where to begin?

1) Free web sites. There’s lots of free information out there. Links to web sites from W3C schools and About.com are provided above, but in my opinion these are not good for novices. There is no or minimal feedback, and it’s sometimes hard to distinguish all the ads from the text. I think they are more for presenting ads than to provide useful or lasting instruction. I would use these as reference and refresher tools, not as basic learning methods.
2) Books. There are countless (well, at least hundreds) of books on web design, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I would use them as a reference or refresher rather than as a primary learning tool. One I use is HTML and CSS for Dummies.
3) On line learning that you pay for. This is a good way to start; lessons are likely to be well thought out and there is feedback from the instructor. I recommend the web design courses at
ed2go as reasonably priced and effective (if you study the lessons and do the homework). “Intro to HTML & CSS” and “Intermediate HTML and CSS” are excellent. At this time there is no “JavaScript” course at ed2go.
4) Classroom courses. This is probably the best route. Courses are offered at thousands of local colleges all over the country. They are more expensive and time consuming than #2, but are apt to more effective, if for no other reason than you will spend more time not only studying the material, but interacting with the teacher and other students. Search the catalogue offerings of your local or community college(s) and you will find these courses in abundance. In addition to HTML, CSS and Javascript, look for “Web Design” courses. NOTE. If you are a rank beginniner, you must learn HTML first, then CSS, and only then JavaScript. Do not attempt JavaScript before learning some HTML and CSS.

1. Find a friend or relative who loves you or owes you a favor AND knows how to design web sites. I don’t recommend this method because the web site require frequent revisions and maintenance, and at some point either party may feel compelled to call it quits — a half-finished or poorly maintained web site can be worse than none at all.
2. Hire a professional. This is great if you have the money, but it can be very expensive. However, this is the way to go if you plan a commercial or for-profit site, or even a professional-looking site for a non-profit organization. (If you just want to sell occasional items use eBay). Commercial sites are very sophisticated, and use ‘server-side’ programming that takes eons to learn. Don’t even think of doing this yourself.
3. Learn WordPress, which allows you to develop professional-quality web sites (and blogs) without knowing any coding. No matter what you may hear from others, there is a large learning curve for WordPress — figure at least 20-30 hours to get going. However, this is less than if you do it all your own, from scratch. For learning WordPress I recommend you take an introductory course, such as the 12-week on-line course offered at ed2go.com.
4. Learn basic coding and develop your own web site from scratch or by building from a standard template. There are many free web site templates on the internet, and others for which you pay a fee. However, even if you modify a pre-existing template, you will need to know some coding to convert it into what you want. (Note: if you sign up for any template that advertises they will do everything for you and you don’t need to know coding, you are really at option 2 — likely to prove expensive in the long run, or else sacrifice flexibility.) Don’t even think of using a free template unless you know basic coding. I chose not to use any templates, and built all my web sites from scratch, but recognize this is probably not the best way for most people. Nonetheless, even if you choose option 1, 2 or 3, knowing some web design coding will help you immensely to tweak other people’s designs (including WordPress.). For this option you basically should learn two types of coding:
a. html, or hypertext markup language, and
b. CSS, or cascading style sheets.

For examples of how coding works to effect web page design, see
html and css for the Declaration of Independence, and
html and css for the Gettysburg Address

Each of these web sites shows the same text twice: first without any styling, and then with html and CSS coding for font shape & size, background color and other features.

To learn html and CSS, it’s best to take a course, like the ones offered at ed2go.com. Think of coding as a new language. The more you practice by writing code the better you’ll become. There is one aspect of web design that helps immensely — instant feedback. You can quickly see if what you coded has the desired result within your own browser. While there are lots of good instruction books on CSS and HTML, I don’t think you can learn coding solely from a book; they should be used more as a reference. Two recommended texts are:

HTML, XHTML and CSS for Dummies

Sam’s Teach Yourself HTML and CSS

If learning coding is your goal, some type of instruction (either on-line or in the classroom) is most helpful.

After you become proficient in HTML and CSS, the next logical step to spruce up your web site is javacscript, which I will tackle in a later blog.

What does “uploading” a whole book entail? First, I had to retrieve the Word file of the text, which the publisher (Author House) kindly sent me. (I still have print copies of the book but somehow lost the original digital file – a warning perhaps not to rely too much on digital storage. But that’s for another day).

Next I had two options. Convert the Word file to HTML or to an Adobe pdf file (pdf stands for portable document format). The latter is much better when you are dealing with lots of text and no intra-text hyperlinks. When I converted the Word file to HTML (a simple command in the “save as” function of Word), the result was tons of repetitive and complicated code whose main function was to preserve the formatting.

