History of Web Design We have to know the beginning in order to relate it to the present and the future. In the case of web design, history is conclusive and clear and it is interesting to dwell a tad in a world of imagination, art and craftsmanship. Together we go back' In the late 1960's, internet was used to transfer data between computers through the telephone network system. The transfer was made possible by transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP). It was developed by Advanced Research and Projects Agency. It was primarily developed for US military needs however, it was later used by some universities. In 1969, aside from the creation of ARPANET, Generalized Markup Language (GML) was also created. This was made possible by the brilliant minds of Charles Goldfarb, Edward Mosher, and Raymond Lorie. GML was then used to facilitate text management in large information systems. It was in 1980 when American National Standards Institute (ANSI) committee built on GML and published a working draft of Standard GML, or SGML. This was later on adopted as the standard system by government agencies, research companies and schools. Few years after, a scientist working at CERN, the Nuclear Particle Physics Laboratory in Switzerland, by the name of Tim Berners-Lee, invented the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to define the structure of Web pages. It is a standard hypertext language protocol and browser program that interrupts the html version and converts it into text. HTML was used in a lot of contents and multi-media images or anything that uses tables, graphics, audio, video, and mathematics symbols. Berners-Lee is also responsible for the early developments in the web's ability to link academic papers like books researches and studies electronically. Another contribution was the inception of the concept of internet to answer the intellectual and emotional queries of people around the world. It was also in 1980's when the web experienced a rapid evolution. The changes are now used by business, education, government and other companies and entities. This is the ear when the World Wide Web was developed by a scientist who has explored communication methods through computer network. Early on, browser programs were only capable of viewing texts, but nowadays, they have already developed into a wide range of computer platforms. Aside from that, there is also lots of authoring software available these days. In fact, it has turned very user-friendly that children can very well understand and use it! About the author: Please visit Web Development Services Pros site at http://www.webdevelopmentpros.com for comments and inquiries regarding this article.
Outsourcing Web design and development Company EGB systems and solutions is an IT company. We have well trained and experienced staff. We have programmers, software testers and SEO. The working environment is very good. Our company is a full service web site design company providing all services such as website optimization, search engine submissions and promotion. Our motto is 'If you think big, then you can achieve the goal'. Layout and Design All the web pages should have navigation aid so that it will be convenient for the user to move to the next page. The web pages should have graphics with less color. Original Content Each web page should be unique. By doing this, the user feels like navigating towards the next web page. Any overlap of the content may lose the interest of the user. There are so many ways you can make the web site attractive. Website design services include the following: * Static web design * Dynamic web design * Website re-design Static Website Design A static website is the simplest way to showcase your business online. It is the easiest type of website to set up, but making changes to static websites require web programming knowledge. Dynamic web design If you require regular or constant updates to your website, consider dynamic website services. Web site re-designs As the Internet grows, outdated methodologies are causing more and more websites to fall to the side. It is important that you keep the look of your website fresh and maintain cutting-edge standards of design, navigation, and functionality. You should regularly schedule a complete redesign of your website, periodically giving your visitors a new and exciting experience. This service will ensure: * Professional execution of the website. * Increases your user's usability. * Enhance the perception of your organization. While designing a custom Website for our clients, we ensure the following:
* Information architecture: structural design of shared information environments. * Accessibility Flash website design is useful and helpful in creating innovative design of the website. This website also creates animation with sound effects, thereby leaving long-lasting impact on the users. Flash web pages are full of graphics and multimedia content. You can do flash animations and corporate flash presentations so that the user will be attracted to the website. You can utilize flash in your website in forms of:* Flash Introductory page * Animated Logo design * Photo galleries * Animation with background music * Flash Buttons * Flash Menus In flash animation, combination of different fonts and effects and an unlimited number of text lines is possible. Our approach to web application begins with creating systems that meet functional requirement and serve large organization goal. We enhance the work quality and efficiency of the users. Our application development services include: * Strategy and planning - A complete needs analysis * User interface design - Application design, layout, and navigational controls * Software engineering - Full functional and technical documentation * Production and deployment -quality assurance Some of the types of applications we have developed: * Web database design and development * System upgrades and migration * Customer service systems * Feedback and communications systems * Online ordering, e-commerce systems, and online payment options Outsourcing is the practice of giving the project work to professionals. It is a term used when a company takes a part of its business and gives that part to another company. Need of outsourcing The reason of outsourcing is: * To reduce capital expenditure over a business process. * The management gets more time to concentrate over core competencies. * We need not depend upon internal resources. * Increases the flexibility to meet the changing business and commercial conditions. Types of outsourcing Offshore outsourcing: When a company on another continent is involved is offshore outsourcing. Near shore: This refers to outsourced projects outside the country, but on the same continent.
Eg: US based company outsourcing to a company in Canada. Why should we outsource? Outsourcing depends on various factors: If we take an example of IT, there could be one of the circumstances favoring an outsourcing solution:* Less of senior IT management * IT strategy not consistent with business strategy * IT budget is not predictable * High inventory costs Benefit of outsourcing Outsourcing is useful in increasing product quality, lowering firm consumer cost. * To focus on core competencies. * Benefit the economy in terms of productivity. Disadvantage of outsourcing Outsourcing may result in the loss of flexibility in reacting to changing business conditions and cost savings. If your company is outsourcing business process such as payroll, confidential information such as salary will be known to service provider. So we must be careful in choosing which process to outsource and which one not. About the author: The word design means draft a specification and write a blue print for any product. Web designer creates web pages that can be used by any reasonable user agent. We do content updates. The communication takes place between user interfaceand other online applications.
10 First-Time Coaching Website Pitfalls to Avoid Mistakes cost. They cost you time, money and frustration - all things that can jeopardize the success of your coaching business. And if, according to statistics, most coaching practices fail to grow to sustainable and profitable levels to begin with, why increase your chances of failure, particularly when your website - one of your most important marketing tools - is concerned? If you can avoid these common pitfalls when building your first coaching website, you can put yourself light years ahead of the competition. You can also avoid the headaches, and save yourself thousands of dollars. The biggest payoff? You'll build a rewarding practice sooner. -- Problem 1: Having a blurry vision. Just like when you coach a client toward a goal, that goal needs to be clear, detailed and
time-specific. The goal also needs to be well defined, so that the client can say, "Yes! I've attained this goal!" In other words, the goal is like a guiding light, helping the client to make decisions that will help him get closer to his goal - not farther away from it. It's like when a person says, "I want to be healthy." While it's a nice sentiment, those words don't paint a clear or detailed vision of what the client really wants or needs. It doesn't get specific enough to tell you what it means to be healthy, or how this state will be achieved, or when it is to be achieved by. It's blurry. Now consider your website: if your vision is hazier than the smog in LA, it's tough to know what content to choose, what to write about, how to organize your site and, most important, what purpose it will serve. You will struggle to build it and in the end it probably won't be very helpful. -- Problem 2: Not having a specific audience with a specific problem. It's not easy to get attention when you tell people, "Hey, I'm a coach. I can help you solve your problems and reach success!" Not only is a message like that general and ambiguous, it's hard to sink your teeth into and really feel. Such a general message is even harder to spread on the Web, because there are so many distractions and a visitor's attention span is drastically-reduced. Websites that don't reach out and grab don't keep visitors for very long. However, if your website is targeted towards a specific group with a specific problem such as expectant mothers worried about their baby's health; operations managers with low division output; overweight teens, to name a few - you would have an easier time gaining interest, holding attention and securing business. -- Problem 3: Selling coaching services when you are really selling solutions to problems. Contrary to the intuition of many coaches, you are not in the business of selling coaching. You are in the business of selling a solution to a problem. Case in point: People don't hire a personal trainer to force them to lift weights or do cardio; after all, this takes a lot of work and effort. What they do want is for the personal trainer to help them look good and feel good. And so, they hire the trainer to help them go from lethargic, unmotivated and out of shape to fit, healthy and attractive. Similarly, people hire coaches to help them solve a problem and obtain success - like turning a low-paying dead end job into a fulfilling, lucrative career. Thus, your website needs to be organized and written in language that talks about problems, solutions and results - that which people are buying. -- Problem 4: Not realizing that content needs to be written - and
written well. Many coaching websites go up without realizing that there needs to be this thing called 'content.' These sad sites usually end up bare, with a few uninteresting, empty-looking pages. To present yourself as a professional, credible coach who can help people, you will need to write good content to: ' Explain what you do in an easy-to-understand way ' Prove to your visitors that you can help them ' Build interest in your coaching services ' Make visitors feel they can trust you ' Connect on a deeper level with visitors ' Encourage visitors to take action Once you've done that, the rest is gravy. -- Problem 5: Not knowing what you want your website visitors to do. As a coach, you are looked upon as the person to lead your clients to a better situation. And so your website will need to do the same: lead visitors upward and onward. If you don't have a clear sense of what you want visitors to do, your vision as a leader is weakened, and the desire to hire you as a coach is greatly diminished. For many coach websites, you will want to lead visitors on to the action of contacting you to further discuss becoming your client. Your website must encourage action, and make that action easy to do. -- Problem 6: Hiring a friend or family member to do your site. This always sounds like a good money-saving idea -- at first. But in the end, asking a friend or family member to build your site almost always ends up as a big mistake, for several important reasons. First, your website --which will surely require hours of a friend's personal time - is not likely to be at the top of their list of priorities. Playing golf or going to the beach, however, will. In every case I've heard of, the website didn't get done. Second, if your friend or relative isn't a professional, talented designer, chances are that your website won't come out looking that great. If your pal is a pro, you can bet your unpaid dollar that they'll be busy working on other projects first and putting your stuff on the back burner. Third, does your friend know what works - and what doesn't work -- for coaching websites?
Unless your pal or family member is a website guru, knows the coaching industry, hasn't any income needs and has free time to dedicate to you, you might be better off turning to a professional. -- Problem 7: Worrying about search engines too much. While it's important to bear search engines in mind for potential future growth and to enable prospects to find you easily, for many first-timers, search engines are given too much weight. The reason is that your first efforts to get clients won't be heavily Internet-based. The fact of the matter is that most coaches are not Internet gurus, don't want to be, and prefer to do hands-on coaching. Before you worry about search engines, you're better off building a site with good, credibility-building content; smooth, easy-to-use architecture; and an image that your potential clients will relate to and find appealing. This will serve you much greater at the outset. As long as your web designer is compliant with designing for search engines, so that your site will be accessible to them and that your basic tags are written, that's all you really need to worry about. -- Problem 8: No project manager. Whether you hire a designer or do it yourself, you'll somehow need to manage the website-building effort. The problem is, as a coach, you're not necessarily familiar with the website-design process; including the rights steps to get the job done to completion, and on time. Many designers like to act as "employees" and thus don't take the lead in terms of getting your website project done. Therefore, you are appointed as the de facto project manager and will need to stay on top of your designer, and tell them what to do, in order to get the job done - and done right. You may want to pick up a book on managing the website design process, hire a mentor coach who knows, or be sure to find a professional web designer who will provide this kind of service. -- Problem 9: Not being able to easily update your site on your own. If you're a coach in business for yourself, perhaps for the first time, you'll want to be able to make basic updates for two main reasons: First, since many newer coaches have tight budgets, doing your own updates save you
money that would otherwise go to your web designer. You can make updates quickly, as needed, say in the middle of the night as you pump out your newsletter. Also, many designers don't put a high priority on updates and they often get done later than desirable. You can eventually have your VA do it. Before working with a web designer, make sure you will have easy access to your website and can make simple updates like adding an article, updating your events page and adding a link. -- Problem 10: You don't own your site and name. In an attempt to make money from your continued existence and help ensure you remain a client, many web designers and design firms will register your domain name and host your website as if it were their own. This is bad because if you choose to go elsewhere for your website development help, you may not be able to get your website and/or you may have to be a surprisingly large fee for it. Ideally, you should own your website and domain name to give you the freedom to go elsewhere if need be, and to protect you from unexpected high fees. In conclusion, bear these 10 pitfalls in mind as you develop your first coaching website. They will put you years ahead, save you thousands of dollars, and most importantly, help you build a profitable, fulfilling practice. About the author: Kenn Schroder helps coaches who are struggling to attract clients. He provides web design, web marketing and search engine optimization to help you build a clientattracting coaching website. Get your FREE report and FREE newsletter to help you build a practice full of clients. http://www.CoachingSitesThatWork.com
How to Build Great Websites Using Grandma's Apple PIE Recipe Been to Grandma's lately? Maybe for a holiday get-together or a family gathering?
