You have created your first logs and uploaded them to my portalhelp account. Now you want to make them accessible from the PortalHelp directory. That means you have to go into your directory structure.

Then log in to your administrative area and go to Hyperseek Administration.

Click the Define Categories link.

I want to delete the existing categories. So I'm going to

• highlight one of them
• then click the button that says "Delete this category."
• You'll be shown a message that says it's been done.
• Click the return button.
• That category still appears there.
• Don't panic! Just delete the other one now.
• Go back up to the top
• click the Go button to get back to your control panel.

Next is: the Updating Dance.
(Learn these steps by heart, you are going to be doing it often.)

• Click Update Category #.
  

• When it's done, click Go.
  
• Click Validate Categories.
  
• Click Go.

Now if you go back to Define Categories, you'll see that they really were deleted. Hooray!

Now I am going to make a New Category.

• So I click the New Category button.
• Enter a Category Title.
  • I don't have any sub-categories yet, so I'm not going to make any teasers or sub-categories at this point.
• Click Save.
  • It wouldn't take my category name because it had an apostrophe in it. Sorry - no punctuation is allowed in your category titles
  • Try a different title.
  • Save again.
• I won't see that Category until I do the updating dance, so one more time, the steps are:

  • Click Update Category #.
    

  • When it's done, click Go.
    
  • Click Validate Categories.
    
  • Click Go.
  • You don't have to do that after adding each category. But you should do it after any significant amount of work. Your changes will not show up on the portal until you have done the dance.
• Now I'm going to add my other categories in the same way, always finishing with the dance. Now, I've set up a bunch of categories, and I'm going to leave that part alone for now. Later I will come back and play with teasers, subcategories, descriptions and other fun stuff. Right now I want to add a link to the first tutorial.

ADD A LINK

• Go to a domain link
• Copy the URL from the location bar
• On the left side of the Hyperseek control panel,
• Click Add Link.
  • There are a number of ways to add links, and I'll take you through them all eventually. You should try all of them to learn what advantages and disadvantages of each in different situations. That will help you use your portal faster in the future. n general, if you are adding a page that doesn't have a title tag, the Add Link method is the ONLY method you should use. If a page has a title but no metas, Add Link is probably as fast as anything else, but it's up to you. If the metas are there but spammed out, you could save yourself a lot of fuss by using Add Link as well.
• First, I'll choose the category that I want to place the link into.
  • You'll notice that all the categories are listed twice. I have no idea why this is. I always choose the top listing of the category and that seems to work correctly.
  • The link I'm adding is in USA English (or some facsimile thereof) so I'll choose that in my refinement box.
• Now add the page title - this will show up in your listing so make it meaningful. Don't use generic titles like Home Page or My Tutorial.
• Now paste in the URL in the appropriate box.
• I'm going to give this a rank of 10 so that it appears on the What's Cool page.
• Since the What's Cool page will get a lot of clicks, I want to make sure this link appears there.
• Now I'm going to write a description of the link. I want everyone to read this thing, so I'm going to try to make it appealing.
• Next, I'm going to add in some search words.
  • These are words that I haven't put into the description because I didn't want to make it a list of keywords. But I want people who are puzzled over, say, the Category Match setting to find that document. So I put "category matches" in the search words, along with some other words that I think are key.
• I'm leaving the Review section blank. We'll come back to that.
• You are the webmaster so you don't need to send me any email to say that the link has been added. In fact, I haven't even filled in the name and address boxes. Hyperseek doesn't mind.
• Click the button to add the link.
• The link will not appear until you do the dance. If there is a problem with the link, it will tell me when I Validate the Database and give me the option to Edit it or Delete it.

HitBox

Then I'm going to announce that tutorial in the Forums and see if I can enlist moderators to dig out the gems from their own forums to submit them to my new directory.

I'm going to change some of the code on my pages now so that I'm running my own affiliate links rather than Searchking's. Yes, you are allowed to do this! And I'm allowed to run my own banners on the top of first page. I haven't set up BannerMaster on this portal yet, so I'm just going to cheat and pull banners from one of my other portals. I could also hard code a banner in this spot until I'm ready with BannerMaster. The important thing now is to get the code where I can work with it. I'm going to log in and go to the Template Editor.