Even with all the html coding there is no guarantee that the formatting (margins, pagination, etc.) would come out intact in all browsers; anyone who does web design knows that the same page can look very different in different browsers. In contrast, pdf files look exactly like the original, formatting and all. (The only problem encountered is that the resulting pdf file of the entire book = almost 2 mb, so I divided the book into two parts for easier loading.)

Next I had to redesign the web page that links to the pdf files. My old home page (for just parts of the book) was based on html files, so a total redesign was needed. I used an existing template (the one for my Fictitious Reviews home page), into which I placed the list of chapters and the book’s original preface. When you do this sort of thing you have to constantly check to make sure the text is aligned on the screen, the links work, etc.

Lastly I uploaded the new home page and the two pdf files (Part 1 and Part 2 of the book) into my web server. I use Filezilla for transferring files from my computer to the web server, which is hosted by Network Solutions. After that I did some more tweaking to correct a few typos and other bugs, uploaded the tweaked files, and now everything looks good. To read the book one just goes to the
home page and clicks on one of the links in the left hand column. That takes you to the pdf file with a Table of Contents. In pdf format the text can be adjusted to any size.

If you have an essay, term paper or book you want to put on the internet, I recommend creating a pdf file of the original document. If the document is in Word simply “Save As” and then choose from the list of options “PDF.” This creates a .pdf file. (If the document has been scanned, it will be in some other format which also preserves the original image, such as .tif, .gif or .jpg). Once in .pdf (or any other format that preserves the original text intact) you still need to link to it from a web file, but that is relatively simple. Assume you have a prized essay saved in your hard drive that is called myprizedessay.doc. Save it as a pdf and it becomes myprizedessay.pdf. After your .pdf file is uploaded, just insert a link to it in any web or blog page, just as you would to any .htm or .html file.

Google is of course the giant of search but its algorithm is incrutable and fickle. 1) Google keeps tweaking its search algorithm. As detailed in a NY Times article,
what’s up one day may be down the next. 2) Whether the algorithm happens to like or not like your site, it’s hard to adjust to meet unknown criteria. Google’s Webmaster sites (links below) give some generic guidance, but no feedback on your specific web site.

Some things are obvious no-no’s, like putting the same word a hundred times in the meta tags, or copying someone else’s site verbatim, or adding nothing more than a list of links. On the other hand excellent, content-laden web sites may not rank at all, or rank on never-looked-at back pages, and you can’t figure out why. There are forums of Google users where you can pose questions, but people who answer may not offer anything useful, since they don’t know what will propel your site to a higher search result. And Google doesn’t ever respond directly. Once your site is freshly posted you can ask Googel to have it “considered” for search, or if it’s an old site to have it “reconsidered,” but since there is never any direct feedback you have no way of knowing if you’re doing something wrong.

Microsoft’s Bing is an alternative search engine that has gained popularity since it came out a couple of years ago. Bing lists one of my web sites (about visiting Charleston vs. Savannah) on the first page of search for “Charleston or Savannah”; Google doesn’t list it at all. Yet a Google search on “Charleston vs. Savannah” does list a bunch of outdated web sites on the first page (many from 2008), or links to mere personal anecdotes devoid of any real content. In contrast, my web site is a content-laden table of comparisons. The disparity between Bing and Google in this one area has me stumped (Google forum responders when I enquired were of no help).

There are many businessess that offer “search engine optimization” for your web site. In my opinion, they are likely to be a waste of money. (I have not used them, but knowing what I don’t know about the google algorithm, be very wary of promises.) Google’s web site also warns against any sort of promise or guarantee from SEO web offers. Unless you have a business where search is critical to survival, paying for SEO is unlikely to be rewarding. Instead, I recommend:

1) Troll Google’s SEO review for all the helpful hints you can find. There’s a lot of information there, just don’t expect that it will be the magic bullet to improve your web site’s search results. Try to resubmit your site after you’ve done everything you can think of.
2) Read the Wikipedia article on search engine optimization.
3) Take the ED2GO course on SEO; this will be helpful to teach you about key words, meta tags and other tools, but won’t necessarily help your site get a better ranking.

