Tips and Tricks of the Web

ENTRY-LEVEL BLOG SITES

         http://www.blogger.com
         http://www.wordpress.com
         http://www.tripod.com

Many web developers recommend that someone use a blog as the 'anchor' page for primary websites.


WEBSITE BUILDING SERVICES

http://www.sites.google.com is a formerly free website publishing tool. From what I can tell it only allows simple appearances though, which is a downside.
http://www.smallbusiness.yahoo.com  I've been using this service for 14 years. The tools are pretty easy to use, but it costs at least 15 dollars / month. Wait until they have a good deal, but the earlier the better, because prices keep going up. Once you have a plan, the fee is flat. Content is basically unlimited, and they provide a non-HTML editor that doesn't require any coding abilities. Just use of menus, and some artistic ability.

GOOGLE RANK TOOL

Useful for discovering the popularity of any given webpage:

It is found on the Google Toolbar HERE.

I have found that some review-type sites are ranked zero (which is bad).

USEFUL HTML CODES

When you have a website, you can add 'like' buttons and other features to your website, found at the following addresses:

Like button: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/like-button/
Tweet button: https://about.twitter.com/resources/buttons
Google+ button: https://developers.google.com/+/web/+1button/

SOCIAL MEDIA

Sites such as http://www.facebook.com

and http://www.twitter.com

can be used to find more exposure for your blog or other resources.

Some colleges have their own built-in services that are only available to students.

In addition, there are some academic social media sites where you can post essays, videos, and attract interest from academic viewers:

http://www.academicroom.com
http://www.academia.edu

I am avoiding them, but there are also online courses available through MOOCs, which are collaborative environments focused on learning.

There are also other sites which I like better, that are more about contributing ideas and brainstorming (However, these sites do not always feature a comment function, unfortunately):

http://www.answers.yahoo.com  help people answer questions. I'm close to level 6.
http://www.project-syndicate.org   high level idea forum
http://www.explore-ideas.com  this guy claims it gets 1,000,000 views / day.
http://www.creativitypool.com


KEY ADVICE

Web searches are content-oriented and also popularity oriented, two themes which are sometimes at odds. The compromise is that many searches become product or commercially-oriented, but there's no access to this for the little guy. So, either you need to attract attention, or you need something that actually attracts attention BY ITSELF. And, unfortunately, there are not a lot of ways to publish links to your site, which is approximately the only way to get more attention. So, you want to make use of free services, and also have one or more paid services. If you have some money to spare, you can start more than one website with decent content, and link them one to the other, using any available free sites to promote the material found on your primary pages. After 11 years, I have one site ranked level 3 / 10 (this currently means that I sometimes get 100 views in a day from other visitors), and formerly had a site ranked 4 that I no longer owned. Competition is fierce. It would help to own a lot more high-profile looking sites, but that often costs money. Some academic pages don't accept links for commercial sites, and some searches are now only commercial-oriented, so it's pretty difficult to make progress. But quantity helps a lot. Word-of-mouth is sometimes a defining factor for longevity, when nothing is moving.