![Screenshot of Allaire.com [February 8, 1999]](graphics/allaire_scrn.gif)
Someone once said "The sum of the parts exceed the value of the whole", and this week's HomeSite featured site, Wild Texas, embodies that phrase in more than one way. In one respect, the combined talents of a husband and wife: one a developer, and the other a nature photographer, makes this site more robust than similar sites compiled by a traditional team of developers. In another sense, the Web site as a whole demonstrates just how much a site can be enhanced by incorporating shareware scripts and advanced functionality that you'd never have the time to code yourself.
Wild Texas is the creation of freelance Web developer Shannon Moore, and freelance outdoor photographer Justin Moore. The couple lives in San Antonio, Texas and Shannon has been using HomeSite since it was shareware, and using it on the Wild Texas site since Aug. 1995. Her passion is bringing the beauty of nature to people through words, while her husband's is bringing that beauty to people through photographs. As their sites have grown, more and more of her Wild Texas site and his OutdoorPhoto.com site have become intertwined. Wild Texas simply would not be what it is without the inclusion of the nature photography, and visitors wishing to learn more about the places Justin Moore photographs benefit from links to the Wild Texas park profiles.
Integrating Third-party Scripts
For a personal Web site, this one is surprisingly feature-rich. Shannon has included some very functional and complete components that all but guarantee that her viewers will become repeat visitors. To enhance the site, she's integrated a Search Engine, Interactive mapping, a Mailing List, a Postcard Generator, and a discussion forum (Web board) - all through the use of shareware scripts that are readily available on the Web.
"I'm always on the lookout for Perl CGI scripts that may be useful on Wild Texas," says Moore. "I found the search engine and postcard generator scripts at one of my favorite Web development sites, BigNoseBird.com, where they provide free scripts with helpful installation instructions, as well as tutorials on HTML markup, Apache server configuration, and bandwidth-friendly graphics. The rest of my scripts were culled from Matt Wright's comprehensive CGI Resources Web site which other HomeSite developers have mentioned."
Since maintaining a consistent look-and-feel throughout Wild Texas is extremely important, she uses HomeSite to customize the HTML output of all CGI scripts that she uses. This way, the result screen of the search engine, the message forum and postings, and the postcard generator all seamlessly fit with the rest of the Web site. This increases development time somewhat, because any changes to the site design (such as a new button on the left-hand navigation bar) must be reflected in the various CGI scripts. However, after configuring HomeSite to recognize .CGI and .PL as editable file extensions, she can quickly update the scripts using HomeSite's extended search & replace.
"I'm no Perl programming guru, but I also customize some of the code to make the scripts do exactly what I want," says Moore. "A good example of this is the script used to support the Texas Outdoors Clubs Directory: that script started out life as a " Web address book" for use with Pro CD's Select Phone database. 2002 NOTE: That feature is no longer online; it is replaced by the "Clubs & Organizations" sections of our Web Guide. I purchased a copy of the script from Dbasics Software Company and then customized it for Wild Texas using HomeSite."
Affiliate Programs
Also of interest to other Web developers is the integration that Shannon has done to provide the Travel Desk and Bookstore sections of the Wild Texas Web site. Both of these areas are made possible through affiliate network programs that have revenue opportunities for Web site builders. If you want to leverage large-scale transactions without the administrative responsibilities, this is a great traffic generator for Webmasters. Shannon first learned about affiliate opportunities through the VirtualPromote Web site, an invaluable guide to site promotion.
"My Amazon.com affiliation has been a tremendous asset," says Moore. "In over a year of being an Amazon.com affiliate, I have seen my referral revenue increase up to 50% each quarter. In fact, I anticipate the Amazon.com affiliation will soon entirely pay for the quarterly costs of hosting Wild Texas on a virtual server."
Managing Graphics & Content
All of the photographs and other graphics on both Wild Texas and outdoorphoto.com were created and optimized for Web use in ULead's PhotoImpact image editing software. PhotoImpact offers similar image editing and Web-critical features to those offered by Adobe Photoshop, but at a fraction of the price ($100 retail).
"ULead's PhotoImpact has served us well for the past several years," describes Moore. "Many visitors to our sites remark on the high quality of our graphics and how quickly they load. Our "secret" is PhotoImpact's built-in SmartSaver that lets us preview GIF, JPEG, and PNG images at various color depths/levels of compression to see the resulting file size and image quality. In addition to numerous effects and controls that empower graphics designers, PhotoImpact also includes other Web-worthy capabilities such as a button designer, background (texture) designer, and imagemap tag helper. We'd be lost without PhotoImpact just as we'd be lost without HomeSite!"
Both Justin and Shannon had been developing their respective Web sites using other shareware HTML editors (Hot Dog and HTML Assistant Pro, respectively). As they gained more familiarity with HTML, they began wanting something more from their HTML editors and turned to HomeSite. Now, with more than 260 HTML documents spread across several dozen directories, HomeSite's project features makes link validation and extended search & replace operations on both sites "a breeze".
"HomeSite has really become an invaluable tool that takes away the burden of unnecessarily tedious tasks for developers," says Shannon Moore. HomeSite ties together everything I need to develop and maintain Wild Texas including link validation, spell checking, and HTML validation. Before HomeSite, I used to rely on several different programs to have all these features at my disposal. Now I can spend more time enjoying the outdoors and sharing my experiences with my husband, and my readers."
Wild Texas was recognized as an Allaire Featured Site in February 1999. The following article appeared on