"Look at how important we are, with our super cool web site, using EIEIO technology. But, since we are so busy, please don't try to contact us."

That's the message I get when I see a slick, interactive, animated web site with never so much as a phone number, contact name or email address on any of the pages. Sure, there are reasons to limit the types of information on a personal web site, but for a business? I always thought the idea of having a business web presence was to help people find, contact and ultimately buy products and services from a company. Isn't that the whole reason behind marketing?

Your small to medium business doesn't have to fall into that whiz bang, super pricey, "turn your customers away" web site trap. Using Linux, you can easily build and manage a moderately sized informative site on your own. And don't think it has to be dull and boring, either. It just takes imagination, a little effort, some organization and a few how-to tips to get started. As your business grows, so will your web site management experience and web marketing effectiveness. In this two-part article, I'll discuss the basic tools and methods (with an emphasis on the processes) for putting a business web site on line using Linux tools. Part one will examine the basics of HTML and composing applications.

Let's build.

As a customer, here is a partial list of what I usually look for on a basic business web site. Nothing flashy, just solid information.

• Contact information
• Product information
• Product pictures
• Pricing
• Company events
• Conferences
• Testimonials
• Interviews with company personnel
• Industry news
• Mission statement
• Job listings
• Links
• How-to's by company personnel
• Articles
• White papers
• Anything else that helps promote your products, services, people and business

Put all those things on a web site and a customer will definitely know what your company is all about. It would also provide valuable take-home information, that the customer can use immediately. If you continually update the site with fresh stories, products and links, your customers will return again and again. Over time, you could easily develop a reputation as the go-to company in your particular field. Every time a new (or old) customer viewed one of your pages, it would be a chance to provide them with a product or service, courtesy of your company.

Now that we have solid reasoning for a business web site, let's see what it takes to get one up and running. It might be easier than you think, especially using Linux tools. These are the general steps needed to start and run a basic site.

• Collect, organize and lay out the information you want your customers to see
• Build your pages using some type of editor
• Copy the completed pages to your web server using some type of transfer program
• Monitor the site using log files and Linux tools
• Update and maintain the site
• Integrate your business with the Web

Countless books have been written on how to organize and build an effective web site. Needless to say, there are thousands of opinions and theories on the subject. A couple of my favorites are "HTML 4 Unleashed," by Rick Darnell and "Teach Yourself HTML Visually," by IDG Books. The Unleashed book is what you would expect for that series, at over 1000 pages. The Visual book is very easy to follow and gives great examples on how to use the various features of HTML.

For a basic informational business web site, I think the main thing to keep in mind is that you want to make your site fast, interesting, and easy to use. Nothing turns away a visitor quicker than slow loading pictures or making the user's life harder. As I said, in the opening monologue, how many times have you seen a business web site, that doesn't even have a contact email address or phone number?

Making your site fast can be accomplished in a number of ways.

• Of course, if you are going to use an old Pentium 100-MHz retired desktop machine with 24 MB of memory for your web server, you will severely limit the number of pages and clients you can handle at any given time. But that kind of machine would better serve as a test server to develop your site. Web hosting services usually have what are known as "level of service" agreements. They are contractually bound to provide certain capacity and up-times. So, if you want absolute levels of availability for your web site, you might shop around for high-end web hosting.
• Try not to get too carried away with graphics. Many sites that contain large numbers of graphics, use the technique of showing thumbnail sized pictures instead of full sized, just so the page loads quickly. When the user wants to see a better view, they can just click on the thumbnail and get a screen full.
• Liberal use of text is generally much faster than using lots of graphics. Text is low bandwidth, graphics is high bandwidth.
  

I don't think you will have trouble with the "interesting" part. That first list was pretty comprehensive and should give you additional ideas. Depending on your business, most users want to get something they can use, from your web site. That could be a how-to article, a recipe, directions to your showroom or your hours of operation. It could be any number of things. Only you can possibly know what information your customer really needs to have.

Building pages for a web site can as simple or complicated as you like.

I edit my HTML files with three different programs. For quick edits of adding a link or changing a title, I simply use vi. I've used vi for years and it's just plain fast.

Next, for fairly fine control of the page, I use Bluefish. Bluefish lets me edit the HTML code directly, although it has a lot of buttons and automated features that save thousands of key strokes.

Recently, though, I started using Mozilla Composer. Composer is a WYSIWYG HTML editor that has lots of buttons, too, and will render the page within Composer itself. Bluefish doesn't render the page so you have to flip back and forth to your browser to see the results of your changes.

Composer is part of the Mozilla package and can be downloaded at http://www.mozilla.org. Many modern distributions load Mozilla by default, so you should be all set. If not, just download the package and install the whole thing. Composer will be included.

To use Composer, you'll just need to start up Mozilla. Then click on the little pen and paper icon at the lower left corner of the main Mozilla window. Since I use KDE, I normally put the browser in my first desktop window, then Mozilla mail in the second window and Composer in the third, for easy flipping back and forth.

Composer is similar to any other graphical document type editor. Text is highlighted by left clicking and dragging the mouse over your selection. Normal tool selections are across the top, along with boldfacing, underlining, bullet lists, centering, etc. on a separate tool bar. You can look at the HTML tags in your document, in a graphical way by clicking on the "HTML Tags" tab at the lower left corner of the Composer window. If you'd like to edit the source code for you document, click on the "<HTML> Source" tag (at the bottom left).

Before we leave this section, I also wanted to mention that the applications in the OpenOffice.org productivity suite can all save documents in HTML format. It's a very useful feature, because by simply saving your OpenOffice.org text documents, spreadsheets, and presentation slides as HTML, you have a ready-made source of material to put on your business-oriented web site. Several of my consulting friends regularly save their OpenOffice.org Impress slide shows as web pages then upload them to their web sites. You should investigate this technique, because it allows you to produce a lot of nicely formatted information, using your existing OpenOffice.org files.

In Part Two of this article, we'll examine the tools and techniques for transferring your pages to the web server as well as the applications and methods for monitoring and securing your site.

Rob Reilly is a Technology Writer and Speaker, whose articles appear on LinuxPlanet and in PC Update magazine. He's particularly interested in stories about Linux on the Desktop/Laptop, recycling with Linux and portable computing. He's currently developing seminars on OpenOffice.org Impress, Road Warrior techniques and business web basics. Send him a note or visit his web site at http://home.earthlink.net/~robreilly.

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