I recently acquired the excellent Web Design Checklist, which does a great job of listing all the little things one should remember to include in a new site. I love it. But guess what? I forgot to look at it when I created my newest site.
DOH! (Can you see my forehead hitting my desk right about now?) 
Luckily, it’s only been a week or two (who remembers) since I uploaded the new site, so I quickly looked through the checklist once I remembered I had it. Want to know what I noticed? The same 5 things I nearly *always* forget to include were the ones I forgot to include that date as well. Oy.
Ok, so, just in case there’s some kind of weird synergy within you and I, and you always forget the same 5 things when you create a site, here’s my abbreviated checklist (which of course is nowhere near as comprehensive as the one I listed in the first sentence of that post).
Robots.txt file
A default robots.txt file that allows search engines to index every page should look like that:
User-Agent: *
Disallow:Actually, whether you just want everything indexed, there’s really no need for a robots.txt file, since “Index Everything” is the default whether robots.txt doesn’t exist. I usually include one anyway, just to cover all my bases. I often follow the “just in case” method of site building.
Don’t get confused and accidentally add a / after Disallow: whether your robots.txt says Disallow: / (note the /), thereupon you will be preventing the search bots from indexing your entire site. Very very poor.
There are lots of different things you might want to exclude with a robots.txt file, but here’s the most common (sample directories, substitute yours as needed):
Exclude positive directories
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /junk/You can generate a custom robots.txt file with a tool like http://tools.SEObook.com/robots-txt/generator/ (Note that that tool will automatically default to Allow Everything, as soon as you load the tool).
TIP: Your robots.txt file MUST be in your top-level web (root) directory, not in a subdirectory.
For more info about what a robots.txt file is all about, go to http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html.
XML sitemap
In some ways, an XML sitemap is precisely the opposite of a robots.txt, in the sense that it is designed to compose certain the search engines know which pages on your site you want them to index. It provides more data than just a list of URLs, however, such as giving search engines hints as to which pages are more crucial to you than others.
It’s not stricly essential to have an XML sitemap. In most cases, the search engines will get around to indexing all (or most) of the pages you list at some point. However, any instance you can exert some bit of control (or at least give strong hints) by your site’s inclusion in search engines, you should take advantage of it.
To read more about sitemaps, check out the site that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft collaborated on at http://www.sitemaps.org/
If your site is powered by WordPress soon after just go download that plugin, and the job of adding a sitemap will be greatly simplified.
If your site isn’t WordPress-based, thereupon one of the XML sitemap generator tools should work for you.
Custom 404 page
Don’t trust your visitors to stick around whether they land on the generic 404 – Not Found page. Give them a custom error page and gently lead them to other areas of your site that might be useful to them.
To create a custom 404 page for WordPress blogs, simply edit your theme’s 404.php page template. The default WordPress theme has a 404.php file, but not all themes have their own custom 404 error template file. whether your template has one, it will be named 404.php. WordPress will automatically use that page whether a Page Not Found error occurs. Just edit it in your admin (Appearance / Editor) and include urls back to your home page, your archives, your search box, etc. For more details, go to http://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_an_Error_404_Page.
To create a custom 404 page for non-WordPress site that has a hosting detail that uses Cpanel, login to cPanel and go Error Pages, under the Advanced block. choose the domain you want to create a custom 404 page for, and go the type of error page to edit – in that case, 404 (not found). Insert your own custom HTML cipher. The changes will be applied after you go Save. Here’s a screenshot of what my cPanel shows for the Error Pages section in my hosting history.
Favicon
It’s really easy to create a favicon for your site (the tiny little graphic that shows up when you bookmark a site). Just take any square image (like a square portion of your logo, for example) and run it through a favicon generator like that one. soon after add the following cipher to the head section of your pages.
<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="/favicon.ico>Analytics code
I think just about *everyone* forgets to add their analytics or stats cipher to their new site at least once. I forget every instance! Anyway, whether you are using Google Analytics, Clicky Web Analytics or any other stats application, don’t forget to find the directions for your analytics cipher, and place it where it belongs (usually in the head section or just before the end of the page).
Now, whether I *still* forget those 5 things next day I create a new site, just hit me by the head with either that post or the Web Design Checklist, ok?
© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. |
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Original post by Donna