Statcounter (www.statcounter.com) tells you how many visitors viewed your site, including unique and return visitors.  It’s easy to set up.  First, you enter basic site information, including your computer’s IP address, a number unique to your computer.  (This is recommended to avoid counting yourself when working on the web site site.  To find it, just Google ‘what’s my IP address?’).  Once you enter all the requested and required information — which takes only a few minutes – Statcounter generates a bit of javacript code that you copy and past to your website.  This code is inserted after the <body> tag; the best place is just before the closing body tag, or </body>, so you always know where to find it.  Once the site is saved with the new code, and uploaded to your server, Statcounter starts counting every visitor.  The free version of Statcounter doesn’t tell you how long visitors spend at your web site, or how they got there, but it is a nice tool for gauging the site’s overall popularity (or lack thereof).   If you have multiple pages, as I do in lakesidepress.com, you can find out which ones are drawing visitors and which are the dogs.  For example, I found out that one of my more popular web pages is Secrets of the Best Golfers (http://www.lakesidepress.com/Golf/GolfSecrets.htm), averaging about 35 unique vistors/day (not huge, but this is a super niche site).  At the same time, a companion web site called Why Are You Still a Hacker? (referring to golf) draws only 3-4 unique visitors/day.  In relative terms, one is a winner and one is a loser, and I should keep the former polished and up to date to keep visitors coming. 

Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics) is more detailed in the stats; it tells you how long visitors stayed at your site and how they got there.  Google Analytics is more difficult to set up than Statcounter, mainly because its instructions are all over the place; I had to go to several web pages within Google Analytics to get the job done.  Like Statcounter, Google Analytics generates a bit of javascript code that you insert into your web site.  However, the insertion point is different; the Google code goes before the <body> tag, whereas the Statcounter code goes after the <body> tag.  

Overall, Statcounter is much more user-friendly, but Google Analytics is more  powerful than the free version of Statcounter.  However, once you get past the learning curves, both are easy to install, and you can install both on the same web site.

Next I revamped the index page for golf web sites.  I did this by grafting CSS code from my Fictitious Reviews home page.  Look at the web site (http://www.lakesidepress.com/Golf/index-golf.htm) and you’ll see that the content doesn’t completely fill the design layout.  That’s because I haven’t changed any of the original dimensions from the Fictitious Reviews home page.  Also, the google ads fill only half of the left side bar.  So have to do more work – resize the page to make it more pleasing to the eye.  

In the medical arena, I reworked my web site “What to Study for the Sleep Medicine Board Exam,” at  (http://www.lakesidepress.com/sleepboardreview.htm).  This a niche site, only of possible interest to a few thousand doctors who will take the exam this year.  I mention it in the blog because the update includes adding pictures of books ( including one just published, of which I am one of 4 co-authors).  Adding pictures almost always helps any text-based web site, and book covers are free and easy to ad.   You can add just the picture with no link to amazon, or the cover with a link to the amazon page.  I did the latter.

1) Go to amazon.com, find the book you want.

2) Copy the book cover picture by clicking on it and then ‘Save Picture As…’ to your desktop or specific file.  Then you must transfer the image to your server via FTP (file transfer protocol) that holds your web pages.  Make sure you know exactly which file it goes to because you have to retrieve it to show the image.  I put the image in the same file as the web page that holds all the text, but it could be in a different file (e.g., one labeled ”Images”).

3) Back to amazon web page, click on the unique URL for that specific book page, located at the top of the screen; it always begins:  This code has to be pasted into your html file as shown below.

4)  Arrange the code to provide a link to the amazon.com page that contains the book; that link is embedded in the cover picture, so that when the user clicks on the cover he or she is taken right to the amazon.com web page containing the book.  The code for this operation is shown below:

<a href=”http://www.amazon.com/Krygers-Sleep-Medicine-Review-Problem-Oriented/dp/1437726518/lakesidepress.com”>

Insights and tips will be shared, along with frustrations and missteps. If you create, design and maintain your own website(s) you might find the blog useful. Basically, it’s for web ‘hobbyists’ who have something to say but don’t want to spend a fortune to get on the web (developing a professionally-designed web site runs from $2K to $10K or more).

I am an amateur with a full time job totally unrelated to programming or web design. Lakesidepress.com is a hobby that’s been on-going for over 15 years. I like to think of its content as A+ and its web design as C-. I am constantly striving to make lp.com better, but it’s all do it yourself. Inevitably, some of the web pages will be dated, some links may be broken, but it’s a perpetual work in progress. This blog is for like-minded individuals who want to write, design and program their own content-laden web sites.

Some of the topics to be discussed along the way: html & css coding, setting up an internet provider; using WordPress for blogging and web site development; ED2GO on-line computer courses; other programming tools ( asp.net, javascript, etc.); google adsense program.

Larry Martin, MD larry.martin@roadrunner.com