Becoming A Website Designer
By waseemaadil
The ability to create simple, attractive and functional web pages is a highly marketable skill. There is a huge and growing demand for websites and web content, especially for smaller organizations who often can't afford to hire a full-service web design firm.
Readers often ask me whether it's necessary to take expensive web design courses or to learn HTML right away to get started in this niche. Is there a cheaper way of learning these skills?
If I were in your shoes, my best investment would be to learn how to use a popular and well-supported website creation software package.
Notice that I said "popular and well-supported." There are plenty of What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) web page creators out there that allow you to cut-and-paste and drag-and-drop your way to create simple, effective websites.
For instance, you could check out programs such as the 123 WysiWyg HTML Editor at http://www.123wysiwyg.com
Mozilla Composer is an HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) editor that allows you to create and edit web pages. Check it out at http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/
Easy Web Editor (http://www.easywebeditor.com/ ) is another low-cost option under $100.
Several Internet "gurus" have created their own software packages. Jim Edwards, for instance, is promoting his "mini site creator" (http://www.minisitecreator.com ) program right now on the web and through affiliates.
Many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as ww.godaddy.com offer their own easy website creation tools. These are fine if you if are a hobbyist or small business owner, and only want to create simple websites for your own use. But if you want to become a professional website designer, and eventually offer your skills and services to other small business owners, you will have to be able to create more sophisticated sites, with more flexible designs and features.
So the key questions you have to ask are, "Am I using a program a professional would use? Will it be around five years from now?"
Years ago I chose Microsoft's FrontPage WYSISYG website editor. I knew that I would not be able to learn all the features the program had right away, but could create simple web sites for my business using the basics, then learn more, a little bit at a time.
I also figured that Microsoft was going to be around for a while, and that webpage creation was an area of business they would want to compete in. So FrontPage would be well-supported for years with new versions, technical support, user forums, etc.
That has all been true. However, FrontPage reportedly has its quirks in the way it generates HTML code. Today, the best software package that I keep hearing about in the WYSIWYG category - and one used by professional website designers as well -- is a program called Dreamweaver, by Macromedia.
There are Dreamweaver versions available for both the Mac and the PC, which is important. If you learn the program on a PC, you'll still be familiar with the same tools used by the Mac world, which is the dominant platform for the graphic arts community.
You can learn about Dreamweaver at: http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/ There is even a free trial option, so you can sample the software. And no, I'm not earning any affiliate commissions by recommending this to you.
Dreamweaver will have far more features than you can possibly wrap your mind around at first. The trick is to use any tutorials included with the software, plus any free online tutorials (do a google search) and teach yourself how to create simple, clean web pages at first. Then you can gradually learn about other features, such as using tables, more complex formatting, etc.
From now on, as you surf the web, bookmark sites you like or designs you like, and keep them in a special folder as examples you'd like to model. There's no faster or better way to learn than by modeling success.
Launch your freelance web design practice by building your own website with Dreamweaver. If you have Internet access, your Internet provider already gives you from 5-10 MB of web space as part of your subscription. So you can practice on your first website there, at no additional cost.
For an initial investment of $399, you can become an expert using a professional tool. Once you're confident enough, build your own business site, with your own domain name, and promote your services as a web designer. I recommend using www.godaddy.com to register your new company's domain name and host your site. It can cost you less than $50 a year to do both.
You can get a professional-looking logo for your business for $25 from www.gotlogos.com What other business can you launch for under $500 that has the potential to earn tens of thousands of dollars per year?
And finally, purists and experts still suggest that you eventually become somewhat familiar with HTML, even if you use a WYSIWYG editor that hides all that HMTL code. Many professionals go in and "tweak" their web pages by hand, using HTML, to get exactly the look they want.
There are some free tutorials available to learn about HTML. Check out: A beginner's guide to HTML: http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimerP1.html And http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/
The ability to create attractive, simple and functional web pages is a highly sought-after skill. Once you have created your own site showcasing a few examples of your work, your first prospects will probably be small businesses, consultants, and retail establishments in your area. Then, with experience, you can start doing work for larger companies. There's another benefit, too. You can work for anyone, anywhere, anytime, around the world, from your comfort of your home office.
Barnaby Kalan is an award-winning freelance copywriter and author of Outsourcing Yourself: How to Turn Your Job Into a Business for Greater Wealth and Security. To get a free chapter from his latest book, visit http://www.outsourcing-yourself.com
Your Website Layout
By Waseemaadil
When creating a website, there are many key aspects of good web design that need to be taken into consideration in order for your to not only create a great website, but to keep traffic coming back again and again.
If you are creating your website on your own, versus downloading and implementing a ready to use template, there are some very important factors you need to keep in mind with regards to the importance of good, simple layouts.
Primarily, you want your website easy to navigate; there is no sense making your customers frustrated and angry by not being able to navigate your layout or read your content. Your goal is to keep and increase your traffic, not drive it away.
There are many tips and tricks of good web design that you can certainly employ when building your websites layout that will make sure your website looks top notch. Among these include the basic premise of keeping it simple. If your website is complex and people can not find their way around, you have just lost potential customers.
Keeping the layout simple is also to your benefit because search engines will be able to categorize your website properly and you may find yourself at the top of the rankings pages depending on your content.
The next two aspects of a simple layout go hand in hand: colors and font. You want to make sure you use pleasing, contrasting colors as this will not only enhance the readability of your website, but will have an overall pleasing effect for your customers... the font you use is important for similar reasons.
The last couple of tricks for good web design and creating simple layouts involves the mechanical aspects of a website. First, you want to keep your websites dimensions in mind when writing your code and placing your content. There are dimension guidelines that will tell you watch your margins so your customers do not have to continually scroll to keep up with your content.
As for your content, you want to try and be considerate of the file sizes that have to load when someone navigates to your page. If your website takes forever to load, your customers are going to get easily frustrated and head off in to the World Wide Web in search of a place that won't waste their time.
What is the Best File Format For Saving Images on the Web?
By Waseemaadil
By Waseemaadil
The Basic Skills Needed to Become a Web Designer - Simple Programs You Can Teach Yourself
There is no handbook on the skills needed to become a web designer. Nor is there a fixed aptitude or personality test required to qualify as one. All you need to have is the knowledge of a few basic programming languages, a good design sense and the drive to experiment. Signing up for a web design course might be partially useful, but in the end most of what you implement will be self-taught. And since the Internet gives you access to a large number of design portals as well as the latest programs, it does prove to be an added boon. By surfing the Web, checking out design blogs and downloading software you can develop a signature style that is in sync with your personality and creativity.
The first three programming languages that you need to learn are:
HTML
Hyper Text Markup Language is a programming language that is used to present pages and text on the Web. You can start writing these either on NotePad or Windows. It is one of the first languages you will need to start out with on your journey to become a web designer. Various mark up tags are used for each stage of text from the title
, to the start and end of a new paragraph
, and even for an image
These are the tags that give the text you see on a website, its format and font. Now this program is essentially a beginner's tool and also meant for designers who are focusing more on text. If you want to learn more about graphic design then Adobe Photoshop and Flash should be on the top of your list.
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets are what you use to convert the HTML code you have written into a web page as you see it on the Internet. CSS can either be downloaded as ready templates or you can create your own template using Macromedia Dreamweaver or BB edit. Once you have created your style sheet, you can implement it either externally, by imbedding it, or by using inline CSS. The method you select depends on how large your website is and how you decide to maintain it.
JavaScript
This is a scripting language which is connected to HTML. It allows the web designer to make his web page dynamic and interactive. By using this coding, you can determine what happens when a user clicks on a link; whether he is shown more text or whether he is taken to a new website.
By learning these three languages, you can acquire the basics needed to become a web designer. Once you have mastered these, you can move on to other programs that help make your website more user-friendly, appealing and more likely to be picked up by search engines.
After mastering the skills needed to become a web designer you should also determine whether you want to work with a design studio or independently. Both are equally good options though the latter gives you more scope to experiment. It's not too hard getting yourself a domain name and finding a reliable hosting company which will enable you to get more freelance work. These along with a stable internet connection, a computer with a good resolution and the ability to withstand hours in front of the computer screen should stand you in good stead. It is only through constant practice and by working on a variety of projects that you will be able to hone your design sensibilities, which is what will make your work distinct and much sought after.
The best file format for saving images on the web all depends on the image itself. Depending on the image, it can be saved as a compressed gif, jpg, or png file. In this article, compressed format is used to reduce file size for uploading, downloading, and opening a web page. File size has everything to do with the speed of how fast a web page can open, including photographs or images.
Gif format
Gif stands for graphic interchange format. It is the standard format for compressing images with sharp detail and flat colors or few colors, such as logos, vector line drawings, types, and animation. Gif is a LZW-compressed format that helps to minimize the file size. It is commonly used to show index-color and images in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) documents for the world wide web (WWW) and other services online. Gif supports transparency in indexed-color images but does not support alpha channels. The file size is very small compared to jpg or png.
JPEG format
Jpeg or jpg stands for joint Photographic Experts Group, is commonly used for saving photographs and other continuous-tone images in HTML documents over the WWW and other online services. It supports CMYK, RGB, and Grayscale color modes, and does not support alpha channels. The file size is much larger than the gif. Unlike GIF format, JPEG retains all color information in an RGB image. The jpeg is lossy, which means that the file is selectively compressed and data is discarded each time the file is saved again. A higher level of compression results in lower image quality and vise versa. It is advisable to back up the original file as a psd file in Photoshop to preserve the all layers and files being compressed.
PNG8 optimization options
PNG8 format compresses solid areas of color and preserves sharp detail like the Gif format. Both file format support 8bit color, so they can display up to 256 colors. Indexing is a process of determining which colors should be used so images in GIF and PNG8 formats are sometimes called indexed color images. Photoshop is able to build a color lookup table, which collects and indexes the colors in the image. The color is matched as closely to the image by choosing either the color, simulating, or using a combination of available colors to match the images.
Saving image files for the web requires compression to reduce file sizes. It is wise to back up the original files before editing the images. If Photoshop is used for editing, always save a copy or the original file as the default .psd to preserve separate layers and images from being compressed.
What is Web Design?
Anything used to create a web page is known as web design. Specifically it refers to the work that is done to create the front end of a web page. The front end is the visual aspect of a web page that is interactive. The back end contains all the information that only the computer understands. Web designers generally use the (X)HTML and CSS programs to create web pages. But these are best for small sites. For larger sites that have more information PHP, ColdFusion and ASP are the programming languages that are more popular with web designers. If designers want to do something different to the websites then Macromedia's Flash is what they use.
Earlier there were many technical constraints in web designing. For example, a graphic designer knows the size of the paper that will be used for printing. But a web designer has to think of different monitor sizes, different display settings and even browsers that are meant for non sighted users. But with all the technological progress that has been made in the past few years, there are limitless possibilities to web designing now. So you if are interested in web designing, you should join a web designing training course.
About Web Design Training Courses
Okay, so first of all you have to decide why you want to know more about web designing. Is it for your own personal use or is it for professional purposes? If it's the latter, then think about doing a course from an institute where you will receive some kind of diploma or certificate after completing the course. Also figure out what exactly you want to learn. Do you want to learn just the basics of web designing or do you want to learn everything you can?
Once you've decided on all of the above, start doing research on the different ways you can learn. If you like studying independently, there are many online courses that can be done from home quite easily. Web design can be a part of a larger course or a stand alone course. You can also do a web design training course in a university or computer institute. Find out about all the courses on offer and compare them. Some useful things to compare are: the cost and the time period of the course, the materials provided, the quality of instructors, the subjects covered in the course and last of all, if the course suits your needs at all.
When you know exactly what you want, it becomes easier for you to choose between all the different courses available. Whether you do a web design training course online or in a classroom, the knowledge you gain will help you make better and more advanced websites.