Well, what happens after you've stuffed your face with turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing? Yep, the desserts come out. Lots of them. And the most mouth watering of all? Grandma's freshly baked apple pie. Mmm, Mmm good! You know what happens next: Your eyes widen with anticipation. Your mouth begins to water as you envision the yummy pie you're about to enjoy. You are sold! Gimme pie! And that's exactly what should happen when people visit your website. They should salivate at the thought of what you're going to serve them - your coaching products and services. Now let's take a deeper look at the recipe for Grandma's apple PIE. It has three ingredients: P for pretty; I for interesting; and E for easy. P: It's pretty. The mere sight of that pie sends shivers up and down your spine. It's appetizing to look at; gorgeous to behold. I: It's interesting. Not only does it look good, it smells good. It's warm and fresh. The heat and aroma emanating from the steaming pie warms your face, tickles your nose and tantalizes your taste buds. And when you bite into it, your mind and body go into pleasure shock. It's more than interesting; it's euphoric! E: It's easy! Heck, Grandma went to all the trouble of making it; all you have to do is open wide and take a bite. You are sold! But most coaching websites aren't that delicious. They're ugly, boring and tough to use. So, how can you use Grandma's recipe to cook up a mouthwatering website that satisfies the taste buds of new clients? It's easy as PIE... Ingredient 1 - P: Pretty Your website needs to be Pretty - professional in appearance, and visually delightful. You want visitors to say, "Hey, nice site!" not, "Yuck, what a mess!" Your visitors will need to read your website in order to get excited about what you have to offer. The fonts, colors, backgrounds and images must all work together to make your website easy to read. Ingredient 2 - I: Interesting Your site's got to be Interesting - alluring, engaging and motivating.
The copy you write must be vibrant enough to interest and motivate your readers. It must also compel them to seek your coaching services, in order to get relief from their problems and maintain hope for a brighter, more successful future. Readers need belief in you as the coach who can help them. Interesting words can do that. Ingredient 3 - E: Easy Your site needs to be Easy - particularly, easy to navigate. It must be organized logically so that visitors can know what's there, where to go and how to get back. The website must guide them along naturally. From a functional standpoint, things must work smoothly and quickly. No clunky forms, slow pages or unintuitive links. If your site is not easy, then visitors won't use it and they won't be interested in what you have to offer. They'll leave the table before dessert is served. So there you have it - Grandma's PIE recipe: Pretty, Interesting and Easy. Imagine if your website tasted like Grandma's hot apple PIE. Your visitors would probably need to join Weight Watchers, but at least you'd know they'd be chomping on your content 'til their bellies were full! The biggest benefit? You would have more clients coming to you with a hunger for your services. What could taste better than that? About the author: Kenn Schroder helps coaches who are struggling to attract clients. He provides web design, web marketing and search engine optimization to help you build a clientattracting coaching website. Get your FREE report and FREE newsletter to help you build a practice full of clients. www.CoachingSitesThatWork.com
Must Have Features Your Web Site Just don't focus on the home page, keywords and titles. The first step to sales when customers visit your site to see the products they were looking for. Of course, search engine optimization and better rankings can't keep your
customer on your site or make them buy. The customer having visited your site, now ensure that he gets interested in your products or services and stays around. Motivate him to buy the product by providing clear and unambiguous information. Thus if you happen to sell more than one product or service, provide all necessary information about this, may be by keeping the information at a different page. By providing suitable and easily visible links, the customer can navigate to these pages and get the details. Understanding Your Target Customer If you design a website you think will attract clients, but you don't really know who your customers are and what they want to buy, it is unlikely you make much money. Website business is an extension or replacement for a standard storefront. You can send email to your existing clients and ask them to complete a survey or even while they are browsing on your website. Ask them about their choices. Why do they like your products? Do you discount prices or offer coupons? Are your prices consistently lower than others? Is your shipping price cheaper? Do you respond faster to client questions? Are your product descriptions better? Your return policies and guarantees better than your competitor's? To know your customer you can check credit card records or ask your customer to complete a simple contact form with name, address, age, gender, etc. when they purchase a product. Does your website give enough contact information? When you sell from a website, your customer can buy your products 24 hrs a day and also your customers may be from other states that are thousands of miles away. Always provide contact information, preferably on every page of your website, complete with mailing address, telephone number and an email address that reaches you. People may need to contact you about sales, general information or technical problems on your site. Also have your email forwarded to another email address if you do not check your website mailbox often. When customer wants to buy online provide enough options like credit card, PayPal or other online payment service. In the field of search engine optimization (SEO), writing a strong homepage that will rank high in the engines and will read well with your site visitors can sometimes present a challenge, even to some seasoned SEO professionals. Once you have clearly identified your exact keywords and key phrases, the exact location on your homepage where you will place those carefully researched keywords will have a drastic impact in the end results of your homepage optimization. One thing we keep most people say is that they don't want to change the looks or more especially the wording on their homepage. Understandably, some of them went to great lengths and invested either a lot of time and/or money to make it the best it can be. Being the best it can be for your site visitors is one thing. But is it the best it can be for the search engines, in terms of how your site will rank? If you need powerful rankings in the major search engines and at the same time you want to successfully convert your visitors and prospects into real buyers, it's important to
effectively write your homepage the proper way the first time! You should always remember that a powerfully optimized homepage pleases both the search engines and your prospects. In randomly inserting keywords and key phrases into your old homepage, you might run the risk of getting good rankings, but at the same time it might jeopardize your marketing flow. That is a mistake nobody would ever want to do with their homepage. Even today, there are still some people that will say you can edit your homepage for key phrases, without re-writing the whole page. There are important reasons why that strategy might not work. Your homepage is the most important page on your web site. If you concentrate your most important keywords and key phrases in your homepage many times, the search engines will surely notice and index it accordingly. But will it still read easily and will the sentences flow freely to your real human visitors? There are some good chances that it might not. As a primer, having just 40 or 50 words on your homepage will not deliver the message effectively. To be powerful and effective, a homepage needs at least 300 to 400 words for maximum search engine throughput and effectiveness. One way to do that is to increase your word count with more value-added content. This often means rewriting your whole homepage all over again. The main reason to this is you will probably never have enough room to skillfully work your important keywords and key phrases into the body text of your homepage. This may not please your boss or marketing department, but a full re-write is often necessary and highly advisable to achieve high rankings in the engines, while at the same time having a homepage that will please your site visitors and convert a good proportion of them into real buyers. Here is the acid test that will prove what we just said is right: Carefully examine the body text of your existing homepage. Then, attempt to insert three to five different keywords and key phrases three to four times each, somewhere within the actual body of your existing page. In doing that, chances are you will end up with a homepage that is next to impossible to understand and read. One mistake some people do is to force their prospects to wade through endless key phrase lists or paragraphs, in an attempt to describe their features and benefits. The other reason they do that is in trying to please the search engines at the same time. Writing a powerful and effective homepage around carefully defined keywords and key phrases is a sure way you can drive targeted traffic to your web site and keep them there once you do. If some people still say re-writing a homepage takes too much time and costs too much money, think of the cost of losing prospective clients and the real cost of lost sales and lost opportunities. In the end, writing a strong homepage that will achieve all your desired goals will largely justify your time invested and the efforts you will have placed in the rewriting of your homepage. We discussed the importance of the Homepage. This section presents a recommended layout for your homepage in order to make it as search engine friendly as possible. This
is where you set the theme of your site. Let's suppose the primary focus of your site is about online education. You also have secondary content that is there as alternative content for those not interested online education. There is also other content that you would like to share with your visitors. For example, this might include book reviews, humor, and links. The top of your homepage, as discussed earlier is the most important. This is where you set the keywords and theme for the most important part of your site, the thing you really want to be found for. So you might start off the top of your index page something like this: (After your logo or header graphic) 1) A heading tag that includes a keyword(s) or keyword phrases. A heading tag is bigger and bolder text than normal body text, so a search engine places more importance on it because you emphasize it. Heading sizes range from h1 - h6 with h1 being the largest text. If you learn to use just a little Cascading Style Sheet code you can control the size of your headings. You could set an h1 sized heading to be only slightly larger than your normal text if you choose, and the search engine will still see it as an important heading. 2) Next would be an introduction that describes your main theme. This would include several of your top keywords and keyword phrases. Repeat your top 1 or 2 keywords several times, include other keyword search terms too, but make it read in sentences that makes sense to your visitors. A second paragraph could be added that got more specific using other words related to online education. 3) Next you could put smaller heading. Then you'd list the links to your pages, and ideally have a brief decision of each link using keywords and keyword phrases in the text. You also want to have several pages of quality content to link to. Repeat that procedure for all your links that relate to your theme. 4) Next you might include a closing, keyword laden paragraph. More is not necessarily better when it comes to keywords, at least after a certain point. Writing "online education" fifty times across your page would probably result in you being caught for trying to cheat. Ideally, somewhere from 3% - 20% of your page text would be keywords. The percentage changes often and is different at each search engine. The 3-20 rule is a general guideline, and you can go higher if it makes sense and isn't redundant. 5) Finally, you can list your secondary content of book reviews, humor, and links. Skip the descriptions if they aren't necessary, or they may water down your theme too much. If you must include descriptions for these non-theme related links, keep them short and sweet. You also might include all the other site sections as simply a link to another index that lists them all. You could call it Entertainment, Miscellaneous, or whatever. These can be sub-indexes that can be optimized toward their own theme, which is the ideal way to go. Now you've set the all important top of your page up with a strong theme. So far so good, but this isn't the only way you can create a strong theme so don't be compelled into
following this exact formula. This was just an example to show you one way to set up a strong site theme. Use your imagination, you many come up with an even better way. It's important to note that you shouldn't try to optimize your home page for more than one theme. They just end up weakening each other's strength when you do that. By using simple links to your alternative content, a link to your humor page can get folks where they want to go, and then you can write your humor page as a secondary index optimized toward a humor theme. In the end, each page should be optimized for search engines for the main topic of that page or site section. Search engine optimization is made up of many simple techniques that work together to create a comprehensive overall strategy. This combination of techniques is greater as a whole than the sum of the parts. While you can skip any small technique that is a part of the overall strategy, it will subtract from the edge you'd gain by employing all the tactics In affiliate programs, sites that send you traffic and visitors, have to be paid on the basis of per click or other parameters (such as number of pages visited on your site, duration spent, transactions etc). Most common contractual understanding revolves around payment per click or clickthroughs. Affiliates use tracking software that monitors such clicks using a redirection measurement system. The validity of affiliate programs in boosting your link analysis is doubtful. Nevertheless, it is felt that it does not actually do any harm. It does provide you visitors, and that is important. In the case of some search engines re-directs may even count in favor of your link analysis. Use affiliate programs, but this is not a major strategy for optimization. Several pages in e-commerce and other functional sites are generated dynamically and have "?" or "&" sign in their dynamic URLs. These signs separate the CGI variables. While Google will crawl these pages, many other engines will not. One inconvenient solution is to develop static equivalent of the dynamic pages and have them on your site. Another way to avoid such dynamic URLs is to rewrite these URLs using a syntax that is accepted by the crawler and also understood as equivalent to the dynamic URL by the application server. The Amazon site shows dynamic URLs in such syntax. If you are using Apache web server, you can use Apache rewrite rules to enable this conversion. One good tip is that you should prepare a crawler page (or pages) and submit this to the search engines. This page should have no text or content except for links to all the important pages that you wished to be crawled. When the spider reaches this page it would crawl to all the links and would suck all the desired pages into its index. You can also break up the main crawler page into several smaller pages if the size becomes too large. The crawler shall not reject smaller pages, whereas larger pages may get bypassed if the crawler finds them too slow to be spidered. You do not have to be concerned that the result may throw up this "site-map" page and would disappoint the visitor. This will not happen, as the "site-map" has no searchable content and will not get included in the results, rather all other pages would. We found the site wired.com had published hierarchical sets of crawler pages. The first crawler
