Web Design Tips
After you learn how to construct web pages, here's some general tips on making your Web sites more compelling and easy on both the viewers eyes and search engine spiders indexing your site:
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Keep your
home page small in terms of text and graphics (less than 50k). Be careful
about overdoing it -- start small with an eye on the future. |
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Use graphics
only when necessary, and use the same general style throughout your site. |
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Put standard
navigation icons on each page to make it easy for visitors to move Forward,
Back, and Home without having to use the back button. |
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Check the
links on your pages constantly -- bad links are "stale" links. |
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Update your
pages as often as possible. This keeps people coming back. Create reasons
for people to come back. |
Your home page
don't have to be flashy. Make it simple and to the point so people know
what you have to offer. Use simple words and short paragraphs so the reader
will stay interested. The main purpose of your Web site is to keep everyone
interested. Keeping sentences short and precise and ghost your home page
(the same background) to the other sub pages will make for a great Web
page.
Spell
Checking and Proofing
Nothing says
unprofessional quite like a misspelled word. Spell check each of your Web
pages. Have someone else proofread your pages before you upload them to
your server because many times when we read what we have written we over
look spelling errors. Don't let it happen to you.
Most HTML editors
and word processors have spell checking functions so take advantage of
that and use it.
Alt
Text
You may want
to have alternative text for each image. This is the text that goes in
the alt attribute of the img tag. There are many important reasons for
doing this: Some webmasters do while some don't so its really up to you
if you want to ad alt text.
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Some software
for the disabled uses this information. If not done then you will loose
visitors if the disable graphics. |
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Several search
engines use text from the alt tag while spiddering your site. |
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Surfers may
want to click on linked images before they have finished loading. |
Try viewing
your pages using a graphics capable browser with images turned off. It's
also a good idea to test your pages with a text-only browser, such as Lynx.
HTML
Validation
HTML code that
fails to meet W3C standards is much more likely to cause obscure problems.
Remember, just because it looks good in your browser window doesn't mean
that it looks good in all browsers. Be sure to view your site in different
browsers to see what your site looks like in each one.
You can use
of a free online page validation tool to check things out. See below for
more information.
Link
Validation
Broken links
( linkrot) will happen to all of us at one time or another, especially
with external links. Nevertheless, it's important to do your best to keep
all links, internal and external, working. The easiest way to avoid this
situation is by testing links frequently. You can do yourself or use online
services and software to track down broken links.
Referencing
Graphics
This is a mistake
nearly every newbie will makes. Graphics loaded into cache on your computer
will display in your browser, Also, you will see the graphic in your browser
if its HTML path points to your local hard drive. The problem with this
is that everyone but you will see a broken image.
To check that
graphics are linked correctly, clear cache, close your browser, open a
new browser window, and visit your site. Even then, the cache may not be
cleared so be sure to have a friend go to your site and check it for broken
images.
Search
Engine Optimization
Look your pages
over like the search engines do. Have you included good titles, meaningful
page descriptions, and meta keyword phrases? Is the content of your pages
optimized for desired keywords? Is relevant keyword rich content near the
top of the page?
Load
Time Optimization
How long it
will take your pages to load on various Internet connections? If it takes
to long to load then you will loose that surfer. Make your graphics files
as small as possible. Some HTML editors and validation utilities will automatically
compute download times at various modem speeds. Otherwise, for a rough
estimate, figure 1 second for every 1k on a 28.8 connection.
Text
Tips
View your page
layout after changing your browser text size setting. Its also a good idea
to print each of your pages to see how they look and make any corrections
afterwards. If you are using any uncommon font specifications be sure to
test the pages on a machine that lacks those fonts to see how your page
may look when using those uncommon fonts.
Web
page
A Web page
is nothing more than a text file that contains not only text, but also
a set of HTML tags that describe how the text should look when a browser
displays it on the screen. The tags are instructions that tell the Web
browser how the page should look when it is displayed. Browsers handle
these in different ways so its a good idea to use different browsers to
view you webpages to see how they look in each browser.
HTML
HTML stands
for Hyper Text Markup Language. A "markup language" is a computer language
that describes how a page should be formatted. If you want your webpage
to stand out from the rest and not be so plain then HTML is the language
you use to do it.
Web
browser
A Web browser,
like Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer, is a computer program
that does a couple things in different ways: A Web browser goes to a Web
server on the Internet and request a page through the network and into
your machine. A Web browser knows how to interpret the language of the
HTML tags to display the page on your screen the way the page's creator
intended it to be viewed.
Once you create
your Web page, you will want to put it on a Web server for all the world
to see. Many services and institutions with Web servers offer free space
to post your pages. AOL offers free space to their members, and many colleges
offer space to their students. There are also many commercial sites that
offer free space. The only drawback to these options is that you will most
likely have to display the site's advertisement banner on top of or within
your page and most have pop-ups after leaving every page so that is a draw
back. Below are a few of these free sites you can use.
Its best to
get your own domain name and pay a small monthly fee to upload your site
to their server. Most professional sites go this route. Its up to you as
to how you will go about having your site hosted but having your own domain
name and a hosting company is the best way if you are wanting to make money
from your site. If you are just posting family pictures so family and friends
can see them then I would go with a free hosting company but if you want
to generate money from your site then get your own domain name and pay
for hosting. REMEMBER: Most Adult Resource Sites will not post your link
at their sire because of FREE Hosting.
Great
Tools
Once you get
your page on a server, you will want to know what kind of traffic you are
getting. A place like Adultfreestats,
PornTracker,
or Hyper Count provides
that service for free and gives you very complete statistics.
There are a
number of tools you can use to help make your site better. One of the best
is the Netmechanic. This
site has the tools that will check your site for HTML errors, spelling
errors, load time over the network, meta tags, browser compatibility, etc.
Another good
place to go is Downlinx.
You can download freeware to do lots of things with your site.
Reciprocal
linking is an "I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine" activity.
The idea is to locate sites related to yours and send them e-mail asking
them to link to you. In return, you generally offer to link back to them.
The best way
to set up reciprocal links is to simply browse the Web looking for related
sites and send e-mail to them. You will find that the response rate is
perhaps 25 percent. But it can't hurt to try, and the more links you have
on the Web the more traffic you will get. One link in exactly the right
place can make a BIG difference in the traffic that a new site receives.
Have text links
on every sub page so people will be able to click back and forth through
your site, that way they will not have to use to forward or back button
on their browser. When you have a link, be it text or graphics, always
use the "text alternatives" just in case they have their graphic option
turned off. This way they will still be able to see what the link is for.
The more graphics
you have on your site, the longer it will take to load and if it takes
more than 30 seconds then you may end up loosing someone because more than
30 seconds seems like forever when it comes to loading someone's web page.
You may only have one chance at keeping the customer at you web site so
make it simple and to the point.
Keep your text
to 3 or less colors ( 2 will be the best ), the more colors you have the
worse it will stand out and make your site look unattractive.
You have valuable
contents on your web site, so make it easy to navigate and read so everyone
will stay interested, and in doing so they will book mark your site for
future use.
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