Fixing Your Web Server's MIME Types

If, after putting the above code on your site and uploading your music file, your music does not automatically play in IE, Netscape or Opera, it is possible that your web server is not sending the browser the correct MIME type. In order for the browser to know how to handle the file, your web server needs to be configured to send the correct information about the file. For example, for MIDI files, the web server should send the browser a "Content-Type" header of "audio/midi".
You can find out if your server has been correctly configured by starting up Netscape, invoking the "View" menu and selecting the "Page Info" item on that menu. (I'm referring to version 4.7x of Netscape - the item may be labelled differently on other versions of Netscape.) The MIME type of your music file will be displayed (among other things).
If the MIME type is incorrect, contact your web host to have them fix it. If your website runs on an Apache web server, and your host has configured it to allow you to override its settings using a .htaccess file, you can set up the MIME type yourself. For example, if you have MIDI files with a file extension of ".midi", you might add the following line to your .htaccess file:

AddType audio/midi .midi

If you don't have any existing .htaccess file, you can simply create one using an ASCII text editor and upload it to the top directory of your website. Remember, Microsoft Word and Wordpad are *not* ASCII text editors. Also note that this method only works for Apache servers configured to allow .htaccess overrides. If this is not the case for you (for example, if your site runs on a Windows machine running IIS), you will probably have to get your web host to fix the problem.

Browser Plug-in Problems

Sometimes you may encounter a situation where the embedded code works for you but not for others using the same version of the same browser.
This situation may occur when the person has installed some other software that has replaced the default browser plug-in to handle the music file type. For example, various multimedia players (like QuickTime) replace the browser's default plugins when they are installed. The replacement plugins may not function in quite the same way as the default plugin for the browser, leading to your code not working as expected.
There's probably little you can do to prevent this from happening, short of posting notices everywhere on your site telling people not to install such-and-such a software, which is of course ludicrous. If you insist on putting auto-playing sound files on your web page, my recommendation is that you ensure that your page makes sense whether or not those sounds are played on your visitor's machine. That is, don't auto-play a sound file that provides vital information that the visitor needs to understand your web page - unless of course you also provide a clickable link on the page that allows him to hear the information should his browser not auto play the sound file.
Like many other aspects of coding for the web, putting music on the web requires a certain amount of defensive coding. Even then, there will probably be a percentage of visitors who will not be able to view/hear your site the way you intended.

How to Embed Background Music on Your Web Site

Update: This article was written at a time when Netscape 4 and Internet Explorer 4 were the browsers used by the majority of people. ("What is Netscape?" you say. My point precisely.) As such, the rest of this page is obsolete. It even talks about a type of music file (midi) that you rarely see on the Internet any more. If your site uses HTML5, you should use the <audio> tag instead. You can find more information about the use of this tag in the audio section of the official web standards site.

The problem with embedding background music is that the different browsers out there have their own methods of implementing embedded music files.
For all versions of Netscape, as well as Internet Explorer ("IE") 3.0 and above, you can use the following code:

<embed src="yourmusicfile.mid" autostart="true" loop="true"
width="2" height="0">
</embed>

The width and height attribute given above causes the player to be invisible. If you do not want it to be invisible, you can specify your own dimensions to suit your site decor.
For Opera and all IE versions, the following code works:

<bgsound src="yourmusicfile.mid" loop="infinite">

As you probably have noticed, IE 3.0 and above support both methods, so you cannot simply put both those tags into your web document in the hope of supporting all browsers. It will work on Netscape and early versions of IE, but the newer versions of IE will recognize both tags, leading to problems when IE tries to load the music file twice.
The workaround that I've seen on some sites, that seems to work for me, is to enclose the BGSOUND tag inside NOEMBED tags, thus preventing IE from interpreting the second tag.

<embed src="yourmusicfile.mid" autostart="true" loop="true"
width="2" height="0">
</embed>
<noembed>
<bgsound src="yourmusicfile.mid" loop="infinite">
</noembed>

This code appears to be compatible with all versions of IE, Netscape and Opera.

Mandatory Items on the Site Navigation Bar

For a commercial site, certain links should be accessible from every page of your website. The easiest way to do this is to place them on your navigation bar. If you don't know what a navigation bar is, take a look at thesitewizard.com. On the top left of every page is a series of buttons which give you access to the main pages of the site. Your navigation bar need not be on the left side as mine is. You can put it at the top, the right or the bottom as well. However, the following items should always be present:

• Products: this is a link to a page listing all your products. If you have too many products to fit into one page, you may want to create category pages that are accessible through the main product page.
• Order Form: this should point to your order form.
• Price List: as mentioned earlier, a price list improves the usability of your site, and ultimately your bottom line.
• Support: you should place a link to a page which provides ways that your customer can contact you.
• About Us: since you are selling things, you should have an "About Us" page that tells your customer about you or your company.

Conclusion

On the Internet, customer service starts with a usable website. How you design your site will determine whether your visitor becomes a paying customer or your competitor's customer.

Allow Your Customers to Browse Your Site in Any Way They Choose

Have you ever encountered a "live" salesperson who drones on and on about a product, giving you little chance to jump in and tell him/her that you have already decided to buy the product? "I'll buy already!" you want to shout, but the guy insists on finishing his tome on the product.