page lists all the category headlines, these links lead to a set of links with all story headlines, which in turn lead to the news stories. We have written above that the spiders may bypass long and "difficult" pages. They would have their own time-out characteristics or other controls that help them come unstuck from such pages. So you do not want to have such a page become your "gateway" page. One tip is to keep the page size below 100 kb. You do not have to submit all the pages of your site. As stated earlier, many sites have restrictions on the number of pages you submit. A key page or a page that has links to many inner pages is ideal, but you must submit some inner pages. This insures that even if the first page is missed, the crawler does get to access other pages and all the important pages through them. Submit your key 3 to 4 pages at least. Choose the ones that have the most relevant content and keywords to suit your target search string and verify that they link to other pages properly. Many websites make use of frames on their web pages. In some cases, more than two frames would be used on a single web page. The reason why most websites use frames is because each frame's content has a different source. A master page known as "Frameset" controls the process of clubbing content from different sources into a single web page. Such frames make it easier for webmasters to club multiple sources into a single web page. This, however, has a huge disadvantage when it comes to Search Engines. Continued - Part Two About the author: Ken Mathie is a marketing consultant based in Darwin, Australia. His specialities include Online & Offline Business Development and Management, Training, Marketing and Software Development. Stop knocking yourself out trying to build websites the hard way! If you can type an email - you can build a website - Build your website in minutes Easy Website Builder. Click Here and watch the video This author is the publisher of PMCezine. Click here for more information.
Must Have Features Your Web Site - Part Two Some of the older Search Engines do not have the capability to read content from frames. These only crawl through the frameset instead of all the web pages. Consequently web pages with multiple frames are ignored by the spider. There are certain tags known as "NOFRAMES" (Information ignored by frames capable browser) that can be inserted in the HTML of these web pages. Spiders are able to read information within the NOFRAMES tags. Thus, Search Engines only see the Frameset. Moreover, there cannot be any links to other web pages in the NOFRAMES blocks. That means the search engines won't crawl past the frameset, thus ignoring all the content rich web pages that
are controlled by the frameset. Hence, it is always advisable to have web pages without frames as these could easily make your website invisible to Search Engines. Making frames visible to Search Engines We discussed earlier the prominence of frames based websites. Many amateur web designers do not understand the drastic effects frames can have on search engine visibility. Such ignorance is augmented by the fact that some Search Engines such as AltaVista are actually frames capable. AltaVista spiders can crawl through frames and index all web pages of a website. However, this is only true for a few Search Engines. The best solution as stated above is to avoid frames all together. If you still decide to use frames another remedy to this problem is using JavaScripts. JavaScripts can be added anywhere and are visible to Search Engines. These would enable spiders to crawl to other web pages, even if they do not recognize frames. With a little trial and error, you can make your frame sites accessible to both types of search engines. We discussed the ROBOTS tag in brief earlier. Let us understand this tag a little more in detail. Sometimes we rank well on one engine for a particular keyphrase and assume that all search engines will like our pages, and hence we will rank well for that keyphrase on a number of engines. Unfortunately this is rarely the case. All the major search engines differ somewhat, so what's get you ranked high on one engine may actually help to lower your ranking on another engine. It is for this reason that some people like to optimize pages for each particular search engine. Usually these pages would only be slightly different but this slight difference could make all the difference when it comes to ranking high. However because search engine spiders crawl through sites indexing every page it can find, it might come across your search engine specific optimizes pages and because they are very similar, the spider may think you are spamming it and will do one of two things, ban your site altogether or severely punish you in the form of lower rankings. The solution is this case is to stop specific Search Engine spiders from indexing some of your web pages. This is done using a robots.txt file which resides on your webspace. A Robots.txt file is a vital part of any webmasters battle against getting banned or punished by the search engines if he or she designs different pages for different search engine's. The robots.txt file is just a simple text file as the file extension suggests. It's created using a simple text editor like notepad or WordPad, complicated word processors such as Microsoft
Word will only corrupt the file. You can insert certain code in this text file to make it work. This is how it can be done. User-Agent: (Spider Name) Disallow: (File Name) The User-Agent is the name of the search engines spider and Disallow is the name of the file that you don't want that spider to index. You have to start a new batch of code for each engine, but if you want to list multiply disallow files you can one under another. For example User-Agent: Slurp (Inktomi's spider) Disallow: xyz-gg.html Disallow: xyz-al.html Disallow: xxyyzz-gg.html Disallow: xxyyzz-al.html The above code disallows Inktomi to spider two pages optimized for Google (gg) and two pages optimized for AltaVista (al). If Inktomi were allowed to spider these pages as well as the pages specifically made for Inktomi, you may run the risk of being banned or penalized. Hence, it's always a good idea to use a robots.txt file. The robots.txt file resides on your webspace, but where on your webspace? The root directory! If you upload your file to sub-directories it will not work. If you wanted to disallow all engines from indexing a file, you simply use the * character where the engines name would usually be. However beware that the * character won't work on the Disallow line. Here are the names of a few of the big engines: Excite - ArchitextSpider AltaVista - Scooter Lycos - Lycos_Spider_(T-Rex) Google - Googlebot Alltheweb - FAST-WebCrawler Be sure to check over the file before uploading it, as you may have made a simple mistake, which could mean your pages are indexed by engines you don't want to index them, or even worse none of your pages might be indexed. Another advantage of the Robots.txt file is that by examining it, you can get information on what spiders, or agents have accessed your web pages. This will give you a list of all the host names as well as agent names of the spiders. Moreover, information of very small search engines also gets recorded in the text file. Thus, you know what Search Engines are likely to list your website.
Most Search Engines scan and index all of the text in a web page. However, some Search Engines ignore certain text known as Stop Words, which is explained below. Apart from this, almost all Search Engines ignore spam. Stop words are common words that are ignored by search engines at the time of searching a key phrase. This is done in order to save space on their server, and also to accelerate the search process. When a search is conducted in a search engine, it will exclude the stop words from the search query, and will use the query by replacing all the stop words with a marker. A marker is a symbol that is substituted with the stop words. The intention is to save space. This way, the search engines are able to save more web pages in that extra space, as well as retain the relevancy of the search query. Besides, omitting a few words also speeds up the search process. For instance, if a query consists of three words. The Search Engine would generally make three runs for each of the words and display the listings. However, if one of the words is such that omitting it does not make a difference to search results, it can be excluded from the query and consequently the search process becomes faster. Search engines are unable to view graphics or distinguish text that might be contained within them. For this reason, most engines will read the content of the image ALT tags to determine the purpose of a graphic. By taking the time to craft relevant, yet keyword rich ALT tags for the images on your web site, you increase the keyword density of your site. Although many search engines read and index the text contained within ALT tags, it's important NOT to go overboard in using these tags as part of your SEO campaign. Most engines will not give this text any more weight than the text within the body of your site. Invisible text is content on a web site that is coded in a manner that makes it invisible to human visitors, but readable by search engine spiders. This is done in order to artificially inflate the keyword density of a web site without affecting the visual appearance of it. Hidden text is a recognized spam tactic and nearly all of the major search engines recognize and penalize sites that use this tactic. This is the technique of placing text on a page in a small font size. Pages that are predominantly heavy in tiny text may be dismissed as spam. Or, the tiny text may not be indexed. As a general guideline, try to avoid pages where the font size is predominantly smaller than normal. Make sure that you're not spamming the engine by using keyword after keyword in a very small font size. Your tiny text may be a copyright notice at the very bottom of the page, or even your contact information. If so, that's fine Almost all Search Engines serve different countries. Search Engines do list content from other countries but most of the content that is listed is either US or UK dominated content. With this in mind, most popular Search Engines have started deploying regional editions that serve only a specific country. For instance, Google has an Indian edition 'google.co.in' that caters to the Indian audience. Given below are some of the types of
Search Engine Regional Editions. Regional Interface is nothing but a translated version of the main Search Engine. Many Search Engines have interfaces in different languages such as French, German, Spanish, Japanese etc. However, the only difference between these regional interfaces and the main version of the Search Engine is that the language used on the interface is not English. In other words, if you search using a keyword on both the interfaces, the listings are exactly the same. Regional Interfaces are aimed at an audience that does not understand English. Human Categorization, as the name suggests, is categorization of websites by human beings. Search Engine employees categorize different websites into regional listings. Websites that are more relevant to a specific country are listed in that edition of the Search Engine. Hence, for a French edition a search would mainly list documents from France. This eliminates the problem mentioned above. The only caveat being that the whole process is manual. Directories such as Yahoo, LookSmart, and Open Directory make use of this process. Domain Filtering automatically segregates websites from different countries into their respective regional editions. This segregation is done on the basis of domain names. For instance a website from Australia would generally have a domain .au. The Domain filtering mechanism looks at the domains of all websites and creates a country specific edition listing. Some Search Engines also have region specific editions which contain listings from the whole of that region. As an example: A French edition of Google may also return German or Spanish websites in some cases. Domain Filtering has a drawback though. This mechanism can only filter out websites based on the domain name, and hence .com is always considered to be a United States website. This is obviously not true. Many websites from other countries also have .com domains. Domain crawling is probably the best solution for maintaining both a main site and a regional version. With domain crawling the regional listing is far more comprehensive as compared to the other mechanisms explained above. Some pages, although regional may be listed in the main listing as well. A couple of years ago spamming may have worked wonders for your website. However, with sophisticated algorithms being developed by all popular search engines, spamming can only backfire. Algorithms, these days, can easily detect spam and not only ignore your website but also ban your website. Besides, instead of spending considerable time and effort on spamming you can always follow other proven strategies and have a higher rank with most search engines. Spamming can also easily irritate readers. Think about it - if your homepage has unnecessary repetitions of a particular keyword, it is bound to frustrate a reader.