James Copper is a writer for http://www.skillscenter.co.uk where you can find information on web design training
XHTML Equals to Browser Compatibility
XHTML is the big in-thing in web designing these days. It is the fastest growing trend that has now become a highly sought after service. So what is XHTML, and how does it guarantees browser compatibility? Let us study it in some detail.
Plato once said, necessity is the mother of all inventions. HTML, which was once a popular source code, is now overshadowed by XHTML, i.e., Extensible Hypertext Markup Language. Earlier there were few web browsers. But as different web browsers have also marked the industry with its advent today, it becomes important to please all of them (as you don't know which browser the end-user uses). XHTML allows the site to divide the content from its appearance through CSS (Cascading Style Sheet). This makes the layout equally appealing and compressed for all web browsers.
Web has crossed its comprehensible boundaries. It started with being on our system desktop, shifted to laptop screens, and has now reached our cell phones and Personal Digital Assistants. Hence it not only becomes important, but mandatory to do valid XHTML Coding for cross browser compatibility. This takes us to the question of 'Valid XHTML'.
If there is valid XHTML, is there any invalid XHTML as well? What is valid, and how could one guess whether a particular coding is really valid or not?
There are many websites that display the "VALID XHTML" tags in the form of images, text and/or banners. This means that they conform to the W3C's (World Wide Web Consortium) coding standards. To ensure that valid XHTML remains valid, W3C, an international standards organization, has laid out few rules for XHTML coding. Designers follow these rules/guidelines while coding XHTML. Valid XHTML, allow me to compare it, is just like White hat SEO- it pays you the long way. Just like grey hat or black hat SEO can be done easily, but doesn't pay you for long, invalid XHTML can't reap you benefits for long.
So if the XHTML service provider tries to play smart by displaying "Valid XHTML" in its website, without mentioning the "W3C standards", you might want to check its credibility again. An XHTML provider, who has met all W3C standards, would flaunt about it!
Xhtml.pixelcrayons.com converts your design files from various common image formats (PSD, JPG, GIF, PNG, AI) into best quality cross-browser compatible W3C validated XHTML/CSS markup. Check xhtml.pixelcrayons for our PSD to XHTML Conversion and PSD slicing services.
You Can Have a Bright Career in Web Design
In web design, a person needs to know how to create and arrange the pages that comprise a website. A good web designer must know how to balance the look and the functionality of the page. He is responsible for creating websites that are accessible to the users irrespective of the device used by them. Web design refers to the process of putting together a website starting from its conception to online publication. Web designing involves everything from technical proficiency to interpersonal communications. There are various facets to the profile. You can expect to learn a lot in this role.
How To Become A Web Designer?
If you want to have a bright career in web design, you must have a degree in Computer Science or E-Commerce. You might opt for an advanced degree of web designing. There are designers who do not have any advanced degree in web design but are self learners. They have developed their designing skills on their own. If you do not have advanced degree in web designing, you can also do a short internship with a web designing firm to get some practical experience. Hands on experience will also help you get the job easily.
Web designers need to have good communication skills. They should know how to explain various issues in different languages. They need to be able to translate ideas into action. Web designers need to be updated with the latest trends in their profession. They should be technically sound as well as creative. They must know how to manage time and meet strict deadlines. This can be a bit challenging as it does become difficult to maintain a strict deadline and yet be creative.
Career Path Of A Web Designer
As a web designer, you can grow in ranks within the function itself. You can also rise within a marketing communications function. It is up to you and your aptitude and expertise on how far you rise and at what speed. Some people confuse web designers with web developers. But both are completely different. A developer usually works on the server side development and web server security. If you are interested in becoming a web developer from a web designer, then you would need to learn additional programming languages as well as methodologies like Object Oriented design and Java programming.
The job market for web designers is quite lucrative. Companies need to project themselves in an attractive manner in order to stay ahead of competition. So they hire web designers to project a favorable image for the company in the virtual space. Web designers are needed in all sectors. Everybody needs websites to attract new business and retain the existing one. If you want, you can even freelance for various companies instead of working for a single one. This way, you can get better exposure and income. Web design as a career can be quite lucrative if you stay on the right track
Taking Your First Steps Toward Creating a Personal Website
Creating a personal web site from scratch is quite a task particularly if you are inexperienced and have an idea but need to get it up and running. Anyone can put a web site together, the trick is letting people know it exists and attracting traffic from the internet to your site. The key is getting the knowledge you need and learning internet marketing.
Where should you start? The first item is finding the product/service you will promote on your site. This is called niche marketing. It is best to find a market you can specialize in and focus on. Make a list of topics for a web site you think you might be interested in. Study trends to see what on your list might be appealing to an audience on the internet. You can use major search engines to help you with this and market journals for the topics you have chosen to do your research.
You should check each item on your list to see if there is enough demand to support the product or service you will be building your site around. At this point, you should pick the topic that makes the most sense for you or start fresh if none of the ideas you have are suitable.
You are now ready to start the process of putting your site together. If you are not comfortable with doing this yourself, you can pick someone to do it for you but I recommend starting small (no more than 5 pages) at the beginning. Later on, you can make changes as your site grows. Keep yourself organized and keep up with who is visiting your site and what they are looking at when they visit.
Now is the time to begin learning internet marketing so you can get traffic to your web site. I am a big fan of free online marketing courses and you should start the process of finding good courses and studying them. A good guide will teach you about methods of attracting customers to your site. There are several methods of internet marketing and in the beginning, it is best to focus on one or two methods to master.
You should then formulate your marketing plan. Set a budget for advertising and stick to it. It is not hard to get caught up in the trap of overspending on ads so keep it simple and stay only with what you can afford. Before long, you will have visitors and can begin the task of managing your site's visitors and customers. At some stage, your will want to add affiliate marketing programs to increase your profit and maybe some form of advertising such as Google AdSense.
The process of setting up a personal web site is easy if you take it in steps. Focus on keeping things simple and you will succeed.
Find out more about learning internet marketing by looking at some of the recommendations on my web site. While you are there, see my best recommendation for affiliate marketing.
Inspiring Designs For Your Website
It is always highly inspiring to have your website designed in a manner that they display functional quality. The websites should be highly accessible and obvious for using. It is not necessary for a site to be very cute but they should be appealing so that the user can conveniently use it. Ease of use is the keyword in such cases.
Drawing the attention of the users is important
Simple and effective layouts are the characteristics of successful modern websites. The contents could be rich in some cases and not so rich in other cases but in all cases, they are relevant and qualitative. Not gorgeous or graphical sites draw attention of the viewers more but the simplicity and convenience of surfing that draws more traffic to your website.
Features of the good web sites that draws viewer's attention
Some of the features that help your web site draw attention of the viewers are -
•Proper layout of the contents and setting them properly in the background of the web page where they are displayed can give your website a natural look. There could be a couple of lines of bold contents and then some bulleted contents.
•The layout should be conventional and minimal. It would be better if the key contents are displayed in larger and bolder fonts.
•A nice logo and text only navigation can help enhance the reputation of your website quite well.
•One of the cleanest sites is the one that carries good typography and excellent photographic views. Simple designs and imagery helps the site enhance its visitor base.
•The site should allow the viewer to focus on the contents and icons, if any mostly.
•If your site uses blogs then such writing materials should be such that should evoke the interest of the viewers.
Using the rich effects and pixel savings
Saving pixels is one of the major issues in any web designing. However, you may have to splash out a lot of information with details in certain areas. Such splashing also creates a simple affect. The working of any rich web site provides you with enjoyment of facts, links, and data without any problem.
Think about a beautiful sky with clouds and lots of variation in light and color. It is intense pixel-wise, but the overall effect washes over you, creating a "sit-back" emotional reaction without requiring a lot of eye work or thinking. Sometimes for good affects, highly colored forms are used as background of the conventional content areas. The detailed sketches used in the background also give a quite grunge effect.
Logos could add character to your web site
Good and lively logos are very important for designing a good website. That is why the Web design London and Web design Manchester both give it a priority in the list of web components. For example a combination of super iconic squares with strong black text could have a telling effect on the viewers.
The important thing about a good designed logo is it should be organic, energetic and should be able to create human -feelings thus facilitating real e-commerce web design.
Harry Works as a Content Writer in Neoteric UK which Provides excellent website design, internet marketing, ecommerce services across UK.
How to Design a Successful Website - A Practical Guide!
There are millions of websites out there, but only a small percentage of them ever reach a higher ranking or even manage to pull in more than a couple visitors a day. The world wide web contains a plethora of information, but the fact is that most of the information available is unqualified. Because there is so much unqualified information on the internet, you have to really stand out if you want to make your website successful. Anyone can show up and start a website related to topics they barely know of. But only a handful of people actually understand their topic or scope and capitalize successfully. It is that handful of people which makes up more than 80% of the web's revenue.
So how exactly can you design a successful website? Here are some pointers to get you started:
1. Create unique content: Forget article spinners and replicators. They are now very easily spotted by search engine algorithms. Search engines love unique content, which means that the content you feature on your website should not be anywhere else on the web. This can only happen if you allow only qualified people to provide content, or write the content yourself.
2. Target a certain segment: Creating a multi-purpose website can be successful, but statistics have shown that niche websites are easier to generate revenue with. So stick with a single topic or scope. If you are starting a news website, try not to accept all kinds of news, but stick to news in a certain niche. Stick with a niche, formulate a plan and you are bound to succeed.
3. Encourage frequent visits: Use a mailing list to capture your subscribers and be in constant touch with them. Give them a reason to visit your website consistently and frequently. This will generate a critical mass of interest, boosting your search engine rankings as well as your traffic.
4. Do not over-advertise: Do not fill up your website with meaningless banners or sponsors in hopes for a quick buck. Websites which have used advertising only sparsely provide a more professional look. This builds trust faster and can improve your business in the long-run.
5. Base your website on an idea: I cannot state this enough. The money is not in the website itself. It is in the underlying idea. What is your idea? Do you wish to bring the guitar community together on a single platform? Is your website catered to bringing single moms to a central platform to solve their problems? Remember, the money is in the idea.
I hope this article was informative. Remember, anyone can design a website. Only a handful people are able to do it correctly and reap amazing benefits.
For more info on how a successful website should be created, check out the new guitar video website I recently created!
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Choose Colors While Designing Web Pages
In the world of Web designers, a major error in website design is the incorrect use of colors. Poorly-defined color palette reflects the work of an unprofessional designer. When choosing colors, the principle must be the 'choice and taste' of masses as it will be viewed by them only, in large numbers. So, picking a color palette should be done very cautiously. The most common colors used in web design include:-
Blue - One of the most popular colors used on the Internet. It belongs to the category of so-called "safe" colors. The blue color is associated with such concepts as peace, serenity, reliability, credibility, honesty, purity, clarity. However, for example, light-blue color can symbolize depression. So while choosing blue color for your web pages, it's advisable to be very cautious.
Green - It has always been associated with nature. It symbolizes the nature, health, future and youth. However, in some cases Green may be correlated with distrust and danger.
Yellow - It is the color of joy, happiness, friendship. Among the negative associations Yellow may suggest cowardice and disease. Do not use too dark yellow.
Orange - It is a symbol of warmth and energy. A very good color for focusing prominently on something.
Red - Red is the most appropriate color for capturing instant attention of the visitor. You can use it in the pages/text/images/logos that demand instant attention.
Violet - It is a mysterious color that suggests creativity, normally used for giving special elegance to the website.
Pink - It is the most feminine color. It is also associated with children and childhood.
Black - Black is a symbol of force, darkness and evil.
Colors
Different shades of colors, well applied in different situations are the identity of a sound web designer. It must be understood that, depending on the subject site, you should be limited to a certain combination of colors and shades. For example, the use of bright pink in the development of a business website will look, to say the least, strange. The same goes true for example, with the use of red color in the development of a website associated with medicine, which not only suggests visitor's distress, but rather draws an association with blood and danger.
