The AvantGo Channel Creation Checklist

• Review the AvantGo Custom Channel policy.
• This will tell you whether your plans qualify as a custom channel. The Custom Channel Policy is located at:

http://avantgo.custhelp.com/

• (Scroll to the bottom of the page.)
• If you plan to use your channel to distribute content to more than eight subscribers, complete the AvantGo Contact Form.
• You can find this at

http://avantgo.com/products/businesses/marketing_commerce/forms/markcomm_contact.html

• Take this step first!
• For more information, see the AvantGo Marketing Products page at:

http://www.ianywhere.com/avantgo/marketing/index.html

• If you don't have a mobile device that can run the AvantGo Client, talk to your manager about expensing one.
• You're really not going to get a good sense of how the AvantGo Client works without using a mobile device yourself. And while it's possible to use an emulator as your sole testing platform, we don't really recommend it.
• Create a directory or sub-domain somewhere on your site to put your AvantGo channel.
• Remember, this needs to be somewhere outside your firewall so that AvantGo sync servers can access it.
• Place a few test pages where your channel is going to be, and create a custom channel to test/view your channel.
• This is just to get you started in previewing your channel on a mobile device. There's no better way to figure out how a page is going to look than to try it yourself.
• For more information, see Creating your first channel.
• Once you can view your test page, start creating a separate template for your AvantGo channel pages within your site's publishing system.
• Different sites produce pages in different ways, but most likely, this will involve your creating a special AvantGo channel template within Vignette, ColdFusion, or ASP.
• Play around with the formatting until you're happy with the results.
• For more information, see Designing pages for the channel site.
• Place <meta name="HandheldFriendly" content="true"> tags on the top of every page.
• Avoid tables that go over 150 pixels wide, or 213 for Pocket PC.

  Users really dislike having to scroll horizontally within their AvantGo channel. This most often happens if you accidentally represent a table using pixel width values instead of percentage width values.

• There's no need to place your entire content in a 150-pixel table.

  This is a common mistake that I often see — sites publish all their news stories inside a 150-pixel table. There's no reason to do this — just use normal text. The AvantGo Client will word-wrap your text for the appropriate screen size. (Plus, if you put all your text into a 150-pixel table, it will look rather odd on a Pocket PC device.)

• Don't create your entire content with <font size="-2">.

  This is also a common mistake — people feel that if they're creating something for a small screen, they should be using a font that fits many characters within 150 pixels. This isn't necessary, because the default font is already quite small for these mobile devices.
   

  Because the Palm OS doesn't support small fonts, using a <font size=-2> tag will look perfectly normal when you're testing your page on Palm. But Pocket PC machines, as well as the newer Palm OS 5, support many more fonts, including <font size=-2>, meaning that your font will be smaller than you probably intended.

• Adjust your logo so it looks good on mobile devices.

  Usually this involves converting your image to a 216-color web-safe palette. For more information, see Designing graphics for channel pages.

• Preview your page on a Pocket PC device, not just a Palm OS device.

  If you don't have one readily available, you can also preview your page in Internet Explorer. Ask yourself: Do you have any text that looks strangely shifted to the left? Expecting to see a page break after a logo? Those formatting glitches will show up on Pocket PC devices as well.

• If you are creating an offline channel (that is, not a wireless channel), handle form submissions elegantly.
• We'll break this down into sub-steps as well.
• Do not place results in the Forms Manager. Instead, use cookies to link to search results on the front page.

  Remember the first rule about using the Forms Manager:
  
       Don't use the Forms Manager.
  
  Nobody knows about it. Even when users do know about it, most of them don't like using it. Use cookies to remember the user's last few search results and place links to them directly on the front page. For more information, see Submitting forms the right way.

• Replace any Submit buttons with SubmitNoResponse buttons.

  This gives you the opportunity to customize the dialogue box that appears, and you don't have to clutter the Forms Manager with unneeded forms. For more information, see Using submitNoResponse() with the Submit button.

• If you are creating a channel where users must complete a sign-up process before they can add your channel (like GMPDA Showroom), request a channel ID now, so you can start testing your <add_channel.pl?cha_id=xxxx&setcookie=...> link.
• This will involve your sending us two URLs — the URL of your subscription page, and the URL where your channel content is actually located.
• For more information, see Subscribing users with a sign-up process.
• Set up your channel for caching.
• Your servers will thank you for it later, and the sync time of your channel will greatly improve. See CHAPTER 5. Caching to improve channel performance. Specifically...
• Set up static stories to cache for at least 1 hour.

  Personally, I recommend 2 hours or more.

• Set up images to cache for 24 hours or more.

  This will probably be your biggest savings, as images are usually the largest chunks of data you're transmitting. Plus, you can safely cache them for longer periods of time.

• Set up personalized pages to be Cache-Control: Private.

  For more information, see Caching guidelines.

• If you really want, you can set your front page to be no-store, so that you can record the number of user syncs.

  Alternately, just include a 1x1 transparent GIF on your front page and set it as no-store. But remember, this only records the number of times a subscribed user has sync'ed. Not the number of page hits you're really getting. You need access to the AvantGo reporting tool for that.

• Test! Test! Test!
• Testing your channel before it goes live is always a good thing. DON'T just preview your channel in a web browser and assume it will work. Some web browsers, especially Internet Explorer, are more lenient about invalid HTML than the AvantGo Client is. You need to test your channel on the AvantGo Client. If you are a AvantGo media channel customer, you can contact your AvantGo sales representative to get assistance with testing your channel on the AvantGo Client.
• Restrict access to AvantGo sync servers only.

Note: The Custom Channel function is intended for personal, non-commercial use. If you are creating a custom channel for any other purpose, you must review our Custom Channel policy at:

http://avantgo.custhelp.com/

• For more information, see CHAPTER 8. Rolling out a channel.
• Tell AvantGo your channel is ready to go.

Note: This step is not applicable for Custom Channel users.

• Provide us with the following information:
• A 10-20 word description of your channel
• A 163x43 color logo for the AvantGo website.
• Where you want the channel to be located on our site.
• The exact title of your channel
• The URL of your channel
• Your channel's default properties (link depth, maximum size, off-site links, refresh time, and so on.)
• You've probably done most of this already when you returned the AvantGo media channel customer agreement to us.
• Get a channel ID from AvantGo.

Note: This step is not applicable for Custom Channel users.

• Contact AvantGo to obtain a channel ID. The next step explains how to use this unique ID when linking to your AvantGo channel.
• Promote your AvantGo channel on your site.
• Wait until we tell you your channel has been pushed to our production database. Then create a link on your site that looks something like this:

<a href="http://avantgo.com/channels/_add_channel.pl?cha_id=xxxx"> Subscribe to our AvantGo channel!</a>

• Where xxxx is the channel ID that we gave you in the previous step. This will subscribe your AvantGo channel to the user's AvantGo account (or create one if he doesn't have the AvantGo Client installed yet), and then take the user back to the referring page on your website.

Note: If you have a Custom Channel, rather than an M-Business Channel or a Media Channel, you will not receive a channel ID number from AvantGo and these instructions do not apply to you. In this case, follow the instructions on how to export your channel to your users in your "My AvantGo User Guide" at:

http://avantgo.com/doc/mobile/palm/desktop/dkchanexim.html

• For more information, see CHAPTER 9. Subscribing channel users.
• Watch the users pour in!
• Revel in the knowledge that people are secretly browsing your channel during meetings. Or possibly while on a really boring date.