Such a person, in real life, is probably seldom found. However, I have visited many websites that practise this very sales tactic. One characteristic of such websites is that the site has very poor navigational facilities. You cannot easily access other pages on the site except through a sequence of choreographed steps that the author has planned. First you have to read his introduction about the product. Then after a very long exposition on the first page, you are graced with a link at the bottom that takes you to a second page. Again, you have to endure the sermon on the second page before you can find the link to move on. Even if you have already decided to buy the product, you're forced to go through the whole sequence of steps before you can buy the product.

Such websites are reminiscent of the high-pressure sales tactics employed by some salesmen, and give visitors a bad taste. The usability of such sites is low, and the design of the site discourages impulse purchases.

One of the basic rules in selling something on the web is that you should not force your customers to click through many pages before they reach the "Buy" or "Download" button. It is never productive, leaves a bitter taste in some visitors' mouth, and drives off others. Sure, you may convince some people to buy the product after they read it all, but you are also convincing others that you're the sort of person they don't want to do business with. A website is different from a "live" salesman. People can leave any time during your sales pitch. And they do. Most people visiting a site to buy something are not there to read a long exposition. They are there to get a product. Delaying that purchase can only hurt your business. When I say that you need to give a product page with a detailed description about your product, I don't mean that you have to force everyone to read that detailed description before they can buy. Always provide a shortcut to the order form for your visitors

Provide Descriptions and Pictures for Your Products

  realize that the new web designer is beset with contradictory advice about how best to design their site. One set of such conflicting advice is the requirement to be brief and to-the-point so that you can catch that Internet visitor who will only give your web page a few seconds glance before deciding whether to stay or go elsewhere. Contradicting that is the requirement that you describe your products in depth and place pictures of your product, or screenshots if yours is a software product.

The best way to resolve this, I think, is to take a leaf from Amazon.com's book. For every item they list on their search results for a query (they have too many products to have a straightforward "Products" page), they usually have a brief description, a thumbnail picture, the price and a link to buy the item. If this brief description interests you, you can click the link and get a longer description and more information about the product.

A product page for each product, with a long description and pictures of the product, is indispensable. This is particularly so if your product is expensive, or has plenty of competition. Your long description and pictures of what you're selling is what cinches the sale. Potential customers will use the information on that page to decide whether or not to buy the item. They look at the page and compare it with the what is said about your competitor's product. It is thus in your interest to mention all the salient points about your product or service on that page. Think of it as the web equivalent of a salesman promoting a product to a walk-in customer.

An informative and detailed product page is not all you need. You also need to place your "Buy" or "Order" buttons both at the top and the bottom of the product page. If your product page is especially long, spanning many screenfuls, you may also want to consider placing additional buttons somewhere in the middle of the page. Do not force your customers to scroll to the bottom of the page before they can buy the item. You may have suffered countless hours drafting the description of the page. Do not pass the suffering to your customers by requiring them to read it all before they can order your product. Some customers are easily convinced, or they come to your page having already decided to buy. Make it easy for them to get to where they want to go within your site.

Tips For Creating And Uploading Web Pages

1. Creating Your Web Pages

Important Elements On A Web Page

Page Title (<title>) - Page titles are the titles that will appear on top of your pages. They are also important because search engines use them to provide title page information to your visitors on the search results page.

Headings (H1, H2 ... H6) - There are six levels of heading and heading sizes. The most important heading is H1, the second is H2 and so on.

Meta Elements - The two most important meta information is the keyword and description meta tag. Meta elements (or tags as they are sometimes referred to) are used by web designers to embed your web pages with information such as your keywords, author information, and description about your site. These elements are than used by some search engines to identify and catalog your web pages.

Contents

Page Size
The recommended file size for a web page is 30KB to 50KB - keep it smaller if you can. Remember that 80% of web surfers uses 56K modem or less, so keeping your pages small means that these users will not have to wait too long to download their pages.

The suggested content per page is between 200-500 words per page. Most web surfers don't actually read, they scan for useful information. Try not write technical or difficult to read articles. Use lots of bold heading, italics, paragraphs, short sentences, dashes and text breaks - anything to make your articles easier to read. If people see that your pages is loaded with technical information or essay type articles, they'll quickly hit the back button before trying to decipher what it is you are writing.

Graphics
Here are some recommendations for using images on your pages.

• Use thumbnail for images that are larger pictures.

• Reuse the same pictures, navigation icons or banner on your pages whenever possible instead of putting up new images. Images that are reused are downloaded once and stored in the computers temporary memory. Using a large number of different images will slow the download time of your webpages.

• If you want to use background image, make sure that you use Alt tags and title tags to describe you what they are. The alt tag is what gets displayed when a picture is broken or it does not load up at all. The title tag tells the visitor what the image is whenever they move the mouse over a image.

2. Uploading Your Contents

After creating your web pages you're ready to publish them. This process is known as uploading. The most common way to upload your contents is via FTP, the other way is to follow a step-by-step web form which will vary depending on the web hosting service. Once you sign up with a web hosting service and you know where you're going to upload your files to, you will need the following information to successfully upload your files:

• Your username

• Your password

• Your host name that you will need to connect and upload your files to

• Your URL or website address