Colors compatibility with OS
When choosing a color palette, it must be remembered that on a variety of operating systems colors may look differently. For example, if a visitor will have a Mac operating system, it is unlikely that he sees the colors in the same way as he would see in MS windows.The factors influencing the different display colors include the installation monitor, the operating system, the type of monitor, graphics card, resolutions, etc.
When you change colors, you must guarantee the contrast between the background and plain text. For example, visitors may not have an ideal vision, and hence it may be difficult to read the light gray text on a white background. Some combinations of colors can cause irritation, for example, green text on a red background.
Pixelcrayon, web design company delivers services like custom web design, web maintenance, PSD to XHTML conversion, template customization, e-commerce solutions and offshore outsourcing
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Remarkable Tips For Freelance Web 2 Graphic Design Templates
"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." - Albert Einstein
If we close our eyes and think for a graphic design for our website then a simple appealing template arises in our mind first. Graphic design is an art that cannot be done by everybody though it is related with our day by day life., just like our simple lifestyles we prefer the graphic design templates for our websites in a calm, simple and effortlessly accessible manner.
A calm poise of your site will differs your website from your competitors and the dashing appeal will attract your visitors at your site. These two things are known as the backbone of any freelance graphic design. Don't collapse your optimistic thoughts while designing templates that will help you to bring much confident appealing web design templates.
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. Never lose a holy curiosity to invent something new." - Albert Einstein
Always follow this word to become a famous freelance graphic design professional, only your innovative thoughts can push you a long way ahead of your competitors. Nowadays web 2 graphic design layout makes this design process very easier and effective. These unique web 2 templates bring a new tide in professional graphic design industry.
These web 2 graphic designs are much affordable and effortlessly synchronized for the visitors. You can easily attract web visitor at your website through its various quality features. It populates more appeal on your website in an optimized manner.
Some valuable hints to attract your visitors through web 2 graphic design templates
Tempting logos: Recently web 2 logos are really very effective to draw someone's attraction in a very first appearance. Unique large size good looking colorful logos are the prime weapon to bring visitors at your site and circulate them at per your wish.
Large fonts for important content: Formatting significant key phrases within content with different font is one of the top capabilities of web 2 style. You can also decorate your entire content with different colors for more attraction.
Innermost poise: Telling a story in a confident manner is always respected everywhere. Thus strong innermost confidence of your website will pay you lot more business.
Mild appeal: Calm as well as a gentle appeal is greatly required for the visitors when they enter at your website. You have only 4-5 seconds in your hand to attract their concentration and make them feel comfortable enough to stay at your website and to travel into your important web pages.
Using CSS: Previously websites have enormous numbers of tables which makes the coding very large and complicated which increases the page weight as well. But nowadays through web 2 style maximum professional graphic designers are using CSS style where they are describing everything about the page structure. After that they simply call those styles from all pages at per their requirement. It generally synchronized the coding which helps to reduce the page weight.
Labeling fluorescent color boxes: For highlighting important parts of your web page (like special offers, business news, gift packs etc) you can use different shimmering colorful boxes through web 2 graphic design style to easily provide main points in front of your visitor. In graphic designing term it is actually called labeling.
Wee icons: Attractive wee icons are playing an emotional role into the visitors mind. You should apply this weapon to attract them at your site but in a simple manner. Wisely inserting catchy icons for different business segments rather planning vast content is possible through web 2 graphic design style.
Reduction of columns: Website clarity always depends on number of columns. Through this designing policy designers can able to reduce the number of columns for different business segments on your designed template. Those segments can be colored differently for more prominence advertisement of your business plans.
Joanna Gadel is functioning as a freelance graphic design professional and she recently allied with leading web graphic design marketing firm in Sydney. Her articles educate her enormous numbers of readers regarding latest graphic design trends.
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Dreamweaver Vs FrontPage Review
If you are serious about web designing, you will know that having the right equipment and tools makes the world of difference. It really does improve your designing skills if you know what software is best suited to making the best websites around.
The powerful Dreamweaver has now overtaken one piece of software that was great once upon a time. So, what is special about Dreamweaver, you may be asking? Well, the list is absolutely endless and although Front Page can still be useful, it doesn't compare to Dreamweaver.
The Comparison
Front page is a great application to use for web sites as it is generally quite easy, while Dreamweaver has been designed to make more advanced applications and websites. FrontPage does have some good advantages to it, such as being easy to add certain features, for example, forms, to web pages. The layout of the interface is also quite simple to understand. So it is great for beginners.
However, when you compare Front Page to Dreamweaver, there are quite a few downsides. One downside includes the code being not as clean as it is with Dreamweaver and it also lacks the interactive tools and other extra features that Dreamweaver boasts, too. Also pages created in front page can't be run on all web hosts, as pages created in front page sometimes require special server extensions.
As for Dreamweaver, the benefits compared to Front Page are quite brilliant. Although Dreamweaver is more expensive to buy and harder to learn, it is definitely worth it, as the possibilities are endless - allowing you to create whatever your imagination will let you.
The best part about Dreamweaver is that the code is clean and simple. This makes it easy when you need to edit the HTML and add extra code. You can easily set up Dreamweaver to communicate with a server and, with this, you can upload your web pages to the server with minimum fuss. The interface is also a bit more complex, compared to Front Page, but it offers so many more features and extras, it certainly makes up for it. If you want to make your web pages and applications more interactive, Dreamweaver can easily assist you in adding elements to your web pages with just a simple click of a button.
Learning Dreamweaver
Dreamweaver, as you may well know, is a huge piece of software capable of making highly complex and interactive websites, with server side technology and other great features. The problem with using Dreamweaver is that it can take a while to master all of the techniques and, therefore, it may be wise to find some tutorials on how to do this. I recommend doing a search on Google for Dreamweaver Tutorial or Dreamweaver Video Tutorial. You're bound to find plenty of good quality tutorials available.
Looking for a Dreamweaver Tutorial? Visit http://www.dreamweavermadesimple.com/blog to get great Dreamweaver tips and tricks.
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Role of Site Structure in Web Designing and Traffic
Search engine optimization is major feature for the search results. There are mainly two types of optimization: on page optimization and off page optimization. On page search engine optimizations are things that we can change on our webpage. Off page search engine optimization comes down to basically one thing, which websites are linking to your website and how they're doing it. The On page optimization aspect keeps in mind during the web site designing. I am recommending a little aspect of on page optimization which is usually do not take into account in web design that is site structure.
Site structure: Site structure plays an important job in search results. The following are the main points which you should follow in site structure during the web site design.
Search engine optimization and the Main page
The most significant point is to optimize the main page of your site for word combinations such as index.html. This page is most likely to get to the top of search engine lists. My search engine optimization observations suggest that the main page may account for up to 30-40% percent of the total search traffic for some sites.
Number of pages
The universal rule of search engine optimization is that the more, the better. Increasing the number of pages on your website increases the visibility of the site to search engines. If new information is being often added to the site, search engines consider this as progress and development of the site; moreover, you should sometimes publish more information such as events, articles, news, press releases, useful tips, etc on your site. This may give further benefits in ranking.
Navigation menu
According to rule, almost all sites have navigation menu. Use keywords in menu links, it will give additional search engine optimization importance to the pages to which the links refer.
Keywords in page names
The various search engine optimization professionals consider that using keywords in the name of a HTML page file may have a positive effect on its search result position.
Avoid sub directories
It is best to place too many pages on your site, all in the root directory of your site. Search engines consider such pages to be more important than ones in sub directories, so that you try to avoid sub directories.
One page - one keyword phrase
Search engine optimization try to optimize each page for its own keyword phrase. Sometimes you can choose two or three related phrases, but you should certainly not try to optimize a page for 5-10 phrases at once. Such phrases would probably produce no effect on page rank.
Site structure is important for search engine optimization results as well as it has major impact on web designing. The proper site structure provides the easily navigated, highly usable website which fascinates more visitors and customers for business.
I hope you understand that how important the site structure in web designing.I advice you during the web site design don't forget about site structure and make sure you remember these points. For more information visit http://www.wensil.com/
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Modern Web Design Techniques
Successful web design companies and designers will all tell you that the most important factors for your website are that they offer original content to your readers in a way that will assist the search engine results.
Make Your Website Sticky
By achieving the above your website will keep regular viewers and of course attract new ones. By adding good quality, original content you can be sure not to lose too many visitors to your competitor sites permanently.
Get The Branding Right
When designing or commissioning the design of your company logo, try to get several variations created to choose from. Ask your friends and colleagues for their opinion to help you make the right decision.
Keep Homepage Text Content Short
Find ways to keep your homepage text content light. Use short paragraphs, line breaks and bullet points where possible to make the information easy to absorb quickly. Don't put off the skim readers with too much text content.
Text Size Matters
Your target market may be much older than you and may require the use of screen reader tools and much larger text. Consider this at the outset so that your site design can accommodate this.
Easy Linking Between pages
Make it simple to move between pages with an organised menu structure. Anyone viewing the site and struggling to understand how to get around will probably leave.
Pictures Tell A Thousand Words
Good use of images can really improve the users ability to skim read the page and analyse the content more easily. Avoid confusing and non appropriate images and stick to the theme of your page when choosing images.
Give To Receive
Web searchers are usually happy to offer their details for you to use in your future marketing if you give them a freebie. A simple pdf download in trade for an email address is often enough to encourage an action from your visitors.
Learn From Your Peers
Sometimes you don't need to be completely original. Research your competitors sites to see the things that they do well and try to incorporate that into your site.
Studio-40.com is a professional web design company. See the website for more details. Web Design Leicester
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7 Must Know Rules For Website Designers
Today, many internet tools or software are available to help and guide users to create a website in a blink of eye. Even new webmasters or non-IT knowledge users may be able to master it in no time. However, to create and design a good website is not as easy as it seems. There are a few simple rules that one can follow to help uplift the quality of your website and hopefully to attract more visitors to surf or linger a little longer on your website.
1. Maintain your site at light load
Basically, if your website is full with images and animations, it will take time to load your website. Transmission time will direct proportional transmission speed. When your website is heavy in term of kB, it will direct affected transmission time. But now, this problem is not so obviously due to high internet connection speed. Though, you are advised to keep your website file size less than 100kB.
2. Put more eye-catchy gadgets into your website
Commonly, people are much attracted by the first impression on something. It is not simple as you think. Too much decorations will make your websites over-exaggerated, and too little will make your websites dull. You are advised to use simple and nice decorations which able to deliver the meanings of your website to surfers.
3. Proper arrangement in content and practice multiple pages creation
To avoid people get boring with your website, do not put all the words in single page, especially your website is full with words. An ideal website will have a proper arrangement for contents (arranged according to topics) on different pages. Always practice to create multiple pages for different topics as this will enhance the search engine traffic.
4. Avoid create wide pages
A very important rule to make your website more interesting is never create pages which is too long until scroll bar is needed. Try maintaining your table below 770-780 pixels in width. Whatever you do, avoid creating pages that require a horizontal scroll bar. This is crucial as wide pages will make surfers difficult to read.
5. Avoid using too much AV gadgets
First of all, you must understand what kind of websites you going to set up. If you going to set up entertainment site, it will be good to attach gadgets like bells, whistles, sounds, moving graphics, etc. Otherwise, try minimize using these especially information websites as it will annoy surfers and eventually leave your site.
6. Make sure navigation easy accessible
Sometimes, it will be frustrating if you cannot find the navigation key in the website. To make your website convenient, you are advised to include easy accessible links, preferable on left hand side of the page. Also, ensure the navigation consistent across the pages.
7. Use simple and easy readable text
Avoid using text which is too big or too small as this will make surfers difficult to read. Contrast colour between background and text also important. Always use dark text and light background. For websites, you are advised to use font like Arial or Verdana as these fonts are more readable on computer screens.