Consequently your site, instead of being content rich, would be junk rich. This can have nothing but a negative impact on your business. Search engine cloaking is a technique used by webmasters to enable them to get an advantage over other websites. It works on the idea that one page is delivered to the various search engine spiders and robots, while the real page is delivered to real people. In other words, browsers such as Netscape and MSIE are served one page, and spiders visiting the same address are served a different page. The page the spider will see is a bare bones HTML page optimized for the search engines. It won't look pretty but it will be configured exactly the way the search engines want it to be for it to be ranked high. These 'ghost pages' are never actually seen by any real person except for the webmasters that created it of course. When real people visit a site using cloaking, the cloaking technology 'which is usually based on Perl/CGI' will send them the real page, that look's good and is just a regular HTML page. The cloaking technology is able to tell the difference between a human and spider because it knows the spiders IP address, no IP address in the same, so when an IP address visits a site which is using cloaking the script will compare the IP address with the IP addresses in its list of search engine IP's, if there's a match, the script knows that it's a search engine visiting and sends out the bare bones HTML page setup for nothing but high rankings. There are two types of cloaking. The first is called User Agent Cloaking and the second is called IP Based Cloaking. IP based cloaking is the best method as IP addresses are very hard to fake, so your competition won't be able to pretend to be any of the search engines in order to steal your code. User Agent Cloaking is similar to IP cloaking, in that the cloaking script compares the User Agent text string which is sent when a page is requested with it's list of search engine names 'user agent = name' and then serves the appropriate page. The problem with User Agent cloaking is that Agent names can be easily faked. Search Engines can easily formulate a new anti-spam method to beat cloakers, all they need to do is fake their name and pretend they are a normal person using Internet explorer or Netscape, the cloaking software will take Search Engine spiders to the non - optimized page and hence your search engine rankings will suffer. To sum up, Search engine cloaking is not as effective as it used to be, this is because the search engines are becoming increasingly aware of the different cloaking techniques being used be webmasters and they are gradually introducing more sophisticated technology to combat them. It may be considered as unethical by Search Engines if not used properly. About the author: Ken Mathie is a marketing consultant based in Darwin, Australia. His specialities include
Online & Offline Business Development and Management, Training, Marketing and Software Development. Stop knocking yourself out trying to build websites the hard way! If you can type an email - you can build a website - Build your website in minutes Easy Website Builder. Click Here and watch the video This author is the publisher of PMCezine. Click here for more information.
Four C's of Quicker Load Time Studies have shown that regardless of how great your content may be, you have approximately 8 seconds for your page to load, before a majority of viewers will opt to hit the road. This means you could have a truly content rich, graphically pleasing source of entertainment - but if you can't match it with acceptable load times, it won't matter in many cases. The trick is to not necessarily ditch your images, but rather to optimize them. Then it is just a matter of sharpening and polishing the coding for your content. Crop & Resize - When trying to post a picture, remember what you're attempting to display, and have that be the focal point of your image. There is no need to take a picture of your cat, and include the entire living room with it. Cropping will make it so the focal point of your image is not only more readily noticeable to your viewers, but working for you in terms of saving space and bandwidth on your page. Same goes for resizing. Nobody needs to see a photo of a birthday cake that is 400 pixels high by 600 pixels wide when a 200x200 will suffice just fine, and probably look just as nice. Compress, Compress, Compress - This is one of the easiest, most important tasks a webmaster can do. This is something you'll want to be sure and do after you've got your image to an acceptable size, but it will really make a huge difference in load times, especially if you have multiple images on a given page. Compressing an image simply means reducing the image's bandwidth load by reducing enough bytes to where it is unnoticeable to the human eye, but allows the image to load much faster on the browser. There are several good online sites to use compression, cropping and resizing tools, if you're not already familiar with the compression tool readily available in most image design software like Paint Shop Pro and Adobe Photoshop. Control Parameters - This means, make sure you define width and height attributes for your images and tables. Don't let the browser decide, guess, or waste time trying to figure it out. Setting guidelines to tell it just how wide and high your image should be, will help tremendously with load times. Always use uniform attributes (ie. width="300" height="400" border="1" alt="Birthday Cake") and don't forget to surround the variables with quotations. This way a browser will know in advance how much space is required
for a given image, and be able to move onto the next line of code instead of waiting for the entire image to load in order to find this information out. Cutting Down Table Size - Having smaller sized tables is yet another aspect which can ultimately help your load times without changing the outward appearance of your website. Because the content of your table will not finish loading until the closing tag is read, it is often advantageous to make several smaller tables that can be quickly read, rather than having to wait for rows upon rows to be read and processed. Calibrate Coding - The second thing after optimizing your images, is that you must be sure to check your web site's coding. Sloppy HTML with hanging tags, and non-uniform attributes all contribute to longer amounts of time your visitors will have to wait for their browser to figure out what you meant for it to do. Browsers are often forgiving, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take them more time to read your mind, so to speak. Be absolutely sure to check and make sure your coding is spell checked, and flowing in the most helpful way possible to visiting browsers. Failure to proofread your HTML only makes for more broken links, non-loading images (what is img src?), and slower load time in general. Again, there are several online tools that will analyze your HTML and give you tips on what needs attention. Remember, 8 seconds is your window - Utilize these tools to make the most of it. For the sake of not only your bandwidth, but your visitors' time! About the author: Learn the tips, ticks and tactics used by Internet marketing professionals to obtain a high raking web site. Kimberly Bodane - http://www.helpmyhits.com
Why Hiring Full Website Services? Sites are fashionable, sites have become a trend and, nowadays if you do not have a personal site you are just not cool enough. But besides being a way through which one can show their html skills, a great number of sites represent a business, a source of payment for some, a job for others. Sites are like companies. And for your business to succeed you must take all the chances to make it bloom. When starting from almost nothing, and all your hopes are in doing affairs with a website, you must know from the start that it is advisable to hire a professional web site designer (of course if you are not already a html specialist). It can take a long time to
built the page, but web site design companies are there to help you and to fulfill your wishes as much as they can. If you want to have a successful business, in the present days, an important thing is represented by your personal website in which you must present the services/products you offer. When someone opens the website, surely what meets the eye is, at first, the design, so this is a very important part in your first steps. Some web site design companies also include a service of internet marketing. This service is very useful for both new and experienced business persons. For the new ones because, by using an internet marketing program your site will be known by a great number of persons. For the experienced and already known affairs, the internet marketing might bring even more clients. So, it is advisable in both cases to take advantage of this service that some web design sites can offer. The costs can vary but all in all it is all worth it, because by building a strong name in the business class, your earning will be pretty high. But once you've made a name you have to keep it up or to even rise it upper. The advantage of using a web design company that also has Internet marketing services is that, because they build you the site, they know what it is all about and it is easier to get it in tops. It is more easier to work on something that you already know. For many, the ideal dream is that in which their website is found on the first position in search engines like Google or Yahoo!. Also it would be even better for their company name to be on everybody's lips, in everybody's minds and the first place they would seek for services/products. It is indeed difficult to get there but not impossible. If you put your entire effort in this dream it can become reality. With the help of a well trained web site design company and with the Internet marketing campaign that follows after you have launched the site on the market, of course, adding a bit of luck, your business can be in the top. Why not giving a chance to your dream and dare to want some more. About the author: This article was written by Steve Madden. For more information about web designing services and Internet marketing you can take a look at the Denver web design company offer. You can find it at the following address www.glovermedia.com
An Overview of 3 Business Website Designs One of the most important principles of any website design is to actually know what you want your website to do! You need to identify what your website's objectives will be' Okay, that may sound obvious but it is amazing how many companies approach a web design agency without thinking through their brief and before they have identified what
their primary business objectives for a website will be. Generally speaking, there are three main reasons why most companies want a website: each one requires a different type of website and a different approach to design' 1- Want to streamline the time spent on the telephone by your employees providing support calls and processing enquiries? To be successful, this kind of website requires a lot of content and at least one FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page so you can provide your visitors with detailed and useful information about the products and services that your company provides. If you can answer online the most common questions that your employees deal with over the telephone then you should be able to cut down on the amount of enquiries and support calls to the office. Rather than just putting an email address on your website, set up an online contact form with form fields for the visitor to fill in and complete: that way you can qualify their enquiry and process it more efficiently, again making better use of your employee's time. 2- Want to raise your brand awareness, promote your company and improve it's reputation within it's industry? You may already have an established offline business and to help extend your brand awareness online you should incorporate your corporate identity, company logos and graphics, into your website banners and colour scheme. Do not worry if you have not got an established company logo or graphics. If you choose a professional website agency they will be able to design and create these for you. By using the same imagery found on your traditional marketing stationery, such as letterheads, promotional brochures and leaflets, visitors to the website will recognise your company branding. This is a powerful branding technique to use to promote your company and one that should not be ignored. 3- Want to increase your company's sales and turnover? Sell your products or services on the Internet - 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. Setting up an ecommerce website is a commercially viable way to increase your company sales, especially when you compare the start up costs against that of a conventional bricks-and-mortar shop. If you make sure that your website can automatically handle transactions via a secure shopping basket (or cart) system that processes online orders and send reciepts to
customers via email, then it will be almost a hands-free business. All that will be manually required is the actual order packing and shipping. Any company can have a website that ranks really well in the search engines, for its chosen keywords, but for it to be truly successful and provide a return on investment it needs to meet clearly defined targets. Defining the purpose of your business website will help your web designers understand your requirements and they will be able to build you a website specifically aimed at your target market - greatly increasing the likelihood of a successful online business website and a quicker return on your investment! About the author: Elaine Clay writes for the Studio 2 Online team a highly successful web design Leicester based agency, specialising in ecommerce website solutions and search engine promotion.
Woo your Viewers through Colors Colors can make images delightful so as to attract at the same time convey its essence. Whether or not the budget is meager, web designers must create websites that fit the customers. Why is choice of colors essential? According to the Institute for Color Research, human beings make a subconscious judgment about an item within 90 seconds of initial viewing and that between 62% and 90% of that assessment is based on color alone. Indeed, colors play a domineering catapult in almost every thing. They have dominant effect that succumbs to influencing potential customers. If you already have a web site, try to ask yourself the conscious judgment that viewers can formulate out of it. Colors say many things. It can persuade or dishearten or motivate or repel. Moreover, choice of colors can make or break your business in general. Color really matters. It is powerful in a way that it can dictate whether the site will be a hit or a flop. In addition, web colors can trounce other web design blemish. Of course, we cannot overlook the fact that web design comes in two important considerations - the functionality and the aesthetic considerations. The former though is more essential than the latter.
