John Tuttle wrote in 060716 MMDigest:

> Also, if you want to help prevent the search indexes from spidering
> your site and finding (and listing) the file, make sure it contains
> no 'readable' text or meta tags.  Search index spiders cannot read
> graphics, but they do read meta tags.

I don't know if the web spiders are paying much attention to meta
tags, but you can try using them.  They will pay attention to a
robots.txt file and you can learn about them at www.robotstxt.org.
You can also do a search for robots.txt to see what other webmasters
say.  A robots.txt file must be in pure ASCII text format, so create
it using Notepad, not Wordpad if you are using a PC.

Several programs are available that can download your entire web site
at one click and many people use these.  They do result in large
bandwidth numbers if your site is large and contains things that are
interesting.

If you have something really interesting to share, you might look
at free hosting.  I have used Geocities and Tripod, both are good,
but I believe Geocities is a little better.  Both offer web site
builder programs for free that let you put your web site together
without knowing HTML, etc.  Worst case, the site will be temporarily
out of service when some bandwidth trigger is reached.

There is a free program useful in reducing the size of image files.
It offers great control and can remove fluff such as the built in
thumbnail images in a JPG/JPEG file.  It's called IrfanView.  One of
its great features is batch mode -- you can set it to work on 2 or 200
pictures with one click.  It has a learning curve and you can reduce
the file to such small size it becomes pixelated, so experiment a lot
with it and work with copies as you will probably make the mistake
causing your originals to be overwritten.

IrfanView can work with almost any file format for images and video
and can save in many formats including JPG, PNG and GIF.  You can learn
about it at www.irfanview.com.

Don Shenbarger