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Web Designing For Your Home Page
Just as a lot can be made out about a book from it's cover page; similarly the home page of your website says a lot about your site. It is not only the first point of interaction between your customers and you, but at the same time the home page also acts as the informer or prelude to your entire site.
Websites have now become the prime marketing channel for several businesses. Almost half of their business is carried out through actions and activities within the website. Hence, you can imagine the plight your website will have to go through, in case these actions are not properly designed and displayed in the site. This makes it essential that the websites strongly concentrate on the development of their site's homepage.
A number of factors play important role in the creation of the home page, one such essential factor is the selection of categories that should be displayed on the home page. Many people have this notion that every feature and every category of their website deserves a place in the home page. As a result of this, they end up over crowding their home page. This makes it even more difficult for users to browse through their website, puzzled and confused, they decide to move out of the site.
Therefore, the first factor in your home page web designing should be the right selection of items that shall be displayed in your homepage. The most common elements that are ideally used in company websites for home page include, Products, Search, News and Press releases, Navigation and events and announcements. And most importantly the About Us page that talks about the company.
Web designing ideas for the entire site should ideally be absolutely synchronized, but yes, a little more emphasis is always added to the home page so that it is able to attract visitors. Talking about the layout part of your home page web designing, you must ensure that a lot of free white space is left in your site, providing ample breathing area to your visitors.
Believe it or not, web designing does make a lot of difference. A good design contributes great deal towards the success of a website. Get your website designed through expert web designers, you will find many of them on the web.
Naman Jain is an Online marketing professional, presently working with Rupiz Media, one of the leading online marketing company offering expert SEO services, pay per click, affiliate marketing services,UK web development services and website designing solutions over the globe.
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Eight Tips to Enhance Online Profits
Let's look at the top strategies that are fundamental to online profits. No Internet or affiliate marketer can afford to ignore these basic tactics if they are serious about making money online.
Here are some tips that are practical, easy to understand and implement right away. Many are amazed at the impact it has on their business, and naturally, their profits. So lets get started with
Launching your website and tips for success.
A well designed website is crucial to an online business' success. Special care must be taken during the pre-launch stage before the world hears about your online presence. Making sure that your website is effective is an ongoing process, especially just before it is launched. You will need to make sure that there are no spelling mistakes in your content or broken links because it adds to your credibility. Imagine what a visitor will think after clicking a link that turns out to be broken - or even worse, clicks on your affiliate program links that's not working efficiently!
So how can you avoid last minute glitches? To avoid last minute glitches and ensure that your website is launched successfully, here are some "must" tips to keep as a checklist every time you launch a new site:
1- Check all links AGAIN. Even though you haven't made any changes in the past weeks except crosschecking each link, just do it again. Broken links are a curse. Make sure that each link points your visitor to the right information page. No visitor enjoys receiving error messages. They will simply think that you don't care enough and be lost in cyberspace forever!
2- The fold is critical. The Fold is the border at the bottom of your web page and you must ensure that all the information above that line must have content you want your prospective customer to see. It's always best to lay the page out in such a way that your visitor sees what you want them to see first. Catchy headlines, bulleted content, subheadings, highlighted text, space, links to more information - are techniques to avoid clutter.
3- Spell check, the experts secret - Always use spell check. All web building software come with spell check function. If you can get a friend to re-check manually, do it. Since you've been looking at the page constantly, any error will be more obvious to someone else.
4- Try to take a fresh look at your website. Always test the site. Have your close associates and friends look at it and get their reactions. It doesn't hurt to make those little changes that will make a big difference. It could be something as simple as font size, color, the flow of text...
5- Test your navigation links. Make sure all menu titles are succinct and to the point. It makes no sense to be overly creative with unclear words here. The most important information must jump out at your visitor in the few seconds he or she takes to glance over various elements of your website. Taking these steps will make sure your conversion rate is high.
6- Too much is too bad. Make a page that is user friendly and easy to navigate. This applies to the content on your page. Your prospective customers already know what they want, so they can always be directed to "know more" if they wish.
7- Keep images relevant and to a minimum. An overdose of graphics will make the page take ages to load and no one is going to wait around until it happens.
8- Check all your registration forms, submission forms, sign up links - everything.
Following these guidelines will assure a good solid launch for your new website.
Marketing tips can be found at http://www.tips4success.biz/mktg.html
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Website Design the Latest Trends
Website design has evolved since the beginning of Internet. The first page uploaded on a web server was just a simple document with black text. This page was created by Tim Burners Lee, the founder of internet. Since then, websites have evolved into a more complicated combination of design and code. In late 1990s, websites were designed using colors and text effects. The design was simple and the web pages looked more like brochures.
The internet boom and the opportunity to do business online changed the look and appeal of websites entirely. People were flocking to tap the online market and get the first mover advantage. They developed visually compelling sites to attract visitors and more sales. The websites were crammed full of information and there were lot of colors on a single page. Those websites managed to do well for sometime although they were a nuisance and most of the people use to run away from those websites. Those websites had overlapping colors, big text and some eye popping text effects which used to you're your attention away from the main product/service. There were multitude of bright color with intrusive text and those websites were crammed full of information.
Then, came the internet recession, this was a golden period for website designs. People learned from their past mistakes and started to design some engaging sites that allowed the visitor to focus on the main product/service they were offering. But there was one drawback; the internet population was going through a learning curve and they used to think that simple websites are designed cheaply and used to run away. To solve this problem, most of the big players changed their website design to interactive flash based movies which used to impress visitors with the flexibility and uniqueness of flash based design.
Those were the times when HTML, DHTML and Flash were used to create website designs. The table based design was good but it had some limitations; lots of codes to write and implement style on each and every object on the web pages.
To address this problem, CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) was introduced and many designers adopted it to get rid of long codes. CSS is the latest trend in web design. There are no tables to draw. You can use the div tag to assign styles to any object or component on the web pages.
The latest trend in website design is the result of a 15 year evolution that occurred step wise. Now website designs are more mature and they are centered on the content of the website; not the other way around. Layouts are hot these days. Good web designers are using layouts to direct visitor's attention to the content and not the design. The designs are aesthetically developed to soothe the visitor eyes and keep them engaged. The liquid layouts are things of past.
Now designers are more inclined toward creating perfect layouts and keep the background simple. The website is intentionally left blank outside the layouts to avoid distraction. The images and icons are used to highlight certain points and videos are embedded on the sites to provide dynamic content that will engage the visitors instantly. Subtle and light colors are used to complement the design. 3D gradients and reflection effects are current trends.
All in all, website designs are getting better day by day. The mature professional look is more important than cramming and stuffing of images, icons and other design components. Less design and more content is the rule of today's online era and it has given visitors reason to think about the product/services they are interested in rather than appreciating or loathing the design of a website.
The future of website design is very promising. In future, dynamic content like videos and images will be used to attract and entice visitors. As the internet progresses towards becoming the sole business platform for most of the major businesses, the website design will be considered less important. Content will rule and design will only be there to complement it.
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What Do All These Graphics File Extensions Mean?
Vector Files store images as a series of descriptions of simple shapes. They will split an image into lines, rectangles, circles etc. and will describe the positions and colors of all of these shapes on the page, and then reconstruct the image when the file is opened.
There are advantages to using vector files, because you have a description of a scene you can increase its size indefinitely and still have enough information to keep a high quality image. Some programs use a vector format by default. All PowerPoint drawings are in a vector format, as is all Microsoft clip art. Vector images are suitable for putting simple images into documents and presentations, but should not be used in web pages.
Bitmap Images are analogous to taking a photograph. The whole image is split into a grid of tiny squares, called pixels, and the color for each pixel in the whole image is recorded. This format allows extremely complex pictures to be described (such as photos), but can produce extremely large file sizes.
Unlike vector files, you cannot enlarge a bitmap file without losing resolution. One last point about these two formats is that it is easy to convert a vector file into a bitmap (that's what happens when you look at it on your screen!), but rarely possible to convert a bitmap into a vector. Typically, BMP files are uncompressed, hence they are large; the advantage is their simplicity, wide acceptance, and use in Windows programs.
JPEG or Joint Photographic Experts Group files (DOS filename extension is JPG) suffer generational degradation when repeatedly edited and saved. The JPEG format also is used as the image compression algorithm in many Adobe PDF files.
Advantages of JPEG images:
•Huge compression ratios mean faster download speeds
•JPEG produces excellent results for most photographs and complex images
•JPEG supports full-color (24-bit, "true color") images
GIF or Graphics Interchange Format is limited to an 8-bit palette, or 256 colors. This makes the GIF format suitable for storing graphics with relatively few colors such as simple diagrams, shapes, logos and cartoon style images. The GIF format supports animation and is still widely used to provide image animation effects.
Advantages of GIF files:
•GIF is the most widely supported graphics format on the Web
•GIFs of diagrammatic images look better than JPEGs
•GIF supports transparency and interlacing
TIFF or Tagged Image File Format is a flexible format that normally saves 8 bits or 16 bits per color (red, green, blue) for 24-bit and 48-bit totals, respectively, using either the TIFF or the TIF filenames. The TIFF image format is not widely supported by web browsers. TIFF remains widely accepted as a photograph file standard in the printing business.
PNG or Portable Network Graphics file format was created as the free, open-source successor to the GIF. The PNG file format supports true color (16 million colors) while the GIF supports only 256 colors. The PNG file excels when the image has large, uniformly colored areas. JPG files are smaller than PNG files. Many older browsers currently do not support the PNG file format. However, Internet Explorer 7 and all contemporary web browsers fully support the PNG format.
For more information on small business branding visit SAS Graphic Design at: http://www.sasgraphicdesign.com
6 Reasons Why Using Flash is a BIG Mistake
Most web designers and web design companies will try to convince you that if you want your business to have the best site possible that you MUST have a flash site. Flash, for those of you who are newbies, is a software program that can create really cool special effects and animations. You can either have flash elements embedded in your website or you can have your entire website done in flash.
Now I will be the first to tell you that Flash can make a site look pretty cool, but if you are actually trying to make some money from your online business that using flash is a BIG no-no. Here's why.
1. Too Much Time
It takes way too much time to download an all flash website. Even though broadband and DSL users are growing there are still too many people that are still on dial up to rely on using an all flash site.
Your potential customers will get ticked off at waiting an hour to download your beautiful website and will leave to go to the next one.
A lot of times, designers will say that they can fix the download problem by making smaller portions or chunks of the main site. So instead of having to wait for just one huge file, you now have to wait for a huge file every time you click on a button to go to another part of the site.
It does not fix the problem at all. Your customers are still gonna get ticked after they click on your product button and then realize they have to wait another 8 minutes to download that page too.
2. Annoying Intro
I see a lot of websites that have these flash designed intros. The concept is to have a really cool looking intro to the company or product before launching the main website.
First of all, I have seen some really pathetic attempts at flash intros. If you can't design a good one you should definitely not try at all.
Second, most people search for the skip intro button and just click past it anyway. Or if you don't have a skip intro button, they just leave your website all together because they don't want to watch your useless and annoying intro.
I know that they can be cool, that everyone seems to have one, but unless your website is already bringing in some big time money, then don't risk losing customers by using a flash intro.
3. Not much Content
It seems to be a common problem that a lot of sites that rely on a completely flash design are lacking in the content department. They seem to think that by having lots of cool, flashy elements and designs that their visitors will not notice they are lacking in anything substantial to offer.
Make sure you have good relevant content in your website, the more the better.
4. Search Engines Don't Like Flash
Websites that are done completely in flash, all face one BIG problem. The search engines have nothing to index for your site. In your HTML file you simply have a piece of code that calls up the flash file to play. The search engines can't read this file or what is in it so they have no idea how to index your site and just skip right over it.
You must have readable text and content if you ever have the hopes of getting in the top 10 search results. You will never ever ever get in the top rankings with an all flash website. It's just not going to happen.