Nonetheless, it must be understood that equilibrium is essential. The two must be harmonized so as to create a positive perception for the business. Fiery red, sky blue, sunny yellow, mint green and other colors have distinct personalities. Fiery red conveys speed, danger, excitement and passion. Sky blue means freshness and tranquility. Sunny yellow conveys brightness and verve. Mint green, on the other hand, means coolness and nature. Each color gives different impressions and vibes thus, be careful in using them. Just a single color can bring back memories good for reminiscing the past. It can dig the chambers in the heart to elicit reaction. In fact, it can woo the heart of your viewers. Choose the right colors for your web design because it can be the determining factor of the success of your web design. About the author: Please visit U Creative site at http://www.ucreative.com/ for comments and inquiries regarding this article.
Image Graphic Formats: Challenge to the Duo Perhaps, there can also be some confusion forming cobwebs at the back of your mind. The dilemma may involve their proper use. Thus, you must zero in on what's best for your graphics. To give you a clear-cut idea on when to use them, here are the rules of thumb: 1. If your graphics are created on your computer like buttons, logos, line drawings, animations and horizontal rules, you have to use the GIF format. 2. If your agendum is to delve on scanned pictures and images, you have to use JPEG. What do you think is the reason why JPEG is preferred when it comes to photographs? It is simple. JPEG has more complex color patters that can accommodate the needs of photographs. This format enables you to save pictures and images with lots of colors say millions of them. JPEG, short for Joint Photographic Experts Group, contains 24-bit or 16.7 + million colors. It stores the information of images by observing and following the track of color changes. GIF or Graphics Interchange Format, on the other hand, contains a maximum of 8-bi or
256 colors. This format is good for graphic files customizations. What is the drawback of using this format? One is that the colors you choose may not be similar to the final color. This is because it picks up colors in its 256-color palette. Thus, dithering occurs. This is evident when you zoom in on your image. Dithering is a process of tricking the eye into believing that the color it sees is solid by using two-different colors in its palette. Nonetheless, pixels in the GIF version change from side to side from dark to light. This does not happen to JPEG versions. With the latter, what results is one solid color. In a nutshell, JPEG was designed to compress photographs, detailed artworks and other analogous images. This format handles faint shadings and color blends better than GIF. Nevertheless, the latter has special features which are good for animation, interlacing and transparency. The next time you get entangled with a situation which needs your wisdom in choosing the right thing especially between JPEG and GIF, you sure know how to handle it! About the author: Please visit Web Development Pros site at http://www.webdevelopmentpros.com/page/WebSite-Design.html for comments and inquiries regarding this article.
There's no reason to fear when making a website. I've been writing about the Internet for a couple of years now so you'd probably assume that I am proficient with all aspects of the Web, from using search engines to building a website. Well, you're wrong. Sadly, I fall into the category of those human beings that fear new experiences in life. You can tell me over and over how cool it is to have a website, I can search and visit other people's great sites, and still I will be doubtful that I can create one myself. Why? What is stopping me from doing what so many people have already done? Those people aren't better or different than me now are they? The answer lies in irrational fear. You know the kind of fear that I speak of. We all do. Somewhere in your life you've deferred from doing something new because of the niggling doubts that pulled like ropes hanging from the branches of your mind. What has stopped me from taking the leap and joining the online community that I so often speak positively about? I think one reason is that I'm a bit of a technophobe. I work with Internet 'wizards' and when I hear terminology like html, C Sharp, bandwidth, and ftp, I get scared. I don't know what most of this stuff is and if I do know what it is, I don't feel very confident to partake in using it. I'm a normal guy. I have a hard enough time
with my life in general without having to integrate a whole new language just to put myself out there on the Internet. I have feared that I won't be able to understand the process of building a website, and that I would waste precious time (we already have a hard enough time getting all of the necessary things done each day) trying and then failing. There's nothing wrong with failing at something (usually it's how we learn lessons best), but nonetheless I think it's part of the human condition to try and get around having to experience failure, even if it means not getting something that we desire done. I've wanted to have a website for a long time and yet this doubt of failure has stopped me in my tracks, literally turning me into a catatonic, barely existent web presence. Fortunately for myself and for you too, there are people in the world who are willing to help with things that we afraid to do, and vice-versa. It seems that for every one thing that we fear doing, there is both someone else willing to show us the way, as well as someone else who has a similar fear relating to something that we ourselves are comfortable in enough to teach them. Recently a friend at work said that he would like to show me one way of building a website. I was reluctant to attempt it at first, but after his constant jovial cajoling I decided to let him have a go at teaching me. I was so pessimistic about the experience; I just knew that it would be harder than he said it would be. Boy was I in for a shock! In twenty minutes with his help I had done what I thought I could never do. Isn't that always the way? The things that we fear doing the most ends up being simple, and gives us the greatest feeling of accomplishment. Weren't you afraid to take the training wheels off of your bike when you were a kid, only to soon discover the joy and ease of riding freely on two wheels? I know I was. On my computer my friend got me to open a simple Word document. Then he got me to cut and paste some photos from my photo library, and some text from some old stories I had written. We saved them as html. I didn't need to know what html was! Then he showed me how to make a second webpage and link it to the first by typing in a word, then highlighting it and saving it as hypertext. Again, I didn't need to know what it meant, only that the word was now able to be clicked on to send me to the other page. We also made a link to one of my favourite websites. I typed in the name of an author that I like's name, turned it into hypertext, then simply put their web address into the required text box that came up automatically. Now when I click my mouse on the writer's name, I am immediately transported to their website. Cool. All of a sudden I've got a website with text, photos, and links! The next step was to put it on the Internet. I went to the website of a web hosting company and within minutes had a domain name (web address), and a hosting account. It's very cheap to do as well. In my case it was only 4 dollars a month. The feeling of knowing that I now had a web presence was to say in the least, exhilarating. My site is still a bit sketchy as it's in its early stages, but I am more confident in how to do things now, and I believe that in time I will be able to improve it more and more.
In the future I hope to have a site that has a videoblog (journal), podcast capability (audio files to share with others-music and my thoughts), blog (writing journal), cool pictures and photos, as well as some commercial aspects-like books to sell, and links to products I endorse. These links are a good way that people are making money just by directing others to places and things that they truly believe in. They also work to define your identity as everything on your site tells people about what kind of person you are. There are other simple ways to make websites through easy to use template forms like www.yahoo.com, www.sandvox, and for freak Mac users like myself, the new 'iWeb' program. I may try them out soon as well to see how they compare to this basic sitecreating method, but in the meantime I think just working this way is going to alleviate the irrational fears that have plagued me for so long. I am no longer afraid to walk down this road, and I know that the more you learn about something, the more confident you get at doing it. I won't tell you my site address just yet as it's only in its infancy, but when it looks cool and has the content that I deem as worthy to share, you can be sure that I'll do my best to let you know where I am. Good luck to you too, prospective web masters! Jesse S. Somer http://www.m6.net Jesse S. Somer is a normal guy with a website. He can't believe how easy it was to create. Jesse S. Somer is a creative writer working at M6.Net: 'The web-hosting company for humans.' M6.Net is working hard to help humanity experience the power and freedom to develop their own part of the Internet, to share their information and connect with anyone, anywhere, anytime. About the author: Jesse S. Somer M6.Net http://www.m6.net
Improve Your Visitors Experience - Add Scripts to Your Website For new webmasters, adding third-party software and scripting to a website can be a really scary proposition. I remember when I put my first scripts on my own website. Even with my basic dos programming experience in high school, I was still intimidated by the whole process. I was so sure that I was going to screw something up. The very first script I ever installed on my website was a Graphical Counter from BigNoseBird.com (http://www.bignosebird.com/carchive/counter.shtml). I ended up
spending five days playing with the script to get it to display just the way I wanted it displayed. The second script I ever installed was a Recommend This Page To A Friend script, also from BigNoseBird.com (http://www.bignosebird.com/carchive/birdcast.shtml). How Scripts Differ From Ordinary HTML Basic web building uses HTML. HTML is simply a markup language that helps you display text and images within a web page. Most of us know the basics of how to build a webpage in HTML. Others use website design software that interprets the requests of the user to build a webpage in HTML. In its most basic understanding, \"scripting\" is the process of programming webpages to perform certain calculations, which will affect how information is displayed on the webpage. If you fill out a form on a website and hit send, chances are that you are engaging a script of some sort to interpret the information that you have sent to the website. If you return to a website and it knows your username and password, then a script has been involved in the process to make your return visit much simpler. If you see a list of the most recent posts on a website, then a script was used to make that information appear for your consumption. Scripting is most often handled in Javascript, VBscript (Microsoft's answer to Javascript), PHP or Perl. Each one is different in its structure and utilization. Javascript can be added within the actual HTML of a webpage, and it will fire when the page is loaded or when a request is made. One way that I have recently seen Javascript used was for a page that was doing a countdown of how much time remains until their scheduled event. I have actually used Javascript to put news feeds across the top of my webpages. Some Javascript is usually placed in the page header, between the HEAD tags within the HTML. Other Javascript is placed in the HTML body where the Javascript activities are intended to appear. VBscript works in the same manner as Javascript, but needs to reside on a Microsoft Windows server. PHP and Perl are more appropriately designated as languages. Both are file types, and both allow you to design an entire website or parts of a website to perform specific actions or functions. A function is defined as, \"Functions (also known as subroutines and procedures) are chunks of code - parts of programs - which can be called from another part of the program. Generally, functions greatly enhance the space-efficiency and maintainability of
computer programs.\" PHP and Perl Usage Most servers have PHP and Perl functionality built into the web hosting accounts. However, not all web hosting companies are comfortable offering Perl (CGI-Bin) access to their users. The reason why many web hosts shudder at the thought of making the Perl libraries available to their users is because Perl is a very powerful scripting language. In the hands of the wrong person(s), Perl access in a server can be used to bring great harm upon the server. In order to operate Perl scripts, you must have the ability to change and set file permissions on any file that resides on your web hosting account. If you have just a basic Yahoo hosting account, you will not be able to use any Perl applications on your website. Some web hosts prohibit Perl usage at any level. PHP is a new language that came about over the last few years. It has been designed to allow people who do not have Perl access to still have the ability to do scripting on their domain. PHP generally does not require that you have access to file permissions. In Perl, executable files must carry permissions of 755. In PHP, most files will only be required to carry permissions of 644, which are the same permissions a standard webpage carries. Fortunately for Perl programmers like me, PHP operates in many of the same manners that Perl programs operate. The learning curve from Perl to PHP is not very big at all. Perl and PHP Bring With Them Powerful Libraries of Functions What makes Perl and PHP as powerful as they are is the fact that both utilize functions very well. Basically, a function will carry out one specific task, and it will be able to be called from anywhere in your software. Generally, one of the very first actions to be taken in a script is to INCLUDE all other files that are needed to operate the software. The additional files generally carry many of the functions that will be used in the software. Then the software proceeds to carry out all of the necessary functions in order to build a webpage in a specific, pre-defined manner. Programmers decide that there is a task that they perform often, and then they build it into a function. In time, the programmer will usually make his function available to the programming community. And eventually, if the function is exceptionally useful, then the function will be bundled in new releases of the basic Perl or PHP build. All of these
additional functions are made available as the functions library. How To Find Perl and PHP Scripts to Use On Your Website There are actually many places you can go to find scripts to use for your websites. Some websites offer directories of free and paid scripts. Some websites will let you have their scripts if they can have your email address. Additionally, there are literally thousands of websites and hundreds of books that will teach you how to write your own scripts in any of these languages. When I am in the mood to improve my coding abilities, I like going to: http://www.planetsourcecode.com/ Planet Source Code offers full scripts and pieces of scripts, with feedback, that will teach me to be a better programmer. My favorite place for locating scripts to download for free or to buy is: http://www.resourceindex.com/ The Resource Index has one part of their site dedicated to Perl scripts: http://cgi.resourceindex.com/ They also have one part of their site dedicated to PHP scripts: http://php.resourceindex.com/ Another decent site for locating scripts is at: http://www.hotscripts.com/ Many individual programmers also offer a lot of good software for purchase or for free. A few of the good ones will be: http://www.scriptarchive.com/ http://www.bignosebird.com/ http://www.willmaster.com/ In Conclusion... If you have ever told yourself, \"it would be cool (or useful) if I could do this for my website's visitors,\" then you are in the market to learn how to use scripts on your website. If you have imagined it, chances are someone has programmed it. If they have programmed it, then you will either be able to download it for free, or to buy it at a very reasonable cost. Before you plunk down your money to buy a program or script, be sure that the programmer is willing to show you the script in action. If it doesn't do what you want it to do, don't buy it. If it does do what you want to do, then by all means, do consider
purchasing the software for use on your own site. When programmers offer their software for sale, their documentation is usually pretty good. They will tell you what steps you need to take to install it on your server, and they will tell you how to operate the software. It is very realistic to believe that if you like what the software does, you can have it live and operational on your website in less than 30 minutes in most cases. Good luck. I will be around later to see what cool stuff you have added to your website. ;) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gavyn Stewart is a writer and programmer. When we needed software for our websites, we would always go on the hunt for software to buy. At the end of the day when we could not find pre-packaged software to do exactly what we wanted it to do, we built our own. Since most programmers are not business owners, how could they know what we really needed? We have started making some of our own software available for purchase at: http://www.StewartConsultants.com For new webmasters, adding third-party software and scripting to a website can be a really scary proposition. I remember when I put my first scripts on my own website. Even with my basic dos programming experience in high school, I was still intimidated by the whole process. I was so sure that I was going to screw something up. The very first script I ever installed on my website was a Graphical Counter from BigNoseBird.com (http://www.bignosebird.com/carchive/counter.shtml). I ended up spending five days playing with the script to get it to display just the way I wanted it displayed. The second script I ever installed was a Recommend This Page To A Friend script, also from BigNoseBird.com (http://www.bignosebird.com/carchive/birdcast.shtml). How Scripts Differ From Ordinary HTML Basic web building uses HTML. HTML is simply a markup language that helps you display text and images within a web page. Most of us know the basics of how to build a webpage in HTML. Others use website design software that interprets the requests of the user to build a webpage in HTML. In its most basic understanding, "scripting" is the process of programming webpages to perform certain calculations, which will affect how information is displayed on the webpage.
