The Utterances of a Peculiar Mindset

Treasure house of scripts

You will want your site to be highly interactive so that users find it easier to navigate. You might want to add menu systems, mouse scroll effects, etc. What you would definitely want is dynamic content. You can download any number of these scripts for free from www.dynamicdrive.com.

Menu and navigation systems

Windows users might prefer having a Windows interface on the Web too. You can satisfy this need by using the menu and navigation scripts available at www.dynamicdrive.com. You can test each script before trying it on your site. Select the one that you like and following the instructions, copy and paste the code into your Web page and hey presto! You have the required menu and navigation effect on your site. You can choose from a range of scrolling, static, and dropdown menu and navigation items from this section.

Document effects

Your HTML pages need not be static. You can add cool effects to it. For instance, you can have a snowfall or flowers moving across the page randomly. Mind you, this looks good but can be irritating too. So add these effects to pages where you have lighter content, for example, a photo gallery or a personal links section.

Free applications

If you want to track the number of visitors to your site, you can add a page counter for this purpose. The other small applications that you could possibly add to your Web site are forums, guest books, log systems, polls, and e-mail forms, etc. Your hosting service might provide most of these. Since all the information is stored on the application provider's server, you don't have to worry about the hosting space for using any of these applications.

Count the visitors

Make use of the counters if you want to track the number of users who visit your site. Some sophisticated counters allow you to track down statistics on user visits month-wise or even day-wise. Microsoft bCentral offers you a counter that tells you exactly how many people visited your site on a particular day in a month.
Visit www.fastcounter.com and you will be redirected to www.bcentral.com. Register and get your passport. A couple of clicks and the site designs the counter and gives you the HTML code. You can copy and paste the code onto your page. All the stats will be stored on the bCentral server and you can log on to your account anytime to view the statistics.

Tracking the stats

You might be curious about which pages on your site are visited the most, what browser the visitor uses, or probably what OS most visitors use. Visit www.extreme-dm.com and register yourself for free tracking code. You will be sent a mail with the code details. Follow the instructions provided and paste the code onto your site. As users visit your Web page, tracking starts automatically and your account is updated with details of the user and his PC. You can login to your account at the site at any time to view your site statistics that are quite exhaustive. You can also restart your tracking at any point in time, but this is at the cost of losing your earlier data.

Soapbox

You can include message boards for free on your site. Visit www.boards2go.com and register yourself for a neat message board service. You can provide a link to the message board from your site or copy the code provided by boards2go.com while you register.

RSVP

You have worked hard to put together your online monument. Wouldn't you like to hear from the visitors whether they liked your site? A guest book is your solution. Some free subdomain name registrars such as Freeservers and Yahoo! Geocities provide a free guest book within the site manager.
Visit www.guestbookgiant.com and signup for a free service. Create as many guest books as you want and customise them from the respective menus. After customising the guest book, click on the 'Get code' link. This provides you two links-one to enter the guest book and the other to view it. Paste these links on to your Web site. Now visitors to your site can use the guest book to send their feedback to you.

DHTML games

Want to spice up your Web page? Then host some Shockwave, Flash and DHTML games. Some DHTML games are available at www.dynamicdrive.com. Download the games and unzip them. Before you upload them on your site, read the instructions provided by the author. Copy all the necessary files on a specific directory on your hosting space and provide a link from your main page to the games section of your Web site. Believe it or not, most visitors get enthusiastic when they see age-old games that they can play online!

Create the blocks

There are sites where you can create logos, buttons and GIFs of your choice. Customise the available buttons and GIFs to suit your preference

Create Logos

If you want a logo for your site, log on to www.flamingtext.com. Here you choose 'Start Here' from the sitemap in the 'New Users' section. You'll reach a page that carries a list of all available designs. Select the one you want and you're taken to a page where you can edit the design-change the text, size, colour, or font. Enter your preferences in the appropriate boxes and click on Create logo. A few seconds of rendering and your logo's ready. Right-click on the image to save it to your hard disk, you can use the image on your site as your registered logo.

Sew that button

There are sites that help you render buttons. Visit www.flamingtext.com and click on the buttons section listed at the top of the page. Choose the style and appearance of the button. The final section of the page lets you add text and change features such as colour gradients, the shape, etc of the button. Make your modifications and click on the Add text button to create your button. A few seconds and your button's rendered and displayed on the Web site. Save it by right-clicking on it.