5. Flash Headers and Navigation
Some websites have the header portion of their sites display a cool flash picture or have there navigational buttons done in flash. You can get away with this if you have lots of other good quality content for the search engines to read.
If you use a flash based navigation, include links to your other pages within the body of your text as well as text links at the bottom of the page. Search engines won't be able to read the flash navigation and won't know there are any other pages to index if you don't also have the text links in place.
6. No Plugin
Some internet users don't even have the Flash plugin installed on their computer. Some people don't like to download anything from the internet or have never even heard of flash. If they don't have the plugin then your site won't even be visible to them. Even if you put a script up to tell them to go get the Flash plugin, most people won't even bother. This is just another annoying problem to a potential customer.
Now you are armed with proof that using flash in your website is a very stupid thing to do if you want to make any money. If your web designer insists on trying to convince you otherwise, then print out this article and smack him over the head with it. If he still won't listen then find a new designer.
The Psychology of Colour in Web Design
By Sherryll Juarres
Designing websites isn't only about creating something alluring. There must to have thought supporting all design related choice and one truly significant decision is what hues your web site should be. selection of colour can be the differences in between the success and failure of a web site.
Being aware that a handful of colours can lead to an emotional response is key to choosing the right colours for a site. knowing what colours have a calming effect & which cause feelings of excitement can make choosing a colour scheme very easy.
Colours can also be used to create contrast & attention to a design. this can direct users to certain parts of a webpage.
There's a guide below to how some colours affect human emotions & perceptions.
Black is associated with power, refinement, riches & mystery. in designing for the web, it can be used effectively with bolder colours to create good contrast.
White is associated with cleanliness, simpleness, calm & purity. used on websites a lot, it can convey a sense of style & indicates that the content of the site is strong enough to stand alone without the any strong visual aid.
With connotations to lust, anger, fire & power, red, used sparingly, can be a great way to direct the user's attention to a certain area.
Associated with feelings of cold, royalty, peace and air, blue is the best-used colour for corporate websites. It creates a very different reaction to red.
Green symbolises nature, environment, peace and luck. Green is a effective colour to use for a calming effect.
Representative of joy, happiness, warning and energy, yellow has a similar impact to red, although it is not as popular. to can be used to emphasise areas of a site. However, if it's used too much, it can be an overpowering colour.
Stirring up feelings of style, modernism, fashion and refinement, grey is usually used on places that cover fashion, design and tech.
Purple is a blend of blue and red. it does have the highlights of red, but has more bold properties than blue. It stirs up images of royalty, religion and luxury. However, it isn't a frequently used colour in designing websites.
Brown, particularly the the lighter end can be very soothing. Beige is also a popular colour in web design as it gives an earthy & relaxed feel. it might also mean tradition, poverty & mother earth.
Grey can be linked to elegance, innovation & the future. The paler side is similar to white in that it's a great colour to use on a website's background to build a sense of space & modernism.
Knowing about what colours symbolise & their subconscious power can be of great benefit when designing sites. by knowing about the target audience, designers can choosing colours thoughtfully which connect to the end user thus making the site look attractive and appealing. E-commerce sites can be improved by pointing the user in the direction of the purchase now button by drawing attention and creating contrast.
waseemaadil is a professional web design and offer web design services in UAE
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How to Create a Successful Web Page Layout
A web page may seem like a puzzle, but keeping the layout simple and conventional will help your visitors finding what they need. You may be tempted to be more creative and unique, but keep in mind that web surfers will thank you for conforming by coming back to your website. To stand out, plan to use creative and unique colors and graphics instead. Here is an example of a simple and conventional layout that works well for most websites.
This article provides free, simple, and comprehensive information, hints, tips, and tools that will allow you to create a successful website. If you have time to learn, it will show you how to get the best of your website and how to run a successful internet business.
Header - Common identifier area
Every page of your website must let the visitors know that they are at your website. Here you may decide to feature your logo, banner, business name, or other graphic. Pay attention to the height of this area; if it is too tall, your content will be begin too low on the screen.
Navigation bar area
The navigation bar helps visitors finding their way through your website. Side navigation bars support an unlimited number of items while horizontal navigation bars leave more width for the content of your web pages. If practical, I always recommend the use of a horizontal navigation bar. Larger websites may need multiple navigation bars.
Web surfers are not very patient and will quickly leave your website if they do not find what they are looking for. Think your navigation system thoroughly to make it simple, efficient, and to minimize the number of clicks required to navigate through your website.
Bottom Footer - Common notes area
Every page must let the visitors know some key information about your website and who to contact in case of a question or problem. This area is also often used to repeat some or all of the links found in the navigation bar.
Main content area - Content is king
The main content area is what your visitors actually come to see. A useful and content rich website will convince your visitors about the seriousness of your business and will invite them to return to your website. Plan ahead and don't make your content an after fact simply to fill up empty spaces. Work and rework the text of your web pages, especially your home page.
Be aware that readers are uncomfortable with extremely short or extremely long lines so plan to use a two or three column layout, a bit like on a newspaper. Short paragraphs like on this page work well too.
Secondary content area - Flasher
A secondary content area is sometimes used for advertising or for highlighting some content that needs to be more visible. If you don't need it, leave this space for your main content.
Background and Colors
The newspaper industry figured out a long time ago that black letters on white paper are easy to read. Other dark font & light background color combinations work well but are a bit more risky. Light font & dark background color combinations often look strange. Do you want your website to look strange?
Pictures, logos, and artwork
Find pictures, logos, and artwork for your web pages. Save time and money by scanning printed documents you might already have. Use a digital camera and take your own pictures. Many websites including Microsoft offers great royalty free pictures.
Large picture and clips take time to download. Impatient visitors might be tempted to leave your website if it takes to long to download. Use judgment and balance.
Flash animations
Flash technology is sometimes used to create animations or sounds effects on web pages. While it can sometimes be cool, some people (like me) find them extremely annoying and will leave your website as soon as they start. Flash animations take time to download and distract your visitors from the main content of your website. Do you still want to use flash?
Outbound links
You worked hard to get a visitor to your website and the last thing you want is to loose them through outbound links. Providing non-competitive related links is great but make sure outbound links open up a new window so your web pages are still opened.
Page width
Each web browser can be set differently so web pages can look differently for different users. I always recommend a fixed page width of 775 pixels. Those pages look good for the vast majority of your visitors and will print well on a regular 8½" X 11" sheet of paper when the left and right margins are minimized.
Website Templates - Build Your Own Website
Once only big companies could afford to have a presence on the worldwide web, but those days have changed. Today, nearly every business has a website, and usually the few that do not will want to have one. Web hosting and domain name rights have become very affordable so having a web presence is available to even the self employed for very little money.
The problem of course lies in setting up a website and making it look good and look professional. While a person can take the time to learn HTML and now XHTML to create and design their own pages, it is simpler and more accessible to more people to use website templates. Templates are much like a paint-by-number experience and take much of the work out of web page design.
With website templates it is easier and less expensive to create you own pages. Web designers can be costly and while you get a great design, your business probably can't afford it. Once your website is designed by a service you have to pay for site maintenance costs as well as keeping the site up-to-date. Website templates usually allow you to maintain your own site in a fairly simple manner.
There are many different avenues to obtaining website templates. Some are offered as freeware and shareware online and are free for the taking. You can also purchase reasonably priced software commercially that provides templates to allow you to create almost any kind of a website.
Many webhosting companies also provide easy to use website templates to create your own pages, many if not most of them at no additional cost other than the hosting fee. Many even offer 24/7 tech support to help you through design problems if you encounter any. None of these templates require any knowledge of HTML code either.
Naturally, every site is not a commercial one. A large number of them have been created by people for blogging purposes or for communication with relatives or to demonstrate a talent of some sort or for other activities. There are computer users who do not know HTML and haven't got the spare time to master it. For them, templates are the ideal approach. Once you locate the right templates, it's a snap for anyone to design a site.
Setting up a web site yourself and making it look good can be a difficult task. Alternately, hiring a professional to do the work can be extremely expensive. A great alternative to both of these options is to use website templates. These templates can make putting together a professional website much easier than trying to learn HTML. Software that includes templates can be purchased at a reasonable price, or you can use one or more of the free templates available online. In addition, many hosting companies include them in their hosting packages, providing a pretty much all-inclusive service.
Benefits of Using a Website Template
One of the fastest and easiest ways to set up a website is by using a website template. This is simply a "ready-made" website that you can use instead of trying to design one from scratch. It allows you to have all the features of a great high quality site without having to pay a web designer to create it for you. This makes it a lot cheaper and easier to have a design that gets you the attention you deserve. What does a website template have to offer? Basically, everything you need to get your website up and running without a lot of hassles.
Due to the fact that you can get your site set up faster it will help you to increase production. You will have more time for other important details that need to be taken care of. Since there are so many different template designs available for you to choose from, it is normally easy to find the one that suits you the best. It eliminates a lot of the hassles and aggravations that accompany trying to start up a website from the ground up. What's even better is the fact that all the kinks and so called "bugs" have already been worked out for you so you don't have to worry about dealing with these.
Other advantages of using the website templates are being able to receive regular updates that can keep your site compatible with all the others. If changes are needed this can be done easily without changing the layout of your pages. It is also easy to use because when you choose the website template you want, you will also receive directions on how to use it correctly. You will find that everything you need to create a high quality web design will be made available to you so you can have the website you have been searching for. This makes everything quick and easier than you thought possible.
By using a website template you can take something that is considered a difficult process and turn it into something simple. It makes designing a professional website so much easier and you don't have the expense of hiring a professional designer to do it for you. You can modify the template to make it unique so it will reflect your personality and the image you are trying to reflect. This gives you the opportunity to have a great professional website without all the hassles and added expense of hiring a web designer. There is no reason to put it off any longer, you can get started today.
How to Design a Search Engine Friendly Website
Many website designers don't design their sites for the search engines. This is a huge mistake because they miss out on attracting lots of free traffic. Your beautifully designed website may have cost you thousands of dollars but it still needs to attract visitors to be profitable.
Here are 12 highly effective strategies for designing a search engine friendly website:
1. Research highly targeted keywords - do this even before you begin designing otherwise you may have to go back and clean up some of your website design. Use the keyword research tool, Wordtracker (wordtracker.com) to research the most popular keywords that pertain to the subject matter of your website. Wordtracker will show how many people have searched for that particular keyword over several search engines within the last 60 days.
2. Create a list of approximately 100 keywords or keyword phrases that you can include within your web pages. After having completed the above research, you should have found the keywords that were searched on most frequently, but only produce a small number of competing web sites.
3. Write a paragraph of 250 - 500 words of text for the top of each web page. Weave your keywords within this text being careful not have them so close together that your copy reads strange for your visitors. Aim to please the search engines as well as your web site visitors.
4. Optimize meta tags - the most significant meta tags are the title and description meta tags. The keyword meta tag has lost its effectiveness due to people spamming it, however include it anyway as some search engines still use it. Include your keywords within each of these meta tags. The title meta tag should be a short sentence about the purpose of your site. In your description meta tag, write a sentence on the greatest benefit of your site. Your keyword meta tag should include the most frequently used keywords contained within your web page.
5. Include Heading Tags - these can range form H1-H6 most designers will only use H1-H3. These tags separate each section of your web page with subheadings. The H1 tag contains the largest font and is the most significant. Within the descriptive text of these header tags you should include the keyword phrases placed in the same order as your keyword phrases that are within your keyword meta tags.
6. Optimize images using the alt tag - write a short description for the alt tag of your image. The alt tag has 2 purposes:
a) visitors can read the description if they can't see the image.
b) search engines only spider text (not images), therefore this could help your site's rankings.
7. Reduce image size - too many images or very large images on your web page will slow down the loading time of your web site. Make sure your images have a resolution of 72ppi. Slice large images into smaller pieces with your graphics editor.