Once at the Template Editor box, I'm going to grab the code for the three main pages (Default, Hyperseek Home, and Search Results) and save it to my local hard disk. This way I can work with it in my own HTML editor, validate the code and make sure it looks like I want it to before I upload it to the site.

NOTE: the pages you are given have a lot, a lot, a lot of nested tables. If you are not really conversant with HTML, be very careful when making changes. Screwing up one table tag may render your entire page invisible for Netscape users.

ANOTHER NOTE: Even though I'm editing locally, I must always put these pages back on the site via the Template Editor. They must not be uploaded by FTP. It's my understanding that the plugins will not work if you FTP the pages. Since plugins drive the system that would be A BAD THING.

I've grabbed the pages and I see at the top of my Control Panel that I have five site submissions already. Cool! I'll add them now for a cheap thrill.

• Click the submissions link.
  • I can see that Hyperseek didn't find any dups, so I don't need to worry about that. Sometimes Hyperseek will report a very odd number of dups (like 43) and give you a link to click to look at them. Often, there really aren't any dups. Never hurts to check, so if dups are reported, click the link to check it out. A new window will open and show you any dupes.
• Now, click the Title of the page that has been submitted.
  • It will open in a small window so that you can look at it and make sure that it is what it says it is. My very first submitted link isn't what it says it is. So I'm going to email the webmaster who submitted it before adding it. (I think he did this just so I could bring up this point!) While I was opening the Review window, Hyperseek changed me over to the edit window. Since I don't want to do anything with this link yet, I'm going to use my Back button to get back to the Link Reviewer window where all my submissions are listed. I'm leaving the small Review window up because all the sites will open in that same window.
• OK, so let's see if I can have better luck on the second link.
  • Yes! It opens the appropriate site. The submitter has placed it in the correct directory. If he hadn't, I would just scroll through the categories and highlight the correct one. He's also written a nice description. I'm just going to edit out phrases with all initial caps because I'm that way. It's considered bad style at Yahoo! and the ODP. Again, who am I to buck trends? He hasn't spammed out the Desired Keys (think keywords) so I'll leave them in place. When I finish looking at the submission, I'm going to add it, sending the submitter email notification. I'm choosing Append to Default Mail so that I can send a short personal note with the email message. Then I click Add Entry.
  • For some reason, clicking Return took me back to the control panel rather than the Link Reviewer like it usually does. No problemo. I click submissions again to get back to finish those links.

Now I'll review the other links.

NOTE: Sometimes people press the return key when writing their description. That will appear as a <CR> in description box when you are editing their submission. Delete those or it will look screwy in your directory listings.

NOTE:When I finish, those sites are all still listed on my Link Reviewer page, and I might be tempted to click in the Add It checkbox. But I don't need to. I've already added them. Click GO at the top of the page to get back to the Control Panel, then do the Updating Dance. To get the steps to the Updating Dance, read the Quick Start Tutorial.

NOTE: It may take as long as a minute for the database to refresh itself, so be patient if you look for them to appear on your pages.

OK, now I'm ready to edit those pages that I grabbed off the Template Editor window. There isn't much to edit on the Default template. The Searchking banner must stay there if you are running a free portal, so don't touch that code. First, I'm going to change the Title tag so that it reflects my portal and I'm going to add some very basic meta tags.

Then I'm going to substitute the PortHelp banner I made for the text that says PortalHelp. (I'll do this same thing on the home page and search results page as well.) I'm going to be very careful to make the link to the image a full URL because it's going to be called from subdirectories and a relative URL won't work in all of them. And, because I'm compulsive, I'm going to right align this so that it's not off-center directly over the centered banner ad. I need to remember to upload that graphic before I put the pages in place via the Template Editor.

Now I'm going to drop down in the page below the plugins for menu, categories and body and add links to Home, What's New, What's Cool, Random Link, and Add Your Site.

