Princess Kiara
All about Cub Kiara!
Here Kiara shares her tips for making your own website.
Page Index:
Disclaimer and Copyright Notice
When you are done browsing, why not place a vote?
Promoting Your Site
Some tips to promote your site and drive more visitors to it:
Got Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or MSN, AOL or Yahoo messengers? Post your site updates on Facebook, etc, and post your site URL in your MSN profile.
Join a Forum related to your website and put your URL/link button in your Forum signature.
Join Webrings and Fanlistings. Webrings especially is a great way to discover new sites, and promote your own. Check my home-page for some Webrings and Fanlistings. There are many different TLK/Disney Webrings and Fanlistings you can join.
Remember that upon joining, you must place a code on your site. This is explained on the sites of various Webrings and Fanlistings.
Doing a search on Google for Lion King/Simbas Pride Webring/Fanlisting should get you many results!
Visit other TLK/Disney themed sites and sign their Guestbooks! (It does not matter if the site was abandoned two years ago or if is updated weekly. It has not been deleted, so people can still visit!)
When you come across a site that you see is still active (check the last time it was updated) you can send the owner an email and ask if they want to be affilliates. This means that you put up a link to their site, and they put up a link to yours. You both gain traffic this way!
If you are a graphic-maker (such as icons) you can make an account at LiveJournal and publish your work, and advertise your site at the same time.
And of course the most important: Submit your site to Search Engines!
Freewebs users, go here on your Members Page:
Stats and Promotion - Site Promotion.
URL and Links
When choosing a site adress, it is beneficial to make it easy to remember. Avoid numbers, if possible. Try to make it identical to the site title. Its really confusing to be visiting a site where the URL is completly different from the site title.
When adding links to other sites, why not write a line about them at the same time? F.ex: If I were to link to my site about Cub Nala, I could write: This site is all about Nala as a cub. It has lots of information, screengrabs, downloads, movies and more.
Or just something short and simple, like:
This site is about Nala as a cub. Lots of goodies for Nala fans.
Interactive Site Content
It is always fun to visit a site that has interactive content. Why not add some to your site? Polls and quizzes are great ways to make your site more fun.
You can make your own quizzes at Quizilla, or something simpler: Why not make a quiz and put it directly on your site? Your own TLK/SP trivia, f.ex
With a little imagination you can make your very own games on your site. Or why not add some colouringpages, make your own stationary, or E-cards?
Here are some suggestions to games you can make yourself:
Navigation and Decoration
Make sure your NavBar (NavigationBar) is clean and easy to find and follow.
On your pages, you might want to add buttons to direct the visitor to the Home Page, to the Next page, Previous page, or simply Back to the Top of the Page. (this is especially useful if you have pages which require a lot of scrolling!)
A Page Index is also very useful for larger/longer pages.
Keep your site content easy on the eyes. (And ears!) Not everyone likes bright, busy backgrounds or music at every page.Try to keep your background designs clean and simple, and make sure your font is always easy to read. Don`t make it too small, and avoid bright colours on light backgrounds.
Adding things like animations, cool counters, glitter text/images, clipart and so on is a great way to decorate and personalize your website.
Bandwidth
Hotlinking should be avoided. This means to copy-and-paste images or other content on to your own site. Stealing bandwidth from other sites can cause problems for that site.
A couple of years ago, Freewebs sites would be frozen for days/weeks at the time the site exeeded its bandwidth limit. Alternativly, they would be sponsored with ads that appeared before the visitor could enter the site itself. Thankfully, Freewebs have raised this limit, but other hosting services (such as Geocities) may be very strict on the ammount of bandwidth regular users are allowed to have.
So be sensible: If you want to use images from another site, save them to your own computer and upload them to Freewebs. (Or whereever your site is hosted.)
Remember: if you hotlink images, and the site is shut down/deleted, your images will stop working! If you wish to keep your images, save them!
Credits
Credit goes where credit`s due. If you use material from other websites, remember to put a line of credit and/or a link to those sites. Remember that if you want to display fan-made material (such as fanart from Lionking.org) on your site, you must ask the creators permission first.
Disclaimer and Copyright Notice
Disclaimer and Copyright Notice.
This is a useful thing to add to the bottom of your Home Page, f.ex. It simply tells all your visitors that Disney owns all the rights to the movie/characters displayed on your site, (you dont work for Disney) and that you dont make money by running your site.
Below is a simple copyright notice you can add to your own site if you want to.
The Lion King, Simbas Pride, and all its related characters, images, etc are the property of the Walt Disney Company. The site owner is in no way affiliated with Disney, and no profit is being made from this website.
Sites Of Interest
Here are some sites that can be interesting if you have your own website,or are planning on making one.
Website hosting servicesFreewebs - Want to make a website? This is the place to start.
Image hosting
Make Quizzes
Quizilla - Make your own quizzes. It`s free, easy and fun!
Counters
All these websites offer free counters. Most of them require you to sign up with a name and email adress, though. Dont worry, it is free. I have used a counter from one of these sites on this site. Look at the home page.
Glitter Graphics
Disney Glitter Graphics - Tons of glitter images of all Disney characters
Graphics Paradise - One page of Disney Glitters
More Disney Glitters - Glitter images of various Disney characters
Various Cartoon Glitters - Disney, Cartoon Network, HelloKitty, etc.
Glitter Text (make your own)
Image Archives (TLK and SP)
German SP Site - Go to Downloads for lots of clipart
Disney Colouring Pages
TLK and SP (This website is in Spanish)
SP Colouring (This website is in French)
Rate This Page!
If you think this page needs work/improvement, I will be happy to listen to your coments and suggestions. Feel free to fill in the Feedback form, or send me an email.
princess-kiara@hotmail.com