8. Find incoming links (backward links) - web sites that link to yours raise your link popularity. Search for websites that are compatible with yours and have a PR 4 or more to do a link exchange. Write optimized articles and include them on your web site. This means your site has a greater chance of being indexed quickly as well as getting a boost in its rankings.
Create absolute links (ie http://www.domainname.com) from all your internal pages to your home page. This will increase the number of links pointing to your home page.
9. Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to implement a clean design throughout your web site. This will reduce the time to implement a consistent text (or layout) style for your website. It will also enable you to easily update your whole site should you wish to make any future changes.
10. Place any script code into external files - when using javascript (ie for swapping images on your navigation bar) it creates a lot of code between the header tags, pushing down the text that search, engines would spider first. Placing the script code in an external file reduces the code to just one line.
11. Insert the DOC TYPE tag at the top of every web page. A DOCTYPE ( "document type declaration") informs the validator which version of HTML you're using for your web pages. DOCTYPEs are a key component of compliant web pages: your markup and CSS won't validate without them. i.e.
[!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"]
DOCTYPES are also essential to the proper rendering and functioning of web documents in compliant browsers like Mozilla, IE5/Mac, and IE6/Win.
12. Write clean html code - website editors often write extra code. This can increase the loading time of your web pages. Check your html code by running it through a html validator (http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator).
Once you have implemented all the strategies above, submit your site to the search engines and get ready for lots of targeted traffic.
"You now have built a profitable search engine friendly website".
Optimal Website Design
The idea behind good website design is to offer your viewer a logical flow while making it interesting and easy to navigate.
Lead your viewers to the starting point and then direct them through your site without confusing them.
Here are some excellent tips that can help you develop a user friendly site and please your visitors senses. Give yourself a chance before they get away.
1. Use lots of white space. Don't feel that because you have a whole screen that you need to fill it up with stuff. Your page should follow a clean outline. Include your site name at the very top. Below that list the subject of your page and below that expand on your topic. Leave adequate space between each section. Don't cram a lot of pictures and ads. If you have an ad keep it off to the side or subtly intersperse it between your text. The idea is not to overwhelm your reader.
2. Don't use animation and flashing objects. As advertisers we feel the need to get our viewers attention. This is important but we need to do it gracefully. Flashing objects and scrolling images distract your visitor and take away from the content. If your product is better demonstrated with animation or some other multi-media, allow your viewer to select the option. Don't force it on them.
3. Every page of your site should contain an 'about' link. The internet can be a rather cold and quiet environment. If someone can come to your site and find out about who you are and what you are about, they can feel a little better about doing business with you or taking advice from you. Always include your business address and phone number and email address as well. This lets viewers know that you are serious about your business and that you welcome contact.
4. Include a 'Privacy' Link Viewers like the reassurance that you have a policy that follows privacy guidelines. They want to know that you will not sell or give away their information. In these days of rampant spam, your privacy policy needs to be prominently displayed. Many viewers and business partners won't do business with you unless you have it.
5. Always keep your links in blue. Why does that matter you might say? It's an expectation that viewers have along with the links being underlined. There's certainly no law that says they need to be as such but people spend a lot of time on the internet and it's good practice to keep your navigation consistent and recognizable. If it's not you may lose out on clicks.
6. Keep navigation consistent Keep your site's navigation consistent. What you do on your index page should be done the same way on the rest of your site's pages. Keep the colors consistent as well. Don't force your viewers to relearn each page of your site. Keep your navigation bars and links the same for each page.
7. Understandable buttons and links. Title your links appropriately. Don't use cute or misleading names. For example, if you have a link to sports equipment don't label the link 'Great Outdoors', call it 'sports equipment'. If you have a link to 'cameras' don't label the link 'hotshots', label it 'cameras'. Your viewers don't want to waste time figuring out what things are. Be clear with your labeling.
8. Focus on the 'YOU', not the 'ME'. Make it obviously clear to your readers that you are there for them. What can you do for your reader? What benefits are there for your viewer? How can you make their life or business better or more profitable? Request feedback on their success. Find out what they want to know or how you can offer them what they need.
9. Make sure your page loads fast. If viewers have to wait for a page to load they will click elsewhere. Here's a site that will help you determine how well your page loads. If a page doesn't load in 8 seconds you lose 1/3 of your visitors. Here's a great free tool to help you check your website's load time: http://www.1-hit.com/all-in-one/tool.loading-time-checker.htm
10. Use a site map. A site map will give visitors a "guide" on viewing your site and also eliminate confusion, especially with larger sites. It's a road map for your visitors to follow while they are on your site. Sitemaps will also increase rankings and placement within the Search Engines.
8 Must Have Graphic Design Skills in Today's Market
By Douglas Farrick
1. Adobe Photoshop
The ability to use and understand the basics of pixel based photo manipulation. The best Photoshop experts are constantly learning and experimenting through online tutorials, books and seminars. This is the grand daddy of them all. Make it a goal to spend X amount of time each week learning a new technique.
Test: Can you do complex selections via the selection tool? Are you accomplished with layers? Do you understand how to use adjustment layers, masks and channels? Can you remove blemishes, "scratches" and color correct
2. Adobe Illustrator
The ability to use and understand vector based graphics. This program is essential to creating crisp, clean artwork. You will need this program for logo/identity creation, poster work and even some print work. The program can be a bit tricky to learn but worth all and any aggravation to learn it.
Test: Do you understand the concept of bezier curves? Can you convert a bitmap image to a vector graphic? Have you mastered multi-step gradients? Do you know how to create graphic images with text?
3. Adobe InDesign or Quark Express
The ability to use a page layout program. This program is fundamental to any print work. Whether you are creating books, magazines, brochures, sell sheets or advertisements you will need to possess the skills of a high-end layout program.
Test: Do you understand the concept of Master Pages? Would you be able to set up a 32 page catalog? Do you have an understanding of how to control text with images? i.e.; how to flow text in and around images. Do you have basic knowledge of offset printing and pre-press processes? Hint: if not, schedule a visit to a fairly large local printer and ask if you can be shown their process AND bring a list of a questions.
4. Flash
The ability to use and understand this motion-based juggernaut. Flash is now the most widely deployed video platform on the Internet. Flash Player is installed on nearly twice as many desktops and devices as any other video player. As the web becomes more and more video-based having a solid knowledge of Flash, In my opinion, is one of the most important programs to learn.
Test: Can you create a simple animation? Do you understand the concept of keyframes? Do you know how to incorporate a Flash movie into a web page? Do you understand the power of interactivity and user interface design?
5. Understand Typography
One of the most "overlooked" design skills today is knowledge of Typographic design. It is one of the tell-tale signs between a good and excellent designer. Our business is all about communication and if type is not clear, appropriate or well designed the design is seriously compromised.
Test: Do you have a font management system installed on your computer? Have you recently read (or revisited) some of the classic type books? Are you up-to-speed on typographic standards? Do you know the difference between True Type, PostScript and OpenType fonts? Do you have a font reference guide resource book in your studio?
6. Idea Generation
In the design business it is critical to have a method of idea generation. Why? Some of the best designers in the world are paid the most money not because they know Photoshop of Flash better than you do but because they have the ability to consistently come up with new and innovative ideas that make their clients serious money.
Test: What methods do you use to generate ideas? Do you know how other innovative thinkers come up with their brilliant ideas? How often to you read (in general) so as to have myriad references and viewpoints to call upon? What do you do when your idea well has gone dry?
7. Building a Network
To be successful in area of life you need the help and support of others. This is especially important for designers who need to spend much of their time in their studios/offices. Building a network of trusted confidants and friends will pay off in more ways than you know.
Test: How often do you attend networking events or seminars? Have you made a list of 5 influential people that could help your career? Do you have some sort of system for capturing and entering your new contacts information? What can you do this week to open and expand your network? Have you sought out a successful mentor?
8. General Business Skills
You do not have to be a genius at business but you DO need to know basic business skills, like; sales, marketing, accounting, tax strategies, database management, etc. This tends to be one myth that designers rather not deal with. If you are marketing your own design firm or you are a freelancer the sooner you learn your business is NOT graphic design but the advertising and marketing business you will be light years ahead of your competition.
Test: Do you know the basic outline of a sales call? What new marketing strategies have you learned/implemented? When was the last time you wrote a hand-written thank you note or sent a surprise gift to a client?
Doug Farrick has owned and operated a successful graphic design studio for the last 4 years. He is currently putting together a very unique set of graphic design tools, tips, interviews and much more called the Designers inner Circle. To be on the pre-launch list, please sign up here: http://www.thedesignersinnercirclereport.com
7 Web Site Design Mistakes That Will Lose You Clients
In today's world, a web site is virtually mandatory for any successful business. But there are web sites that will win you customers, and there are web sites that will lose you customers. Good design has a lot to do with which category your web site will fall into. But what is it that makes good or bad web site design? In my personal opinion, a good web site is one that's simple, informative and gives me a reason to come back frequently. That's what you should get from a good web designer/writer team. Bad sites, on the other hand, are complicated to use, slow loading, confusing or just plain annoying. Here's a list of my personal top 7 turn-offs as far as web site design is concerned:
1. Slow loading pages
Studies have shown that you have less than ten seconds to grab a visitor's attention. If your web page hasn't finished loading within that (very short) amount of time, you might as well forget about it. The main culprit I've found here are huge, slow-loading graphics, especially when they are embedded in tables. If large images are absolutely vital to presenting your business, compromise by adding thumbnails to the main page and allow the visitor to click on them to access the main image. Nobody minds a longer loading time, as long as it's them who can make that choice.
2. No contact information
As I've already mentioned in my article "Do's and don'ts of web site copy", one of my pet peeves is a web site that has no contact information accessible form the main page. If I can't get in touch with a company quickly and easily, chances are that I'll go to the competition. My advice is to have a whole page dedicated to contact information - address, phone, fax, email, and preferably a map of where you can be found (remember item #1, though - no huge graphics!) And please, don't use a graphic to display that information in a particularly clever way. I like to copy and paste that information directly from the web page to my contact management program. If I can't do that, you'll likely never hear form me - and all other customers who do the same!
3. Difficult to navigate
Don't try to be clever with navigational features. Simple text links or, if you prefer, quick-loading graphics are perfectly good means of allowing a visitor to navigate your site. Anything that requires interactive navigation, like menus that expand into sub-menus, sub-sub-menus and so on, is more an indication of a wrong information architecture than of a true need for complicated navigational features.
4. Non-HTML features
Don't get me started on this one. I've got a firewall on my computer, and my browser is set to block all those little nasty things that can mess with my PC. As a result I come across many a site that won't display or function properly, because it relies on features like JavaScript, Cookies, Interactive Headers or Java Applets. None of these are necessary to build a good web site, and unless you want your web site to lose you potential customers, you shouldn't use them. Or, if you absolutely have to, make sure that they are not integral parts of the web site!
5. Huge splash page
Another pet peeve of mine. As mentioned earlier, you have less than ten seconds to get your message across. Now guess how many visitors are going to wait longer than that just to watch a fancy animation? 'Nuff said.
6. Pop-up ads
A huge turn-off as far as I'm concerned. As a matter of fact, I've got a pop-up blocker installed on my PC, so if your web site tried to tell me something important via a pop-up window, I'd never even see it. If you feel that you have to use pop-ups, consider going for the less intrusive (and annoying) pop-under windows instead.
7. Sideways scrolling
Not everybody has a monitor with the same screen resolution as you, so make sure that your web site displays on monitors with a lower resolution without forcing your visitor to scroll sideways. It's a singularly annoying thing, and chances are that you'll lose those visitors very quickly. Or, if you have information in a column on the right side of your web site, it may simply never appear on the screen.
Designing Your Website's Directory Structure
Any kid, and their grandmother too, can make a webpage. There are many "wysiwyg" webpage design applications that let you create a webpage as easy as typing text. But only a few people can create a WEBSITE. The stumbling block is knowing how to link webpages together to form a website. I have seen many websites that consist of a single webpage - about a mile long!