I'm hardcoding the link for Home. I won't make this a relative link since this template will be used in all directories and subdirectories. I'm coding it as the full link, http://www.portal-help.com/. I'll use plugins for the rest of the links. Here's what that code looks like when I get done: <div align="center"> <table width="600" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" border="0"> <tr> <td align=center><a href="http://www.portal-help.com/">Home</a> | <a href="<!-- PLUGIN:NEW -->">What's New</a> | <a href="<!-- PLUGIN:COOL -->">What's Cool</a> | <a href="<!-- PLUGIN:RANDOM -->">Random Link</a> | <a href="<!-- PLUGIN:ADD_URL -->">Add your site</a> </td> </tr> </table>

I'm also adding my own banner at the bottom of the page. Again, I'm calling it from my other portal since I haven't set up BannerMaster here yet.

Finally, at the very bottom of the page there is a Home Page link that I'm going to make a full URL instead of a relative URL so that it works in all directories. You do need to make this change as the link will lead to a 404 error if you don't. I'm also fixing the URL for Site Additions as that leads to a 404 as well. Mine will be: http://www.portal-help.com/getlisted.html And I'm changing the feedback mailto: address to my portal email account. I don't know about the copyright statement. I'll leave that until I check with Bob, although I am updating it to reflect the current year.

Bob has approved this text to appear in place of the current copyright notice: Powered by Searchking. Copyright for concept and design of templates are held by Searchking, Inc. All content is the sole property of the specific portal owner. Searchking, Inc. accepts no responsibility for content. This is better, not just for us as portal owners, but also for Searchking in case someone decides to do something crazy and illegal with their portal.

And that's all I'm doing to this page right now. I'll add it to the site via the Template Editor. Now, if someone browses my categories or What's Cool page, etc., they will be seeing pages based on this template. I'm going to make the same changes to the Search Results page.

The front page is a bigger mess to edit, but I want to get my own links and stuff on there, so it's going to be worth it. First, I can have my own banner at the top of this page, so I'm going to drop down to the javascript that calls the banner and change the three variables to point to my BannerMaster account at my other portal. My ultimate goal is to get my BannerMaster account running on this portal though--then I can replace this long javascript with the banner plugin and have it work more reliably for Netscape users. But for now, I want to get this going.

Now I'm going to drop down to where it says The MarketPlace and put in my own affiliate links (which I urge you to use every single day for huge purchases - he he he).

I'm going to take out the WebTV area because a) the graphic is broken and b) I've looked at this page in WebTV and it just doesn't look good to me. I don't like to make claims that I feel iffy about, and this is definitely one. You make your own choice on your portal.

Now I'm to the second column. The Searchking mail section irritates me because it's HUGE and it's taking up prime real estate. Trying to move it further down the page with all these nested tables is giving me a headache. I've made four unsuccessful stabs at it, so I'm calling it a day on that and I'm going to talk with Mike about editing my template to put comments at the beginning and end of the mail section. Then I'll archive that page with the comments so that you can use it to compare to your page if you want to move the big mail area down below your directory like I do. Feel free to help me pressure Mike about doing this :-)

Mike has confirmed my suspicions that this layout has the mail section so inextricably nested in its current location that it can't be teased out by mere mortals. He has been kind enough, however, to provide some templates that allow much more flexibility. NOTE:2/12/200: I did manage to tease the email out of it's location and move it down to the lower section of the page. In doing so, I've lost the nice alignment of the text bars at the top of the two columns. I still like it better though. Feel free to copy it if you like.

Next, I'm taking out the DMOZ Cool button. It may have been awarded to Searchking, but it wasn't awarded to my portal and again, I just don't feel that it's right for me to have it on my page. This is in it's own little paragraph so I don't have to decipher the nested tables to get at it. Thank goodness!

Finally, I'm going to fix the mailto: for the Support, Webmaster, and Sales links under the Contact Us section. Then I'm going to fix the links at the very bottom of the page for Email, How to Advertise, Feedback, and site additions. I'm going to revisit a lot of stuff on this page, but for now I've stomped the bad links and made sure all the mailto links will work.

Because I've edited HTML, I want to make really sure that everything still shows up in Netscape. These tables make me nervous. Yup, it's all good. I upload my affiliate buttons and then use the Template Editor to put the new front page up.

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