Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
pros
.
If you're already generating Word or PDF documents for consump-
tion in your oice, publishing those ile formats directly to a Web site
saves you from having to generate something else for the Web.
. Because you're not hampered with design or having to integrate your
information into an already existing structure, making a Word or
PDF document can be a lot faster.
he people who ind your document can easily print it out, save it to
their own hard drives, or move it somewhere else to peruse at their
leisure (which can sometimes be tough with multi-page Web sites).
.
cons
. If you're not already generating a report for the oline set, this method
will in fact be an extra step.
. Search engines, while they're okay at indexing Word, text, and PDF
documents, are pretty awful at formatting them—your carefully
crated report may end up looking at bit spastic through Google's
“view as HTML” lens.
. Standalone reports can also be a bear to update, and it's tough to
inform users that you've got a report that has more information than
the report they viewed last week (it's a little easier to see the updates
on a Web site). As far as I know, you can't publish an RSS feed from a
Word document. And in my experience, it's a little tougher to ind a
standalone document like a PDF ile than it is a Web site.
essentials
he essentials for posting these kinds of documents are pretty simple: make a
document in your favorite (preferably popular) word processor and upload it
to a Web site! he following tips may help you ensure your document survives
the translation into HTML by a search engine without getting mangled:
. Use as little formatting as possible.
One column beats two columns. Sometimes if you format your con-
tent in two columns, the search engine has a hard time indexing it
and presenting it in a readable format.
. Fewer pictures are, in my experience, better than a lot of pictures. Try
to reserve pictures for when illustration of a point is really necessary.
.
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