Designing Banners And Buttons According to Ad Standards

By Eileen Mullin

Dear Dr. Website: I'm just getting started in having Web advertising banners created to promote my company's site. My question is, are there any standard sizes for these banner images? I've seen Web ads in a number of different sizes and shapes on just the sites I visit every day. I'm outsourcing the design, and I don't want to have to go back and have the banners reconfigured if they're not sized correctly in the first place.

As you noted, a little casual Web surfing will turn up advertising graphics in a number of different dimensions. The image sizes may not be as random as you might think, however. Two industry groups, the Internet Advertising Bureau and the Coalition for Advertising Supported Information and Entertainment, have devised a model for standardizing image sizes for Web advertising.

The IAB/CASIE voluntary banner standards identify eight different image sizes that it recommends:

Full banner 468 x 60 pixels
Full banner with vertical
navigation bar 92 x 72 pixels
Half banner 234 x 60 pixels
Square button 125 x 125 pixels
Button #1 120 x 90 pixels
Button #2 120 x 60 pixels
Micro button 88 x 31 pixels
Vertical banner 20 x 240 pixels

Using these image sizes is strictly voluntary. If you wish to invest heavily in advertising on a specific site, you should contact the site's ad production department to determine their image requirements.

Managing Mailing Lists

Dear Dr. Website: My Web visitors give me their e-mail addresses via a single field in a form. My CGI program stores the addresses in a file. I then subscribe them in a message to majordomo. Do you know of a way to automatically subscribe someone into a majordomo list from a form?

There are a number of freely available tools that provide Web front ends to majordomo mailing lists, including MailServ and LWGate. With these kinds of services, your Web visitors can subscribe to your mailing list at the click of a button, instead of compelling you to provide that function via your own CGI scripting and list maintenance.

But before you adopt a new Web tool to handle your mailing list tasks, check out what customizations you could make to its interface to provide additional services. With some utilities, you can let visitors search the list's message archives easily, browse the archives in a hypertext format, search for similar mailing lists, and complete other related tasks.

An additional good resource for finding companies that offer these Internet mailing list services, either for a fee or for free, is the Internet Mailing List Providers list, which is updated monthly and posted to the comp.mail.misc Usenet newsgroup.

VR Sites, For Real

Dear Dr. Website: I'm interested in putting virtual reality on my Web site. What do I need to establish a basic VR site, and where can I get documentation for making such a site work?

Creating a VR world that visitors can access with a VRML browser can take your site to the next level of interactivity. The sites listed below will show you how you can begin to build immersive worlds.

The VRML Repository at the San Diego Supercomputer Center has informational listings on what VRML browsers are available and where you can find VRML plug-ins. You'll also find pointers to authoring tools, modeling software, documentation, and VRML user guides. If you're looking for ready-made VRML objects, follow the links to clip art collections and VRML object libraries.

On the Net: Internet Resources in Virtual Reality is a rich resource site with links related to VRML applications, publications, and resources. The applications range from architecture to games and entertainment to virtual communities.

Visit The Dr. Website Archives.
Click here for a list of Dr. Website's most frequently asked questions (and answers!).
Send your own question to Dr. Website.

Refresh Daily
Join Editor-in-Chief David Fiedler The Editor With No Time and find truth, justice, and a clue or two.

[ Site Map ]

ActiveX / VBscript

Animated GIF Archive

Browsers

CGI / Perl

Database Connectivity

Design / Graphics

E-Commerce

HTML-Advanced: DHTML, CSS

HTML / Site Authoring Tools

Intranet/Groupware

Java

JavaScript

Multimedia: Audio / Video / Streaming Technologies

Opinions

Refresh Daily: Editorial Column

Security

Servers & Server Tools

Site Design / Graphics

Site Management / Marketing / Log File Analysis

Tutorials

VRML / 3D

XML