Anyone can put up a web site. The hard part is helping people discover it, and then stay with it. Your first priority: Make your site people friendly. Your second: Make it search-engine friendly.

Here are a few more specific suggestions:

Design it well. Make it pleasing to the eye, and easy to navigate. If the site has a lot of pages, develop a structure that people can easily navigate, rather than throwing too many links up at once.

Write well. Re-read your text before posting it. Correct spelling and grammar errors. Use clear and concise language.

Stick to your subject(s). Don't be all over the map with content. Keep the site focused, at most, on a handful of topics that you're passionate about.

Link with words, not pictures. For web navigation, a word is worth a million pictures. A link that reads "The eternal allure of the Three Stooges" says more about the page it leads to than a photo of Larry, Moe, and Curly. That holds true for search engines as well as for people.

Use title and description tags. Search engines give priority to the text in these tags, and usually display their contents in result pages. So think carefully about what you want to put here.

Try to read your title through the eyes of a stranger. It should clearly describe the page. See the comments on this post to see how I messed up in this area.

And where do you put this text? In your page's HTML code, the title text goes between the <title>and </title> tags. The description goes inside a meta tag that looks something like this:

• <meta name="description" content="This is where you put the content of your description. It can be longer and thus more descriptive than a title." />.

Describe your images. When you do use pictures, give them descriptive file names. Also, describe the picture in the image tag's alt attribute. The Alt text is there for people who can't see the images, but it also helps search engines. In the HTML code, that tag looks something like this:

• <img src="http://urltopicture/filename.jpg" alt="Put your alt text here" />.

Finally, links can be extremely helpful in drawing people to your site. That's one of several reasons why I always suggest that people read the original forum discussion. And then I include additional links in the italicized "bio" paragraph below.

You can and should encrypt your individual email messages during transit, but both you and your recipient must do some work ahead of time to make the protection work properly. You can use encryption features built into your email service, or you can download encryption software or client add-ons (such as those that use OpenPGP). In a pinch, you can use a Web-based encryption email service like Sendinc or JumbleMe, though doing so forces you to trust a third-party company.

Most forms of message encryption, including S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) and OpenPGP, require you to install a security certificate on your computer and to give your contacts a string of characters called your public key before they can send you an encrypted message. Likewise, the intended recipients of your encrypted message must install a security certificate on their computer and give you their public key in advance.

Support for the S/MIME standard is built into many email clients, including Microsoft Outlook. In addition, Web browser add-ons, like Gmail S/MIME for Firefox, support Web-based email providers as well. To get started, you can apply for a security certificate from a company such as Comodo.

The OpenPGP (Pretty Good Privacy) email encryption standard has a few variants, including PGP and GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG). You can find free and commercial software and add-ons, such asGpg4win or PGP Desktop Email, that support the OpenPGP type of encryption.a

If you're a Google Chrome user, you can keep Facebook front and center with MyStatusBar. This extension adds a Facebook status bar to the bottom of your browser, where it stays visible in every tab you have open. That way you can keep up with the latest messages, friend requests, and notifications, all without clicking away from your current page.

Here's how to get set up with MyStatusBar:

1. Head to the extension's page in the Chrome Store, then click Add to Chrome.

2. Wait until you see a new tab, then click the Login to Facebook button at the bottom.

3. That'll open a pop-up window, where you'll click Log in with Facebook.

4. Now you'll see a permissions list. You'll probably want to allow them all to get the maximum benefit from MyStatusBar, but you can certainly disable any you're uncomfortable with. (Needless to say, using an extension like this requires access to your account.)

5. On my system, I had to click the X in the bottom-right corner of that window, the one just above the blue MyStatusBar bar, to make the Allow button visible. Without clicking that button, you can't finish the setup.

And that's it! Now just open a new tab and you'll see your Facebook status bar at the bottom.