More on Using META Tags; Linking From Frame to Frame

By David Fiedler and Scott Clark

Dear Dr. Website: I'm using Drop Down for URL links in a page with frames and want to TARGET another frame. I am using your strategy on how to TARGET to TOP, but when I tried substituting my desired frame for TOP (example: "bbmain.location"), I got the error message "bbmain was not defined."
TOP is a special reserved name. You can't just replace it with anything you want. We looked at your site, and sure enough, you don't have a "bbmain" page -- although you do have a "bb" page (in fact, you use both bb.htm and bbindex.html, as well as Home.html with a leading capital letter, all of which is almost guaranteed to jump up and bite you one day).
Set up a test page with the JavaScript code, make sure you have all the file extensions and cases correct, and try again. If that doesn't work, send us the URL for the test page and we'll take a look.
Dear Dr. Website: I run a Web development firm, and we have built a Web site for a winery here in California. The site is hosted with a large provider elsewhere. The winery wants an intranet, so we decided to place all intranet documents in a password-protected directory under the same domain name as the Web site.
Will the intranet directory and its contents be visible to Web-indexing robots, or will password protection keep those files safe? Should I include the META NAME=robots tag on every page, too? If information can be indexed, what is the solution? Do we need to set up our own servers?
An intranet is not just a password-protected site. By definition, a "real" intranet is hosted on the company's own hardware, behind a firewall, where nobody outside the company can get at it. That's the whole idea...keep it private. These links should help you learn a lot about intranets.
But meanwhile, you asked some good questions. If a program obeys the Robot Exclusion Standard, it won't try to crawl pages you marked, using a robots.txt file or the appropriate META tag. But that doesn't protect against programs that don't follow the standard, or against nosy folks prowling around looking specifically for robots.txt files to tell them what's trying to be hidden on a particular site.
Password protection will stop robots or spies, but it's no bar to the truly sneaky -- so if your client has really important information on their pages that its competitors could use to advantage, a real intranet is what they need.
Just tell them not to whine about the cost.
Dear Dr. Website: I want to add a page for pictures, but I am nervous about Web design and don't know how to link to a different page of my Web site. Do I have to choose a URL, or does my site choose it for me? I am too nervous to try anything...thanks, I hope this doesn't sound too menial.
You're too nervous. Relax. A Web site with a broken link never killed anyone.
Your "site" can't do anything, because it's nothing but a bunch of letters in a file. Since you seem wary of technology, we suggest using a page design program (such as FrontPage, VisualPage, or Fusion) that takes care of links, HTML, coding, and site publishing for you. If you're on a budget, look at AOLPress or Magic Site Wizard, both of which are free.

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