James is particularly careful to make sure his email address is correct, because
if it isn't, the site won't be able to email him to tell him how his promotions
turned out. He also lets the site know how he found out about it (Dad is pleased
that James considers him a friend), and clicks on the create button.
After taking the time to actually read all the instructions on the
page which give incredibly valuable tips on what to do next, which is
particularly impressive behavior for a 6-year-old (at the time I wrote this
tutorial; he's older and more annoying now), and more than 90% of the people
who use this site manage to do (judging by the email Dad gets), James notices that
the Log In To Existing Account palette has been thoughtfully filled
in for him.
So he clicks on the LOGIN button to start using his account.
This brings up the Main Options page. James immediately notices that the
Log In To Existing account palette has changed into the
Promote! palette, and that it's telling him he needs to create a record.
Dad explains that his account can contain up to 10 records (more if
he's willing to give Dad some of his allowance money), and that each record
stores the information needed to promote a different URL. So if James had
2 or 3 websites, he could create a record for each website and keep them
conveniently in one account. But for now, he only needs one, so he
scrolls down the page to find the Add Record palette, which is on
the left hand side.
After clicking on the Add button, the new record is created,
and the Main Options page replots. Lo and behold, the Promote palette has
changed; it's got some pulldown menus.
The Record pulldown lists all the records in the account
(right now, only one). The Type of Promotion pulldown lists all the
various types of places one can promote the record (such as Search Engines,
Major Indexes, General Indexes, and so on; they are broken down into easily manageable chunks
so you can do your promotion a bit at a time, as time permits, without becoming
overwhelmed). It also has a bunch of utility options in it. Finally, the
List Full Descriptions checkbox lets you decide if you want to get a
lot of information about each target site so you can determine if you want
to promote there. Since James knows that it's a no-brainer (for the benefit of
the non-americans reading this, "no-brainer" means "such an easy decision that
only an idiot would get it wrong") that you promote
your URL to all of the Search Engines, he's deselected the checkbox.
Note: At SelfPromotion.com, we make a distinction between a Search Engine (a site like Altavista which has a robot that visits your page and looks at it) and an Index (a site like Yahoo that lists a description of your site that you provide to it when you submit). The rule of thumb is: you can submit your home page URL (and sub-URLs if you want) to the Search Engines as many times as you want, within reason (Dad's rule is "Once every month or two, whether they need it or not"), but you submit just your home page URL to the Indexes, and only once (unless it doesn't get in). You don't submit sub-pages to the Indexes. Oh, and by the way, one cute extra feature contributors get is an option to automatically resubmit their urls to the search engines every 45 days.After being advised of this, James clicks on the PROMOTE button and proceeds to the Site Selection page.
The first thing the page advises is to read the instructions. James does.
His father loves him even more. The instructions explain how to interpret the
listing on the page, plus give some tips.
Scrolling down to the site listings (which in our illustration we've
chopped up to save space), the first thing James sees is that despite the
fact that he chose not to list full descriptions, the full description for
Aeiwi is given. This is because Aeiwi has some unusual requirements
that Dad wants him (and you) to know about so you won't send him email about
it.
Since James knows that he wants to promote to all the search engines,
he clicks all the checkboxes, then proceeds to the bottom of the page, where
he finds two additional options. First, he can enable a bunch of Javascript
enhancements during data entry, and second, he can have the data entry page
give him a lot of helpful hints. Since he knows his Dad wants to show off
the cool Javascript tricks, and since this is also his first time using the
site, he leaves them checked, and clicks on the ENTER DATA button.
When the Data Entry page appears (be patient, as it often has to do a lot
of computing to generate a custom page just for you), the first thing that James
sees is more instructions. James starts to get a little upset about all this
verbiage, but Dad explains that it is there so that (as much as possible) the
answer to all the common questions one might have about the page is right there
on the page. Dad points out that this reduces the amount of email he gets,
which gives him more time to do far more important things, such as
take James to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace yet again.
James is morally offended by all the instructions about what a
proper URL looks like. "I type in URLs all the time," he says, "and I
know what my URL is." While James is busy typing in his URL, he does not
notice his father smiling. Does Dad know something James does not?
When James scrolls down to the next field, he is both pleasantly
surprised and confused. He likes the fact that the Javascript on the page
has filled in the field for him. Dad explains that whenever possible,
the page will fill in similar fields with data already entered, but
that you have to check to make sure that this automatically entered data
is correct. But James doesn't read carefully, so he leaves his URL in
this field instead of blanking it out.
Note: The reason the site asks you if your URL is available in a "domain-only" format is that some search engines and indexes only list sites with their own domain name, while other sites and search engines require full URLs including filenames. By getting your URL in several formats, Tooter, the SelfPromotion.com robot, can give each site what it needs.