The first problem is that websites are contained in virtual directories. You know that your webpages can be found at yourdomain.com, but the actual path to yourdomain.com on the web server may be known only by the system administrator. And the system administrator can move your website to a different folder, or even a different computer, without changing its virtual address.
The second problem is that most people don't know how to write a relative link. Relative links have the advantage that you don't need to know the path to the webpage that you want to link to, you only need to know where it is "relative" to the webpage containing the link.
Designing Your Directory Structure
The first step to implementing a website is to design the directory structure. Let's design a directory structure for a simple download website. The website consists primarily of articles and digital material that visitors can download. You could just dump everything at the top level of the website. Good luck maintaining that website!
To keep the files organized, you need to create sub-directories (folders) on the website. Even though the website consists only of articles and digital downloads, you need five sub-directories, as described below.
- articles
- downloads
- general
- common
- cgi-bin
You understand what the "articles" and "downloads" sub-directories are for, but what are the other three sub-directories for? It's standard practice to provide certain features on your website, as listed below.
- About
- Contact
- FAQ
- Privacy Policy
- Search
- Sitemap
- User Agreement
Each of these features requires a webpage. Instead of dumping the webpages at the top level of the website, or mixing them in with articles or downloads, let's put them together in a folder named "general" (I'm sure you can think of a better name).
All of your webpages use certain things in common, for example, your logo graphic. If your web server provides SSI (Server Side Includes) all your webpages can share a common header file and a common footer file. You might also define all your website's styles in a common style sheet. Let's put all of these files in a folder named "common".
Your contact page might use an email form. If your server provides server-side scripts, you would place the email form script in a folder named "cgi-bin". Cgi-bin stands for "Common Gateway Interface - Binary". Few people use CGI any more, and those that do don't use binary files, but the folder name has stuck as a traditional place to store scripts. Almost all websites come with a preconfigured
cgi-bin folder, and the website may be configured so that the cgi-bin folder is the only folder with rights to run scripts.
I would also recommend that you create certain sub-directories for some of the above mentioned directories. Most web pages contain images. You could dump all the images in the same folder with the webpages, but when you get more than about 50 files in a folder, it becomes difficult to maintain. You should create an "images" sub-directory in the articles, downloads, and general directories. The downloads directory should also have a "files" sub-directory to store the downloads.
This arangement of directories and sub-directories will provide good file organization for the example website. Understanding my reasoning for this directory structure should help you to design a directory structure for the website you have in mind.
Default Page Configuration
Every website has at least one default webpage configured (also called the "home" page). The default webpage is the webpage that is returned when the user enters or clicks on a link containing only the domain name, without a specific file name. On a Unix or Linux web server, the default webpage will usually be "index.htm". On a Windows web server (IIS), the default page will usually be "default.asp".
The website administrator, or if your webhost provides the required "control panel" feature, you can actually configure any page to be the default page. If your web server has more than one default page configured, I would recommend removing all but the default page that you intend to use.
Now, let's assume that all of your webpages need to link to an image file named "logo.gif" stored in the "common" folder. The relative link on your default webpage would be as shown below.
"common/logo.gif"
The website file manager interprets this as "look in the folder named common for the file named logo.gif".
However, the link on any webpage contained in one of the sub-directories would be as shown below.
"../common/logo.gif"
The website file manager interprets this as "go up one level, then look down in the folder named common for the file named logo.gif".
This difference in the link may not be a problem unless you use SSI or ASP (Active Server Pages) to build your webpages from a common header file and a common footer file. Then you need a different link in the common file depending upon whether the page linked to the common file is the default webpage (where you would use common/filename) or a webpage contained in a sub-directory (where you would use ../common/filename). There are several ways to solve this problem.
1. If your website has a server-side scripting engine like ASP or PHP and you know how to program, you could implement code that selects the proper link.
2. You could use the complete path, including the domain name, on all pages. This will cause problems if you ever have to move your website to a different web host (Until all the dns servers across the planet have been updated).
3. You could put your home page in a sub-directory, for example "common", and make your default page into a re-direct to your home page. Then you would use "../common/filename" for all links. The following meta tag, placed the head section of your default webpage, will immediately redirect the users browser to your real home page.
meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0,url= "http://yourdomain.com/common/homepage.htm"
In this article, I showed you how to design a directory structure for your website and how to create relative links to link all your webpages together to form a website. Website visitors don't like to do a lot of scrolling, so try to keep your webpages to only two or three screens high. Please, no more websites that consist of only one mile long webpage!
Dreamweaver Tip: Build Better Websites Faster with Templates
If you want to make money marketing products and services on the World Wide Web, you must have a consistent look and feel to the pages that comprise your web site. Dreamweaver templates make this easy.
Dreamweaver templates relieve you of much of the tedious job of editing individual web pages, because you create the template one time then apply it to initial pages in your site. If you want to make changes alter, you can make them to the template and they are automatically applied to all of the pages that are based on your template.
Using Templates is a two step process:
1. Create the template.
2. Instantiate the template into one or more actual web documents.
So when should you use a template? How do you create it? How do you apply it? How do you make changes to a template and update the pages it applies to? The following sections will answer these questions.
When to Use a Template
Use a template whenever you have a group of pages that share a basic common group of layout features, and well defined areas that need to be customized. For example, you might use a template to define a group of pages with a three column layout, a common background color, and common menu bar at the top of the page, possibly common links on both sides of the page, and only the center column of the page left available for customization.
How to Create a Template
Dreamweaver gives you two methods to create a template, but this article discusses only the second method. The methods are:
•Create a template from an existing page.
•Create a template from a new page.
Here are the steps to create a Dreamweaver template from a new page:
1. Click the File menu, then click New.
2. A "New Document" dialog box will pop up. In the left column (the Category column) of the dialog box select Template page and in the right column (the Template column) select "HTML template". Click the Create button in the lower right corner of the dialog box.
The template is created. Now save the template as follows:
1. Click the File menu, then click Save.
2. You may get a Dreamweaver message complaining that the template has no editable regions. Ignore it, and click OK.
3. Now a "Save as Template" box will pop up. Type the name you want for the template in the bottom entry field, which is labeled "Save as".
Dreamweaver will automatically create a Templates folder and save the template into it. The template will have a ".dwt" file extension.
Populate the Template
To populate a simple Dreamweaver template, follow these steps:
1. Add content
2. Mark content as editable where applicable
A detailed description of these two steps follows:
Adding content to a Dreamweaver template is the same as adding content to any other page -- except . . . you should think carefully about the fact your content will be replicated on all instance pages based on your template.
As an example, you might do a table based three column layout, where the first row of the table is just one cell containing a graphic, and the second row of the table contains three cells -- links on the left, links on the right, and an editable region in the center.
You create the table, and then add the top graphic and the links as you normally would. This leaves only the center cell of the second row of the table to be marked as editable. Do this as follows:
1. Select the center cell of the second row of the table.
2. On the "Common" Bar, click the Templates popup menu, then click the Editable Region command.
3. A "New Editable Region" dialog window should pop up. Type a name (for example "Content1") into the "name" text box, then click OK.
Now the template has an editable region. Save it.
Create a Page Based on the Template
This is where you get a return on the work you did creating your template. The following steps describe how to create a page based on a template.
1. Click the File menu, then click New.
2. A "New Document" dialog box will pop up. Select the "Templates" tab at the top of the dialog box.
3. Now there should be two columns at the top of the "Templates" tab in the dialog box. The first column is labeled "Templates for:" and the second column is labeled "Site [site name]". In the first column, select your site; then in the second column, select your template.
4. Select "Update page when template changes" in the lower right corner of the tab.
5. Now click Create in the lower right corner of the tab.
6. A new untitled page should now have been created. Save the page, giving it the name you want.
Now you can make changes in any of the editable regions of the new page.
At this point, making changes is very simple, because Dreamweaver will only allow you to edit regions of the page that were defined as editable in the original template. If you try to edit anywhere else, the editing cursor will turn into a little circle with a slash through it and you cannot edit or delete anything.
When you are done customizing the page, save it. If you make any changes to the template in the future, they will be automatically added to the page you just created.
Conclusion
If you would like to know more of the under-the-hood mechanics of how Dreamweaver implements templates, see my article "How Dreamweaver Templates Work".
How To Think Like A Web Designer
I've noticed over the years that when I start a new web design project I've developed my own process. I imagine that most designers will say the same thing. Sure we might all follow certain principals, but I've discovered that I usually think about three things:
1.The initial concept/creative idea
2.Usability
3.Secondary design such as colors, images, etc.
I'll open up a new Photoshop document (usually at 1024 px size or greater since the majority of internet surfers are at that resolution or higher) and basically just start placing elements on the page (logos, images, menu items, etc.). This is what I like to call the "collage" phase. Often times I revert to this if that initial concept hasn't come to me yet, but even if I have a concept in mind, I like to try different placement of elements to see what works best. I often compare it to interior design of a room - you move the furniture around to see what the best placement and "flow" is.
As I'm creating and moving elements around the page, I'm thinking about two other things: how will this translate to an actual webpage (for example, can I make it 100% css, how will I "cut up" the page, etc.) and how useable the site will be to visitors. By this point in a project I've either researched or learned more details from the client about their specific target audience. This is important information to know when building a site because a site targeted to children will be completely different than a site targeted to adults, and so on.
If a client doesn't have a specific color scheme in mind, I may try several different ones to see what works best. With color and imagery (photos) I review the target audience details one more time as this plays a major role in how the design will appeal to the majority of visitors to the site.
Of course after the initial design is shown to the client there are often rounds of changes and revisions to get that "perfect" look. Here is where I combine my experience with the wishes of the client. A good designer will know how to, what I call, "tread the line", and be able to explain professionally to a client why one of their ideas might not work or how to incorporate something the client wants and make it work in a design. No one likes to be told they have a horrible idea, but I generally like to steer well clear of things like blinking animated gifs, white text or a black background, and other general no-no's.
This is a really simplified explanation on the thought process involved when first started to design a new website. Every project worked on is unique and the more you design, the more experience you gain on how to handle different projects and clients. In time, you will develop your own process that works, but don't forget to incorporate the basics (design principals) and consider the usability of your finished design.
Don't Trust This Kind Of Web Designer
So you need a website but you don't know the first thing about how sites or made or what it takes to make them. In this article I will explain the process of finding a web designer and the pitfalls and scams used by some of the less professional members of the web design industry.
A website can be designed either by writing what is called the 'source code' by hand or by having a 'what you see is what you get' (WYSIWYG) editor help you out. Source code is written in programming languages that tell your computer how to display the information on a website. A WYSIWYG editor allows you to lay the web page out as it would look on a computer screen and creates the 'source code' for you. Either method of website creation is acceptable professionally and both can create great results.
So how do we find the right designer for your site. The best starting point is to ask friends, relatives or colleagues if they have used a designer and what their experience was like with them. A good designer will have very positive feedback from past clients. This has to be the least risky route to finding a good designer as they have already been used by someone you know. Should this method draw a blank, you can find a designer on the search engines, yellow pages or they may even ring you if you have an established business.
Let's assume that you have gotten in touch with a designer and either the designer or their representative is sat in front of you. No doubt they will want to show you their previous work. Have a look at it and make your own mind up as to the suitability of their work in regards to what you want, but then listen carefully to what they say and listen for alarm bells whenever these phrases pop up.
1. "We will get you number one position in the search engines."
Absolutely 100% rubbish. There are people out there who are experts in the field of search engine optimisation - the process of helping a website rank highly in the search engines. These people do time and time again get 'good' results in the search engines. Note how I said good. These professionals will never guarantee number 1 position because each search engine uses complicated methods of ranking sites that are beyond the control of all but the people who work for companies such as google and yahoo. Do not trust this designer.
2. "If we can put our link onto your site we will give you a massive 80% off."