If you fill out a form on a website and hit send, chances are that you are engaging a script of some sort to interpret the information that you have sent to the website. If you return to a website and it knows your username and password, then a script has been involved in the process to make your return visit much simpler. If you see a list of the most recent posts on a website, then a script was used to make that information appear for your consumption. Scripting is most often handled in Javascript, VBscript (Microsoft's answer to Javascript), PHP or Perl. Each one is different in its structure and utilization. Javascript can be added within the actual HTML of a webpage, and it will fire when the page is loaded or when a request is made. One way that I have recently seen Javascript used was for a page that was doing a countdown of how much time remains until their scheduled event. I have actually used Javascript to put news feeds across the top of my webpages. Some Javascript is usually placed in the page header, between the HEAD tags within the HTML. Other Javascript is placed in the HTML body where the Javascript activities are intended to appear. VBscript works in the same manner as Javascript, but needs to reside on a Microsoft Windows server. PHP and Perl are more appropriately designated as languages. Both are file types, and both allow you to design an entire website or parts of a website to perform specific actions or functions. A function is defined as, "Functions (also known as subroutines and procedures) are chunks of code - parts of programs - which can be called from another part of the program. Generally, functions greatly enhance the space-efficiency and maintainability of computer programs." PHP and Perl Usage Most servers have PHP and Perl functionality built into the web hosting accounts. However, not all web hosting companies are comfortable offering Perl (CGI-Bin) access to their users. The reason why many web hosts shudder at the thought of making the Perl libraries available to their users is because Perl is a very powerful scripting language. In the hands of the wrong person(s), Perl access in a server can be used to bring great harm upon the server. In order to operate Perl scripts, you must have the ability to change and set file permissions on any file that resides on your web hosting account. If you have just a basic Yahoo hosting account, you will not be able to use any Perl applications on your website. Some web hosts prohibit Perl usage at any level.
PHP is a new language that came about over the last few years. It has been designed to allow people who do not have Perl access to still have the ability to do scripting on their domain. PHP generally does not require that you have access to file permissions. In Perl, executable files must carry permissions of 755. In PHP, most files will only be required to carry permissions of 644, which are the same permissions a standard webpage carries. Fortunately for Perl programmers like me, PHP operates in many of the same manners that Perl programs operate. The learning curve from Perl to PHP is not very big at all. Perl and PHP Bring With Them Powerful Libraries of Functions What makes Perl and PHP as powerful as they are is the fact that both utilize functions very well. Basically, a function will carry out one specific task, and it will be able to be called from anywhere in your software. Generally, one of the very first actions to be taken in a script is to INCLUDE all other files that are needed to operate the software. The additional files generally carry many of the functions that will be used in the software. Then the software proceeds to carry out all of the necessary functions in order to build a webpage in a specific, pre-defined manner. Programmers decide that there is a task that they perform often, and then they build it into a function. In time, the programmer will usually make his function available to the programming community. And eventually, if the function is exceptionally useful, then the function will be bundled in new releases of the basic Perl or PHP build. All of these additional functions are made available as the functions library. How To Find Perl and PHP Scripts to Use On Your Website There are actually many places you can go to find scripts to use for your websites. Some websites offer directories of free and paid scripts. Some websites will let you have their scripts if they can have your email address. Additionally, there are literally thousands of websites and hundreds of books that will teach you how to write your own scripts in any of these languages. When I am in the mood to improve my coding abilities, I like going to: http://www.planetsourcecode.com/ Planet Source Code offers full scripts and pieces of scripts, with feedback, that will teach me to be a better programmer. My favorite place for locating scripts to download for free or to buy is: http://www.resourceindex.com/
The Resource Index has one part of their site dedicated to Perl scripts: http://cgi.resourceindex.com/ They also have one part of their site dedicated to PHP scripts: http://php.resourceindex.com/ Another decent site for locating scripts is at: http://www.hotscripts.com/ Many individual programmers also offer a lot of good software for purchase or for free. A few of the good ones will be: http://www.scriptarchive.com/ http://www.bignosebird.com/ http://www.willmaster.com/ In Conclusion... If you have ever told yourself, "it would be cool (or useful) if I could do this for my website's visitors," then you are in the market to learn how to use scripts on your website. If you have imagined it, chances are someone has programmed it. If they have programmed it, then you will either be able to download it for free, or to buy it at a very reasonable cost. Before you plunk down your money to buy a program or script, be sure that the programmer is willing to show you the script in action. If it doesn't do what you want it to do, don't buy it. If it does do what you want to do, then by all means, do consider purchasing the software for use on your own site. When programmers offer their software for sale, their documentation is usually pretty good. They will tell you what steps you need to take to install it on your server, and they will tell you how to operate the software. It is very realistic to believe that if you like what the software does, you can have it live and operational on your website in less than 30 minutes in most cases. Good luck. I will be around later to see what cool stuff you have added to your website.;) About the author: Gavyn Stewart is a writer and programmer. When we needed software for our websites, we would always go on the hunt for software to buy. At the end of the day when we could not find pre-packaged software to do exactly what we wanted it to do, we built our own. Since most programmers are not business owners, how could they know what we
really needed? We have started making some of our own software available for purchase at: http://www.StewartConsultants.com
Website technologies on the Go! In your web browser, Client Side technologies use HTML, XHTML and CSS in order to create web sites. HTML is short for Hyper Text Markup Language. This is a manner of labeling text so that the computer can understand what it means and what it wants. If we are to trace its humble beginning, HTML was created by Tim-Berners-Lee in the year 1990. This creation was acknowledged by the W3C or the World Wide Web Consortium. The use of a series of 'tags' is the function of HTML. To emphasize a word, say to make the word 'mike' bold, here is the right tag - mike. The result of which is this mike. In order to come up with a whole site, series of appropriate tags is indispensable. After HTML came XHTML. This technology means eXtended Hyper Text Markup Language. It is foretold to constitute a big part of the world wide web's future. The project of the W3C called 'The Semantic Web' will be utilizing more of XHTML as well as other latest technologies. This will bring about a modern change that we never expected since 1990. Another worth-knowing technology is called CSS. Cascading Style Sheets or CSS was created by W3C. It is a user-friendly way of showing what the text is and how it should be displayed in the page. It guides designers to have the ability to control how the documents are presented visually in different mediums. This is an example of how to use it - font-family:Verdana, sans-serif. This is used to make the web browser use Verdana font. If Verdana is unavailable, then the default will be sans-serif font. CSS allows a single file, style sheet to be utilized for the whole site. It is also downloaded once, thus saves time and effort. To learn more about HTML, XTML and CSS, there are lots of tutorials available in the net. Make your website catchy, functional and dynamic. Make it happen, use the best technologies available! About the author: Please visit Website Development site at http://www.webdevelopmentpros.com/page/Website-Development.html for comments and inquiries regarding this article.
6 Easy Ways to Create a Website How? Here it is... 1. Conceptualize an idea. Think what you like your future website to be. What audience will you cater? Everything you do must redound to their fulfillment. They will be visiting to get what they need. Be sure that their needs are answered. That way they will be satisfied and will keep coming for more. Not only that, they can recommend your site to their friends if they find it functional and nice. 2. Find a host. Having a host is not that expensive. In fact you can get one at $70 for two years. However, if you don want to spend a single penny, there are lots of sites that are hosting for free. The only consideration is that their banner must be placed in your site. That for one is a great deal, isn't it? 3. Start with your first page. Do the layout and design your first page. It will be easier and better if you have basic knowledge in HTML. Though there are hundreds of What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editors, but you will create a better site using HTML. There are tutorial sections available online. Take advantage on them and apply your knowledge to the web design you are creating. 4. Edit your page. Observe the loading and the navigation. Are they doing well? How about the web design, is it pleasing to the eyes? Are the fonts readable? Is the content helpful? Are there errors in spelling and grammar? Better check all these little details. They may be tiny details but they make up the whole website. Be careful in dealing with them. If there is a need to redo the page do it. It will be disastrous if you are displaying a total trash. 5. Do the rest of the pages. The goal is to attract visitors, keep them and to gain more. Edit, proofread and edit more. It pays off to have everything in order. Never sacrifice the quality of your website. It is your frontline. It is the one capable of attracting visitors that makes your business sell. 6. Submit the pages to your host. After you are done with the pages and the editing, you can submit them to your host. Wait for it to be shown in the net. Do not forget to update the pages regularly. You have to be updated in order not to lose your target market. Otherwise, they will look for a better site that can satisfy their needs. You don't want that to happen, do you? You may not realize it but your site is already done. Easy as your ABC's! About the author: Please visit Website Development
site at http://www.webdevelopmentpros.com/page/Website-Development.html for comments and inquiries regarding this article.