The next two fields are easy, and James has no problems filling them in.
His middle name, by the way, is Japanese for "Bright History", and as
to why he has his mother's last name instead of Dad's, the reason is
simple: Dad remembers how many times he got beaten up as a kid for
having a funny name. If James wants to become a Woodhead later in
life, that's fine, but for now, Ueki ("Planted Tree") is close enough!
Finally, James has to answer a few questions about his site. If the
list of possibilities is long, he gets a big scrolling list to choose
from. If it's short, he gets a pulldown menu. Note that when a bit
of information is needed for only one site, you get told which site
needs it (so you can tailor your submission).
After all the data entry is done, James
arrives at the much-maligned ENERGIZE button. Just above it
are two checkboxes. The first enables SelfPromotion.com's URL
validity checking, which attempts to make sure that the URL(s) you
have entered are indeed correct. James wants to disable this because
he's absolutely positive that he's done it right, but Dad insists he
leave it on "for the sake of the tutorial."
That's right, "Mr. knows his url" has made a few mistakes.
Fortunately, the site makes it easy to fix them. Each error is
highlighted with a complete (some would say seriously over-complete)
error message, and has a link to the offending field. Even better,
if you just scroll down the page, each field that has an error will
have a big ugly red banner just above it that contains a copy of the
error message. So it's usually easy to just scroll down the page
until you "see red".
Upon being told this awful pun, James gave out the obligatory groan, by the way...
Also note that, due to a bug in some browsers, you shouldn't click on these links until the page has completely loaded! Another reason to just ignore them!
To his great chagrin, James discovers that the site is complaining
about his "perfect" URL. Fortunately, it also tells him what the correct URL
probably is.
http://www.geocities.com/tokyo/springs/9162Bizarre, isn't it? And bad because around the 3rd redirect, many of the search engines will have given up on the URL.
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/springs/9162
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Springs/9162
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Springs/9162/
Awed by his father's wisdom, James scrolls down to the
URL field and corrects it. And since the site also complained that
he entered a non domain-only URL in the domain-only URL field, he
blanks that out.
And finally, after clicking (without too
much complaint this time) ENERGIZE, he is rewarded by being
told that his record is queued for promotion. Depending on how busy
the site is, it will get promoted in anywhere from a few minutes to
a day or so.
Scrolling down the page, after skimming a ton
of advice on what to do next, James finds the form that lets satisfied
users send Dad money. Given that a certain percentage of this money is
used to buy him new toys, James is greatly in favor of them doing this.
Next, wanting a bit more of a challenge, James
decides to promote to the Major Indexes (the next segment after Search
Engines). This time, he decides to select List Full Descriptions.
He immediately notices that many of the sites in the Major Indexes section are
listed as Manual Promotions, with a M where the checkbox ought to
be. Dad explains that most of the really big indexes have registration systems
that are either complex or awkward, so automatic promotion isn't much easier
than doing it manually. Furthermore, the sites are so important that hand-tailoring
a submission for each site can increase your chances of getting in, and increase
the effectiveness of your listing once you get it. So it's best for people to
do these sites themselves.
Thus, unless SelfPromotion.com can do a submission for you better than you can, or faster than you can (or both!), it won't do it. Instead, the site contains lots of advice on how to properly submit to these sites, explanations of their quirks, and so on.James clicks on the sites that are appropriate for automatic submission, and proceeds to the Data Entry page once more. There he finds that some of the new fields he needs to enter (variants of his URL and name with limited lengths) have been automatically filled in for him. He also finds some advice on how to construct good site descriptions, which he finds helpful.
And remember, you promised you'd check out that page and submit to Yahoo properly. The guilt will gnaw at you until you do, so go do it now!
For the sake of the tutorial, James will skip that step, however...
Next, James finally gets asked for his keywords. He also has to enter
his company name (he makes one up, the scamp) and where he lives. Then
he discovers that he has to enter the appropriate category for his website.
Since different websites have different category structures (some having
only a few to choose from, and others hundreds, James had to do this
several times.
After filling in the category questions appropriately, and answering a
few other questions about his website, James, with the confidence that
only youth has, (and no grumpiness this time), clicked on
ENERGIZE to start promoting his site...
...only to realize that after the site had copied his long description to
the other fields, he had forgotten to edit them to make them shorter. And
that he'd apparently accidentally blanked out one of the URL fields!
However, as James now knew how to find and fix these problems, they were
dealt with in short order, and once again James saw that his site had
been queued for submission:
At this point, James decided he'd rather play Nintendo. But you,
now that you know as much as James, are ready to promote your own website.
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