 Basic and Small Catholic Web Site Development - Web Developer Methods
to Propagate the Catholic Faith the New Digital Continent
Introduction
The basics of Web 1.0 technology will ground us
solidly on the Web. This technology involves basic and small
web site and blog development. In this initial learning stage, steps
are taken to create a Catholic web site, maintain a blog with a good
Catholic theme, and produce sitemaps for the two to be indexed in Google.
This article will focus on these three steps in basic and small Catholic
web development so you can be part of the Catholic mission to evangelize
the new digital continent Pope Benedict XVI speaks about in his World
Communications Day Address.
Catholic web site development
To learn basic and small Catholic web site development, the first
step is conceive of a theme for the Catholic web site - one that
can pilot all the content and move it towards the site's general
objective. When this Catholic theme has been established, the second
step is to select a good web hosting service, and formulate a name for
the site's domain. Once this has been done, the third step is to
decide whether to design the Catholic web site ourself or to
purchase web site templates with Catholic themes online. If you design
your own Catholic web site, you can save on money. On the other hand,
if you purchase Catholic web site templates, you will save on time and
energy because much of the HTML (the basic language of the Web) and
CSS (cascading style sheets) have already been done for us. Whatever
you decide, the fourth step is to write a lot of good and unique content
on the Catholic faith.
Maintaining a Catholic blog in web development
Part of web site development is to maintain a blog. We also need to
do this for basic and small Catholic web development. The purpose of
a blog is to write on any updates we have done in the web site. So, whenever
there is something new in our Catholic web site - an article, a review,
a third-party application, or a new gadget - then we can post all these
new information in our Catholic blog and create anchor text links that
point to many of the pages in our site. This method of "blogging" can
obtain for us targetted traffic. The more we post regularly in our
Catholic blog - using the Catholic key phrases we have used to
develop the content in the web site - the more our pages will be visited
and our site regularly indexed in Google.
Creating a sitemap for Google
Once we have produced the main pages of our Catholic web site, we
need to create a sitemap in .xml format. This sitemap contains all
the pages of our site we want to be indexed. We need to remember that
this sitemap is not the HTML sitemap which acts like the table of contents of
our site. Rather, it is the .xml file which contains all of pages we want
indexed in Google. We submit this sitemap at Google Webmasters Tools.
Now for our Catholic blog to be indexed, the atom feed or rss feed of
the blog site can act as the sitemap of the blog (e.g. atom.xml). If you
have already started an account with Blogger.com, then the atom.xml feed
of your Blogger blog will index all the posts of your blog in Google
Webmaster Tools.
The importance of sitemap submissions
When we have submitted both the web site's sitemap and the
blog feed, the majority of our web pages and blog posts will be indexed.
Full indexing of pages takes time, and Google updates its indeces regularly
to change and upgrade their algorithms.
When a search query is made at Google or another search engine,
if one of our web pages or blog posts is relevant to the key phrase
used in a search query, our site and blog posts will appear in the first
pages of results (especially if these pages are well optimized for that
key phrase). As a searcher clicks on our web page or blog post, a
clickthrough is made and he enters the site or blog. This is how we are
able to get free traffic from Google and the other search engines. The key
to this free traffic is learning well the techniques of ethical search engine
optimization (SEO).
As we continuously build and develop more Catholic content,
we can then resubmit our sitemaps at Google for updating in their
indeces. The more unique and good Catholic articles and blog posts
that are indexed in Google, the more free traffic we can obtain from
the general public. This is how we can contribute to the Catholic
mission of proclaiming the gospel on the Net and evangelizing
the new digital continent.
Tips on basic and small Catholic web site development
1. Local host, Blogger.com, Google Sitemaps
One tip for your missionary venture in small Catholic web site development
to work well, is to get a local web hosting service (one from your own
country). This will surely have low web site operating costs. Then for
a blog, you can register at Blogger.com and purchase a custom domain. With
a custom domain, you can link the Catholic key words used in the content of
your Catholic web site in the blog's domain. Lastly, you can avail of
Google Webmaster Tools free service, www.google.com/webmasters/tools/,
and submit your Catholic web site's sitemap and Blogger.com atom feed.
2. Submitting Blogger.com atom.xml to Google Sitemaps
We need to be patient in indexing a Blogger.com atom feed. If it
doesn't work the first time, try it out again until it works. Usually,
using the blog's atom.xml feed gets the blog indexed in Google Webmaster
Tools. There are tutorials you can search in Google which
teach how you can index your blog feed as a sitemap in Google
Sitemaps. As an example, for indexing my main blog, I registered
the URL http://www.c-internet-mission.net/atom.xml at Google
Sitemaps.
3. Using the tag feature of Blogger.com
You can also use the tag feature of Blogger.com to place your
main Catholic key words and key phrases in the blog posts.
This helps in identifying what our blog post is about. whenever
a search query is made that is related to one of our tagged key words,
there is a good chance that our blog post will appear in the search
engines results pages.
4. SEO in basic and small Catholic web site development
To obtain the full benefits of web site development, it is
necessary to enrol in a class of ethical SEO. There are many teachers
of SEO giving free classes online. In these classes, you will learn
about SEO, and everything that has to do with basic
web site development: internet niches, the meta tags, alt tags,
heading tags, title attribute tags, file names, page titles,
anchor text optimization, web site navigation, sitemaps,
submission to directories, search engines, domain names,
reciprocal linking or link exchange, and the robots.txt
file. To have an idea of SEO in web site development, you can
check this article:
Ethical Search Engine Optimization.
Web development in the present Web 2.0 environment
Web 2.0 technology is at the forefront of the Web at present.
Social networking sites are getting more and more popular.
Some bloggers comment that the trend of the Web seems to
favor web sites like Twitter -
where friends inform each other of what they are doing in just a few
lines of 140 characters maximum. Because of this new development and
trend in the Web, the web development technique of writing full and
comprehensive content seems to be relegated to the background.
Many who have entered the Web at the irruption of Web 2.0 sites,
may not see the value of this basic web site development method.
But Web 2.0 technology stands on the shoulders of Web 1.0 technology.
Without basic web site development, there would be no groundwork for
all Web 2.0 technology.
In view of this Web trend, one wise approach and strategy
is to continue with basic and small Catholic web site development,
and to integrate the elements that are being used in Web 2.0.
Using the social bookmarking and networking sites for the purpose of
promoting a Catholic web site and Catholic blog, is a very good and wise
strategy to apply. In fact, this is what all the faithful of the Church
are being advised to do by Pope Benedict XVI: "to promote a culture of
dialogue, respect, and friendship by evangelizing the new digital
continent". With the irruption of social networking and media sites
that created this new digital continent, Catholics can easily use
the Internet as an instrument for peace, goodwill, and friendship.
Related references
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Dennis Emmanuel Cabrera
Web Developer Methods for Catholics
www.c-web-developer.net
My Main Catholic Blog
www.c-internet-mission.net
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