Web design with a 'Catch' Web design is an artsy interface. It is all about blending, harmony, unity and functionality. Its beauty and usability combined. Given is the fact that each web designer has his own style of making his design communicate. It varies according to the art influences that they have, their preferences and the stuffs that they want to incorporate in a certain design. Time is one great influence. As we move forward, we are discovering lots of things to make our design better and more effective. Two of the new designs invading the internet nowadays are the design with the use of 3D objects and robots. This design is made possible by the use of 3D software, production technologies and other sophisticated materials. When it comes to 3D objects, a simple spreadsheet can edit the same. Anyone skilled in the matter can control the object's chamfers, fillets, dimensions, shell thickness and more. After that is to go into details. Even the minutest style element detail must be given a leeway and must be considered so as to yield a productive output. 3D software allows the designer to edit the image continuously. The style tools are just around the interface for easy access. This access can speed up the design process of the object. It can be edited and refined in an easy manner. The evolution of these 3D tools will give a wider leeway to all the designers. As a result, design will be enhanced so as to make it catchier. Another worthy discovery is the use of robots on the website. Robots can be easily downloaded. There are numbers of sites that are offering them. Through robots, you can give ample information. They are recorded so that the moment the viewers set their eyes on your site, they immediately hear the information. No need to scroll, no need to type. The information is readily made available to them. These additions will surely uplift the web design's aesthetic and functionalism aspects. More discoveries are yet to come. About the author: Please visit Website Design site at http://www.webdevelopmentpros.com/page/WebSite-Design.html for comments and inquiries regarding this article.
How do you master web design? 1. Do not center everything. Doing so will just give your web design a scattered and disorganized look. When it comes to layout, centering tends to waste so much space. Try to maximize space. It is there for a purpose. Do not overlook that purpose. In a nutshell, use space with cautiousness so as not to appear scattered at the same time not crowded. Use columns for better organization. That way, the contents are easy to read and the images will not appear as an eyesore. 2. To make your page more attractive, apply an efficient contrast. Contrast can be applied to color, size, value and weight of an image. Contrast has something to do with the clearness, brightness and volume of an image, logo or graphics. It can also be applied to texts and other objects of the web design. If you get it right, your web design will look organized and easy to scan. Be assured that the viewers will not find it hard to glance and search your site's contents. 3. Be sure that sections are well separated. It must be easy to trace and the contents are easy to read. To distinguish one section from the other, you can use different colors or a thin line will do. Using borders is also a good remedy. Another option is to use blank 'buffer zones'. This is somewhat similar to the concept of borders and dividing lines the only difference is that you are creating invisible lines to separate the parts of a page. 4. If web design is the queen, the king must be the content. Thus, to make your site functional, make sure that the information is tight and full. So not waste the space. Put something in it to make it productive. Bear in mind that your site is not mainly to entertain their eyes. It is there to cater to their needs, answer their queries and tickle their fancies. About the author: Please visit Website Design site at http://www.webdevelopmentpros.com/page/WebSite-Design.html for comments and inquiries regarding this article.
PageRank Paranoia PageRank determines how well your site is. PageRank values may vary depending on your site's performance. In order to see your site's PageRank values, download the same
from Google. Marketing analysts and administrators want to be updated with the PageRank so as to determine where to exert more effort in marketing the sites. What is involved in the PageRankmania? Usually, the Google toolbar fetches the PageRank values from the data center with the use of its IP address. Values come in simple text files to the toolbar. When the Google Dance begins it displays the old PageRank values. Administrators and marketers are having a hard time finding strategies to keep the PageRank high so as to give them greater opportunity than those sites found under them. How do they keep up with the tough competition? Administrators and marketers alike are discovering lots of techniques to increase their site's PageRank. Some of these techniques include submission of articles to various submissions sites, subscribing to forums, blogs, blog commenting, directory submissions, reciprocal linking, three-way linking, and offering discounts. These techniques are already proven. Aside from these techniques, administrators and marketers are still discovering more. Google search engine as well as the rest of the search engines is actively finding the keywords in a site. Keywords have to be placed in the right position and with the right density in order for search engines to locate it instantly. What though is the essence of this mania? If there are hundreds of sites with the same keywords and your site landed on the first page of the search engine, imagine the advantage, imagine the opportunity. Now, imagine no more for it can be your reality. Let's face it, viewers and searchers are lazy enough to browse over all the sites in that resulted from their queries. Obviously, they will select the ones on the first page especially those situated on a higher ranking. If you are one of those situated in higher rank chances are you will get most of the viewers. This will be greatly advantageous on your site. Greater viewers mean greater chance of marketing your goods or services. Work the PageRankmania to your advantage. It surely pays off! About the author: Please visit E-Commerce Services site at http://www.webdevelopmentpros.com/page/E;Commerce-Web-Development.html for comments and inquiries regarding this article.
Build Your Site the RIGHT Way If you want to learn the secrets of a well-made website, let me give them to you' 1. Plan ahead of time. Plan. Conceptualize. Think of an idea that will make your site standout. Think of strategies that will keep the people from visiting. That way you can secure a good traffic for your web site. 2. Lure visitors with your web design. Choose the right colors, layout and content. Be sure that these three elements complement each other. They must make your site appealing, functional and attractive to viewers. 3. Search for your web host. If you want to have it for free. There are lots of sites that are hosting for free. Some may demand that their banner or pop up be placed on your site in lieu of the hosting services. However, if your site is a commercial one, it is advisable that you get your own domain. Having a commercial domain is not as expensive as others think. Subscription only costs 70 dollars for two years. It really pays off to have one. 4. Start your first page. Basic knowledge of HTML is necessary in creating pages. You can create better sites with the use of HTML compared to WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors. To learn the basics, you can ask your peers who are good at it to teach you. When no one is available try to have tutorials. 5. Examine, proofread and edit your page. Be sure to have good loading and navigation. The contents must all be purposeful and redounds to the function of your site. The text must be readable and the colors are good to the eyes. Consider also other important factors that make a site productive. If there are flaws or errors, correct them right away. 6. Continue doing other pages. If you are already satisfied with your first page, continue doing the rest and follow the same procedure to check the quality of your site. 7. Upload your web design to your host. If you are done with your web design, you can now upload it to your host. That's all it takes. Now you have a well-created site. Regularly analyze the progress of your sites as well as your competitor's in order to know what strategies you have to employ to make it better from the rest. You can run optilinks to delve deeper. About the author: Please visit Web Development Services Pros site at http://www.webdevelopmentpros.com/sections/Website-Design.html for comments and inquiries regarding this article.
Tips to designing your own website As the rate of information technology increases, many small business owners and individuals are now aiming to increase their communication and business with the use of the Internet. Some of the benefits of the Internet is that people can frequently improve their knowledge, be critical, and analyze new concepts and developments. Not only does the Internet provide an opportunity for people to access new and foreign knowledge, but people are also given the opportunity to share knowledge through the use of creating their own websites or visiting chat rooms. The concept of building a website may at first seem to be foreign to the less technologically inclined, but once the basics of website building are mastered, then the concept becomes routine and easy to handle, especially with updates. However, the building of a website does not only involve conquering technology, but also the design of your website will largely affect how many visitors will stay on your site and the amount of information that is consequently attained. For example, a website that is offensive in their use of language or ideologies, or even which has unsuitable colors will deter viewers from going to the site. Below are some tips that need to be taken into consideration when building your website. TIPS: 1. Make sure the color of the text on your website is not too bright and is suitable for the content of the website. For example, if you are designing a website to talk about the death penalty, a pink background with yellow text may not be the most appropriate format. 2. The pictures or images that are presented on your website also need to be taken into consideration. A website incorporating cartoons and pictures of Barbie but which is aimed at mature age people in the content may not be as successful. Remember, when people go to a website the first thing they will see will be the graphics, and just as easily as getting to the website, people can just as easily go to another website. 3. Make sure the links that you put on your website are relevant to your content. Although advertising is permitted and incorporated into some websites, too much advertising and propaganda will act as a deterrent and may compete for the attention of the viewer. Also, although advertising may pay for the cost of maintaining your website, remember the initial purpose of designing the website and don't let in-your-face advertising overtake your valuable content. 4. Although most people feel that a website is made more interesting when there are graphics on the site, do not put in too many graphics and make the size of your website too large. Viewers can become frustrated if a website takes too long to download and will go to another website. 5. Remember to reference everything that you have researched and include a bibliography or a list of references. Do not plagiarize. Plagiarism can have consequences if you are an academic, or you may be liable for court action if it is too serious.
Remember to indent long quotes that you may have gotten from a person or from research. Acknowledge help and all your sources. 6. Be mindful of different ideologies and cultures. Colors for backgrounds may have significance to the content. However, in another culture it may have a completely different meaning and may be misunderstood. 7. Ensure that the content is concise and attractive to the viewer. The content of websites can be written in formal as well as informal language. This will depend on the target audience and what you want to promote. For example, a person who is aiming at a teenage market may want to use less formal language, however, if you are aimed at academics or mature age people, correct referencing and research as well as formal language will be better appreciated. 8. Ensure that the links that are put on your website work and that your website is easy to navigate. For example, endless links that go nowhere can cause frustration and deter people from your website. Information that is not concise or inaccurate can cause misunderstandings. Hence, check all information before you put it on the website and check your links before you publish the website. The building of your website can be a challenge at first, but the rewards are that many people will have the opportunity to share in your knowledge and communicate with you in relation to your ideas. For entrepreneurs, websites have the ability to promote your business and also ensure that consumers have the ability to gain better information about your goods and services. About the author: By Bernice Ly http:// www.m6.net Bernice Ly is a technical writer working at M6.Net: 'The web-hosting company for humans.' M6.Net is working hard to help humanity experience the power and freedom to develop their own part of the Internet, to share their information and connect with anyone, anywhere, anytime.
Web Design's Infallible Rules of Thumb The fact is - details mater a lot. Hence, every site must be a product of careful planning, conceptualization and concentration to details. Effective website is all about stepping into the shoes of the visitors. Every designer must
have the same mindset as the visitors so as to be intimately related to them. To know what to expect and to feel about a certain site is an advantage that can only be reckoned if you place yourself in the place of another person. To know the wants and the needs is also another added factor. This will enable designers to deliver to the visitors what they expect and need. Understanding specific needs, benefits and concerns gives us the idea of what we should create - from page layout to graphic design and overall site organization. Anticipate the queries that might come out upon seeing the page. Be sure that these queries and objections are answered and understood so as to draw out loyalty and trust. In order to be sure of what you are designing here are the rules of thumb in designing: 1. Provide simple, clear and straightforward directions. Do not forget to emphasize the 'call to action'. This is the most important aspect of web designing thus, make sure it is not overshadowed by other aspects. 2. Aside from emphasizing the 'call to action', also emphasize the functionalism of the site. Make the benefits more understandable and apparent. These are your weapons to achieve persuasion. As we all know persuasion is the most important factor that affects the purchasing decision of visitors. This should not fail so as not to fall short in the site's objective. 3. Objections must also be answered. If the visitors have hesitations, this may hinder his decision to buy or subscribe. Hence, the site must remove the clouds of doubt in order to direct the visitor to buying or subscribing. 4. The goal is to draw a path that leads to the site's goal. Bear in mind the link between the 'call to action' and the end goal they must result to the site's satisfaction. The design must motivate a person to do the next big thing and that is to do the 'call of action'. Finally, after doing the web site, evaluate whether each element are present and that principles are practiced. That way, you are secured that you are producing an excellent site! About the author: Please visit Web Development Services Pros site at http://www.webdevelopmentpros.com for comments and inquiries regarding this article.
