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Making
Your Pages Searchable
Potential visitors will find your site more easily if you make it friendly to
the Internet search engines. One of the limitations of these Web crawlers is
that they are text based, that is, they search for pages containing keywords
or phrases
and therefore sometimes miss the real meaning of pages that are primarily graphic.
For example,an architectural firm may have a publicity page about all the elementary
schools it has designed. The page is illustrated with pictures of completed designs,
and it conveys much information to the intended audience of school boards and
administrators looking fora good architect. The search engine, however, misses
the meaning entirely, since the text “elementary school” does not
appear on the page. The use of meta tags corrects this problem, allowing you
to embed keywords describing the page in a hidden header section of the HTML
that
is invisible
to the user but discernible by a search engine. Metadata is roughly equivalent
to a library catalog record. If it were widely adopted, it would make Internet
searching moreefficient, particularly if an industry-specific system of keywords
were
developed and implemented. Future versions of Web-authoring and word-processing
software may have the ability to extract standard keywords from a document (including
notes attached to or embedded in graphics files) and place them in metadata format.
An HTML meta tag looks like this:
< META NAME ="keywords" content="architecture, city planning,
interior design, structural engineering, construction">
Meta tags can be seen in Web pages in the VIEW SOURCE mode.You
can add them to your pages by hand, using a text editor
suchas Windows NotePad or Macintosh
SimpleText.
Place them between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags, and they won’t
be visibleon the page. Search engines sometimes have trouble with framed
pages, because the primary link is to the frame set page,which has no information
in it beyond the arrangement of the frames. If your site uses frames and
you want
search engines to find you, place meta tags with keywords in the header section
of the frame set page.
HTML’s sophisticated cousin, XML,
improves upon meta tags by using declarations that tell a Web browser about
the kind of information that will be presented
on the page, using terms specific to an industry or discipline. In addition
to making your pages searchable, you
can add yourown search function to your Web site. All of the popular Web
servers, including Apache, Netscape and Microsoft, have a builtin search
capability. Even if you are not running your own server,your ISP may allow
subscribers
to add
indexing and search functionsto their Web sites. You may need to trigger
the search function by invoking a CGI script. Microsoft FrontPage
includes a
built-in indexing and search function for sites it creates, but the FrontPage
extensions must be installed on the server. Customized search forms can be
dropped into Web pages for word searches of the entire site.
Managing Your Media Assets
Desktop publishing has accustomed many people to arranging formatted text and
graphics into publications to be printed on paper.With the arrival of interactive
media such as CD-ROM and the Internet, these printed materials must be
adapted for the new formats. More and more information will be published simultaneously
on the Web and as printed documents, presenting the same material in ways
appropriate to their respective formats. How can you efficiently make use of
your assets—text
and media—without duplicating your efforts?
One approach is to create a
publishing database. Keep all text and media as separate files in a central
repository from which you can place them in desktop-publishing applications
such as QuarkXpress for printed publications,and link them to Web-authoring
applications such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage. Such a database makes synchronizing
printed, CD-ROM,and Web versions of related material much easier. Database
publishing also helps with version control, easing the task of making corrections
and updates simultaneously to all publishing formats. Whenever a text or
graphic
file is updated, all print- and Web-based documents that make use of it
are automatically updated as well.Some form of database publishing is needed
for tracking the large number of CAD drawings in a typical architectural
project. As firms transition from paper-based to Web-based
project management systems, making sure the various versions of files
are coordinated during the overlap period is critical.
One of the strengths
of Web publishing over
paper is the ease with which you can customize publications for specific
purposes.For example, most subcontractors don’t need an entire set
ofdrawings and specifications. But because specification sections typically
make reference to other sections, giving subcontractors just one or two
sections is risky—a roofing section may refer to a flashing section
and a waterproofing section, and they may all refer to the general conditions
and other boilerplate material. By using hyperlinks, spec sections can
carry links to other material that physically resides elsewhere. You can
give
subcontractors a URL that points to a specific spec section on your server,
for example. All necessary references will be a click away, including links
to related documents such as industry standards, building code, and manufacturers’ Web
sites. When sections are revised, you need not reissue new paper versions.
for more information, read Communication and Design with the Internet,
a Guide for Architects, Planners, and Building Professionals.
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