7 Pointers about Web Design
1. Web designers are marketers per se. Web sites are all about advertising products, ideas and services. Thus, a web designer has to understand the mindset of marketers in order to create a design that sell. 2. Read, read and read. We do not experience everything. Thus, our tendency is to learn from others. Reading web design books, newsletters and tips are pretty valuable since they can save you time and effort. Basically, books are more conclusive than newsletters and tips however, they are for free and mostly updated. 3. Narrow down your target market. You cannot please everybody same thing that you cannot be good at everything. Thus, this fact calls for the narrowing of your target market. Even in the interface of the so-called web design, a designer cannot claim that he is an expert at anything or everything about the needs of a website. It is better to pick a certain audience and try to be good at catching their attention, preference and choice. This practice allows you to be best at a given area thus developing expertise. 4. Answer your target audience's needs. In order to answer the visitor's needs, web designers must know what kind of visitors his site is welcoming. Do they belong to the younger generation or otherwise? What do they want from your site? Are these information, details and pleasures in your site in order to get their undivided attention and loyalty? Bear in mind that colors, font size, style of graphics, contents and the entirety of the site affects viewer's decision and choice. 5. Know the basics of SEO and copywriting. Though Search Engine Optimization and copywriting are not directly related to designing, still, designers must have basic knowledge about them. This is because web designing is intertwined with marketing, use of keywords and visibility. Aside from that, designers must also have knowledge of the programming basics. If not, the tendency is waste time or to create a mediocre or unsatisfactory design to the detriment of the sites. 6. The primacy of functionality. If ever you are faced to make a decision between a web site's aesthetic form and its functionality, you have to be firm in upholding the latter. Not everything that is pretty is 'saleable'. Besides, you don't create web sites for the sake of making it nice-looking. Above anything else, the site must be functional so as to cater to every visitor's wants and needs. Appearance is a means to catch visitor's attention nevertheless, it is not the end. If a designer prioritizes appearance alone without considering its primary consideration the web site's marketability will suffer. 7. Know when to break the rules. Rules are only guidelines, if you feel that the rules are inappropriate for a certain creation follow your heart's desire and venture on an experimental adventure.
About the author: Please visit Web Development Services Pros site at http://www.webdevelopmentpros.com for comments and inquiries regarding this article.
The Future Of Web Design Is Content Management! By: Martin Lemieux
Web development has greatly increased in popularity over the last 5 years. Many new design concepts, code standards, and technology advances have happened in a short amount of time. With that, so has the knowledge and demand for better, more independent and functional web design packages. More and more we are starting to see a shift in consumer demand for the increasingly popular website content management system. Most website owner's are typical business entrepreneurs who don't have the time to chase down their web design company for some minor updates that usually cost an arm and a leg. Updates for websites are becoming more and more necessary. It's now a reality and a trend that in order to make something happen with your website online, you need to stay on top of things and create new content to keep visitors coming back. As entrepreneurs, we all get new creative ideas almost every day on how to improve our products or services. Without the ability to update our own website's, those fresh, new ideas may not become a reality for a long time. Website Content Management Systems Are The Future: This is somewhat of a call out to all web design companies. If you cannot offer content management to your clients, you may be left in the dust within a few years. The more affordable content management becomes, the more in demand it will be. Without giving your prospects this crucial option, you may lose a great chunk of your potential clients to the next web design company that has a fully automated system that states: "all the consumer has to do is login and get started." Granted, there will always be a need for web designers. That is an understatement but with the option of content management, you can also decrease the amount of work needed to put into each project and concentrate more on marketing your business and it's services.
Content Management Gives The Consumer The Freedom They Need! Without giving too much freedom that may make the website look bad, there is a high demand for the ability to update a website when needed, not when convenient. People like to have power over managing their own company, content management gives them the freedom they need to expand on their own terms, without extra costs. Here Are Typical Features Of A "CMS": - Add/remove/edit pages. - Update content within each page. - Add images where needed. - Update contact information. - Show updated listings (i.e. Real estate listings, Mortgage rates). - Add new tips on their industry everyday (The spawn of blogging). + Many extra features not listed here. Take The Real Estate Industry For Example: In the last 2 years, "Real Estate Content Management Systems" are popping up everywhere we look. I can recall reviewing over 50 websites that offer this style of service. And why not! Real estate agents as a whole spend a great deal of money marketing themselves. Just in the last couple of years, real estate agents have seen more value in marketing online than they have through regular print media. Many real estate agents I know would rather spend $4,000 for a website rather than spend $4,000 getting listed in the local telephone book. In Conclusion: If you offer web design services and have (CMS) Content Management Systems available to your visitors, this might be the time to consider this ever growing popular service for your company. You won't regret putting in the effort of developing your own system and marketing it, there is a shifting demand for this ever-popular freedom online. About the author: About The Author: Martin Lemieux is the owner of the Smartads Advertising Network helping companies like yours to increase your business further! International: http://www.smartads.info Ezine Article Directory: http://www.article99.com/web-design/ RSS/XML Feed: http://www.article99.com/RSS/Martin-R-Lemieux.xml
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Take Your Flash Tutorials Now Do you know something about Flash? Well, you need to know something now. It would be fun! The Flash tutorials are the ways in order to learn how the program works. Consider that in learning a complex language that can be used for multiple devices, Flash tutorials should be look into it. Well, Flash is a programming language that is becoming extremely usual in laymen with its various products. Since for sure you can find Flash programming in cartoons, websites and computer software. Bear in mind that if you are looking for something that will help build your website then Flash will be there to help you out. Flash tutorials will surely guide you through the different types and kinds of website developing. Such as, you can learn how to import data for use in your projects, designs and many others that really matters to you. The Flash is a unique and pretty much good programming language that can take image files and audio file together as one. Take note that this is as extremely efficient way to save up space on any of the programs that you will be using. It is extremely useful and manageable when designing using objects. Movies, animations and all other movements of elements could be done using Flash. The tutorials work much better than books on this subject since aside from just reading it and what you can do with it, the tutorial itself will show you the all in all making of it. The tutorials can also help you in creating attractive and full of impact websites. It will clearly show you how to use action scripts and motion weenies to amaze your audience. The tutorial is can be learned in just a little time. Take note that these tutorials can be practiced until you feel like you are acquainted with it. For sure, with the tutorial you can watch and listen to a demonstration on what you want to learn and focus on. Give your best shot in learning at your own pace with these programs. Film addicts, this is for you. One of the greatest advantages of Flash is that you can use and incorporate many different films into one. If you will create a movie character for instance, you will be able to import these objects into a new design that you will make. And this can be done only in few hours, only if you are interesting inn it and you love what you are doing.
The Flash tutorials are excellent ways to learn how to program using Macromedia Flash. If you are just a beginner in programming, professional programmer or what, you can all benefit from the tutorial. Consider that in every new edition of Flash that comes out there is more to learn and there is always something exciting about it. it is fun and exciting to do as well as it will make your mind think and ponder on things that you really love to do. Try it on now! About the author: For Comments and Questions about the Article you may Log - on to http://www.printingshoppers.com
Keep It Simple Stupid' Recognize that saying? It has been used in many different things to mean simplicity is the key to doing things best. In explaining concepts, putting it in simple yet understandable terms would easily get your message through. This is in contrast to using confusing words and 'beating around the bushes', resulting to an overload of information yet losing the main idea in the process. This same saying should also be applied in the designs of websites. Ever felt the frustration of having to go through much information while browsing in some sites? Not only that, think of all the graphics that keep appearing and popping every now and then. Most of the time, these things make downloading pretty slow. And you only went there for simple information. Take researching, for example. These sites were meant to help in every way possible. Making the hassle of researching more convenient and easy. But some people do not have the patience of waiting for an animation to stop moving, or for the flow of not needed information, and impossible icons to find on the screen. Not all users have the same modems and software you have. So if it is not hard for some, it may be terrible for others. Think of the people in a rush to purchase something. Dazzling them with intricate graphics would likely send their tempers rocketing. And special effects can only make them want to scream with frustration. And for what? For a request of a catalog? These are just some of the factors that needed to be taken into consideration in designing your own web site. Bear in mind that there are still old computer models being used by people and their tools will not likely match with yours. Having pictures and graphics is not a crime. You just have to know the perfect location to put them. Cramming them into one page is not a good idea. Try putting them on another page. That way people will be able to view them as they went on their search. They do not have to necessarily see them first hand. What about the people always on the rush? They want transactions done fast. Having an entrance site with all the menus catering to their needs would help them lots. Keeping in mind that these busy people only want speedy entrance and exit to keep up with their schedules.
Keep in mind that the entrance should be as easy to access as it can possibly be. As to not make initial browsing difficult for the people. In the process making them comfortable enough to go to others pages, then bombard them there with all the colorful graphic designs and voluminous prints. Who knows? Your site would even stuck them as unforgettable and probably go back for more. So keep in mind to Keep It Simple Stupid! About the author: For comments and inquiries about the article visit http://www.colorprintingwholesale.com
What should you do when designing a business card online Designing a business card online is not any different from designing one offline. There are a lot of factors to consider to ensure that your business card will serve the purpose that it is intended in the first place. When designing a business card online you should: 1. Try to design the business card yourself. Nothing like avoiding the charges you have to pay when hiring designers to do the job. Besides, you are your own boss. Nobody will tell or criticize you on what you want attained. 2. Use shadows on texts so that when you use light texts, it will be easier to see even though the background is also light. You would not want your readers squinting their eyes out just to see what is written in your cards. 3. Go for bulks. Did you know that having more quantities printed can save you a lot in printing costs? Many people do not know that by cutting on the amount of printing materials, they are paying more than they think they are. If you compute the overall value, you will see that you actually save more by printing more copies. 4. Opt for UV coating. UV coats for cards give them longer protection and color life. Business cards do not just serve as one day cards. For sure, you will want them to last longer so people will be able to use them for quite sometime. 5. Try out different business card design and layout. The design you want may not go with the image you have chosen. Try experimenting with various designs so you will get to see which one will look best combined together. 6. Convert to gray scale. This will give your cards a unique look that will differentiate it from other typical looking business cards. Gray scale tends to look good with color texts too. The colors are more emphasized.
7. Leave blanks. This provides simplicity - white space. This factor is especially needed if your business card is full of graphic and designs. By leaving some space, you give readers a chance to breathe from all that is being shown to them. If you do not get the design you want, you are probably better off hiring experts to do the job for you. They can do this online too. All you have to do is approve the final draft and get them from a printer near you. Creating a business card is made easy nowadays. All you have to do is think of something that is eye-catching enough. About the author: For comments and inquiries about the article visit http://www.businesscardsprintingonline.com