Think about it. If you are quoted a price and the designer is willing to slice 80% off just by putting a link to their site, do you think that the designer is being up front. Your site will have very little visitors initially due to it being new. Your site is an unknown quantity but the web designer wants to knock a bucket load of money off because he is saying that he will get lots of work from your site. Rubbish. It is a classic sales technique to make you think that you are getting a good deal when really the designer is knocking no money off the deal. Can you work with someone using such tactics?
3. "We will get your pictures for the site from Google images."
Beware, beware, beware! Just because an image appears on google images does not mean you have a right to use it. These images may be subjected to copyright laws. Some designers have been fined $2000 per image for using this method. It is worth noting that this site belongs to you and some web design contracts state that the designers are not responsible for the content. Beware, beware, beware.
4. "You can collect data from visitors on your site and use it to 'spam' them about special offers."
This guy obviously forgot about data protection and laws on spamming. This is not advisable.
These are just a few examples of things that may be said during a sales pitch for your website. Do not employ anyone that is coming out with the type of suggestions above or you will end up in trouble one way or another.
You may be wondering where I have heard the examples I have used above. I also have another business completely unrelated to web design. The site for this business is actually number 1 on the search engines for many of the keywords we bid for. We were called by a 'web design company' that had not even bothered to check if we had a website. This amused us so we ask for a visit to see what they had to say. Well, they said a lot of things including every single one of the points above. Watch out, these guys are out there.
7 Tips for Improving Your Website Design
It doesn't matter whether your website is of a personal nature with just a few pages or a larger e-commerce website, having a well-designed site is very important. Believe it or not, website design is something that matters to your visitors. It can make all the difference in whether they leave your site or bookmark it. The following are 7 tips for improving your website design.
1. Pages that load quickly. If your site does not load at least within ten or 15 seconds, chances are that most people will simply leave. You may have speedy Internet connection, but keep in mind that not all folks do. Remember, 56k modems do still exist.
2. Text on your pages should be easy to read. You will want the size of the text to be big enough, and a background color that does not obscure the text. To be on the safe side, it is recommended to use black text on a white background. If you would like to use a little more color, choose carefully, making sure that the page is still easy to read..
3. You will want your website to be easy to navigate. All text links and graphic elements such as buttons and tabs should be easy to read and use. Links found within your article should flow appropriately. You don%u2019t want your visitors leaving because they were not able to figure out how to get your Flash menu to work.
4. Both your website design and layout should be consistent with one another. If you were to switch from one style to another to often, you may confuse your visitors. It only makes sense that if the website design is suddenly too different people are bound to think that they are at another website altogether.
5. Stay away from music and sounds. Not many people like to suddenly be forced to listen to a certain type of music when they click on your site. They may already be listening to their own music. If you think that your site really does need music, turn it off by default and provide a button for visitors to click on if they want to listen.
6. Focus your web design on browser compatibility. For example, not all people use Internet Explorer. Be sure that your site can be viewed using Mozilla, Safari, Opera and Firefox. If at all possible, you may want to test your website on both a Mac and PC. Sites targeting markets such as technology should be careful, because these readers are more likely to use some of the newer browsers and gadgets.
7. Consider your website design for all screen resolutions. Chances are, you like to surf in 1240x1080 with your screen, but remember, some folks still use 800x600, or even 640x768! A website that looks great in high resolution may not be so easy to view correctly in 800x600.
If you have any doubts, consider these tips for improving your website design and test, test and test! You could ask for advice from friends or family if you want. They are not as familiar with your website design, and will likely be able to point out things that you overlooked.
A Website Checklist
If you've just finished building your new website (or revamping your old one), how can you be sure it's "ready for prime time"? Or maybe your site's been around for awhile and you think it may be due for a makeover. Because Web technologies, techniques and standards change so rapidly, even a website that seems "cutting edge" when it's built can look obsolete a year later. Or maybe you started out with a barebones website and finally have the time and/or money to take it to the next level. If you'd to give your website the once over, here are ten aspects you should consider:
Compatibility: Will your website display correctly for most people regardless of their computer hardware, operating system, browser and monitor resolution? Make sure your site renders properly for as many users as possible. If any features of your website require certain browser plug-ins, provide a download link. Remember that not everyone will have Javascript enabled and that graphics can be turned off by the user; make sure your site will still work without them.
Completeness: None of your website should be "Under Construction". Websites tend to evolve over time and are never truly "finished", but that's no reason for your website look like a construction zone. If you must include pages that aren't completed, at least put some informative content on the page to motivate people to check back later. Otherwise leave out the section altogether until it's ready for prime time.
Content: Do you need to update the text on your site? Have you added services, expanded your product line, targeted new markets, or changed your business strategy? Is your website's description of your company current and accurate, including your contact information? Could the content be written more clearly, convincingly, or succinctly? Could your website be more informative, helpful, interesting or relevant? Would customer testimonials or an FAQ section strengthen your sales message? Check all of your site content for incorrect grammar, spelling errors and typos.
Graphics: Do your graphics contribute to or detract from your website? A website with no graphics would be uninteresting, but a site with too many graphics, animations, and different fonts is overwhelming and distracts from your sales message. The trick is to find the right balance. Use animations sparingly, especially those that "loop" (play over and over). They can easily become annoying and distract from your sales message. Remember that banner ads count as graphics, too, and one or two per page is plenty.
Interactivity:You might consider making your site interactive by adding a mailing list, message board, poll, ezine or guest book. A contest or trivia quiz can attract visitors and bring them back more often. Rotating content like a joke, quote, or tip of the day keeps your website interesting. Don't feel obliged to add all the latest bells and whistles just because you can, but ask yourself whether some advanced features might give your website the edge. If you don't want to provide the content yourself, check into content available from syndicators (just keep it relevant to your target market and your other site content).
Links: Are all the links on your website working? First make sure any links between pages on your site are directing site visitors to the correct page. Check all of your links to other websites, too; the webmaster may have renamed the page or removed it altogether, and those dead links will make your site look unprofessional and frustrate your site visitors. If you've removed some of the pages from your own site, set up a custom 404 page that redirects your visitors to your home page (or a search page) when they try to access a page that no longer exists.
Speed: Does your site load quickly enough in the viewer's browser? The "Eight Second Rule" is a good rule of thumb, meaning no site visitor should have to wait longer than eight seconds to view the opening page of your website. After eight seconds have elapsed, chances are good the viewer will give up and go elsewhere. If you have graphics or animations that take awhile to download, provide some engaging content to hold their interest while they wait. Adding graphic elements always comes at a cost in terms of slower loading times, so only include graphics if they really contribute to visual impact of your website and strengthen your sales message.
Navigation:Is it easy to find information on your site? The opening page should tell visitors, at a glance, who you are, what you do, and how to find what they're looking for. From there your visitors should be able to follow a logical path to learn more about various aspects of your business. If you list products or services on your site, organize them in a logical way. If you decide to use graphic icons instead of text, make sure their meaning is obvious. Make it easy for your site visitors to find what they came for.
Search engine optimization: Is your website optimized to rank for important keywords in the most popular search engines? Double check your page titles and meta tag keywords and descriptions to make sure they are accurate and descriptive. Did you work your keywords into the actual page content as well (including variations)? Is your website focused on a specific theme, and do you have plenty of informative content related to that theme? Is your website spider-friendly (meaning search engine spiders can access every page and read the most important content from the source code)?
Style: Is your website's style consistent with your business goals? Ask yourself what you want your business image to be, and make sure your website enhances that image. Is your company's style polished? Friendly? Trendy? High tech? The look and feel of your site should reflect that style. Does your website still compare favorably with those of your competitors? Your website should reflect favorably on your business and help you to build your corporate image. If yours doesn't, maybe it's due for a makeover.
Usability: Usability refers to how easily site visitors can use your site. The best measure of usability is feedback from users -the people who visit and try to navigate the site. If you have received complaints, comments, questions, or suggestions from site visitors, change your site accordingly. Of course, dissatisfied customers won't always let you know. That's why you should also analyze your Web logs to see whether visitors quickly abandon certain pages or don't visit some of your pages at all. Think in terms of building pathways through your site that visitors can follow. A well-designed website leads visitors deeper into the site without frustrating or confusing them and doesn't lose them along the way.
The Powerfully Attractive Webpage Template
Finding and Using a Free Web Site Template
If you want to make a web site, but have limited funds or limited design skills, you may want to consider searching out a free web site template. Finding a free web site template is relatively easy. In addition to web design firms, there are also many web hosting companies and domain name registrars that offer this service.
A free website template will provide the bare skeleton design. When you are ready to make a web site, you simply fill in the empty spaces with your own text. In certain cases, your free web site template will come complete with images, and in other cases, you will only have frames and backgrounds to build upon.
The free web site template that you decide to go with should be visually pleasing and have all of the features you will need to make a web site. Above all, it should look professional. Web visitors will judge your products and services on the look of your web site. Choose the wrong free web site template and you may send your traffic away in droves before they have a chance to get to know you.
More Tips for Choosing a Free Web Site Template
While it is nice to get something for free, you should never completely base your web site design decisions on price alone. When choosing a free web site template, it is essential that it contains all of the essential aspects needed to make a web site and manage it as your business grows. Particular things to focus on when finding a free web site template include:
Support - Choosing a company or web developer that can offer you ongoing support with your free web site template is important. If you have problems when you make a web site or try to make changes, you need to know that you have someone you can call on for help.
Credibility - The last thing you want to do is choose some fly-by-night company that has no experience or no track record of success. You will be much better off choosing a free web site template from a credible company that is sure to still be in business in the coming years.
Security - If you will be using a free web site template from your web host, you need to make sure that it comes equipped with the security features you need. Custom applications need to be accessible to the right people and the database must be capable of storing sensitive information.
Individuality - The one bad thing about a free web site template is the fact that other web sites may be using the same template as you. If you want to make a web site that is completely original, a free web site template may not be for you. If you will be getting the template from a designer or a service like your web host or domain name registrar, you may want to ask how many other sites are using a similar template.
Planning An Effective Web Site Design
Seventy-five percent of a successful project is planning. That means beginning with measurable goals and objectives. Your goals and objectives should always tie back into your company's mission. So, if your company's mission is to be the market leader in widgets, your site's purpose should be to do that. It's also important to set measurable goals. This will prove that investing in your web site, pays off. Plus, it'll make you look good to your boss.
Once the goals are set, your planning is still far from done. You'll want to examine your target audience or audiences and get in their heads. This means finding out who they are and why they are on your site. Then, you'll need to make sure you are fulfilling their needs. Identify what actions each target audience will take on the site. If it's someone purchasing a widget, make widgets easily available from the homepage. Research show that people who buy on the web want to see products right away and they want to see images and prices. Put your widgets on your homepage with a small image, title, description, price (users hate to drill down to get pricing), and a "Buy Now" link.
The next step is to determine the specifications of your functionality. It sounds scary, but it's not. Most developers can work with a list of statements like, "I want a user to be able to rate products on a scale of one through five." Write down everything you want the site to do and even include what you might want it to do. For example, "An administrator should be able to log into a content management area and add a press release." You get the idea. Along with your specs, you'll need to include a database discovery. This means determining all the possible fields for everything that might be stored and served in a database. For example, a product might have an image, a title, a description, a price, a product number, etc.
Now that you know who your target audience is and you have identified key user paths and you know what the site should do, it's time to start creating your information architecture. This determines the flow of the site. Build the flow of the site to best accommodate those key user paths. These should give the user what he or she is looking for in three clicks or less.
After you have determined your information architecture, it's time to create wireframes. Wireframes are like a blueprint of your web site. You'll want to identify all of the content that will be represented on each page including navigation, logos, images, and content. This is a very important step because it takes all the guess work out for the designer, and you can do a usability gut check on your key user paths and the flow of the site itself. You can even build a test site based on the wireframes and run a usability test.
The next step is to get your content together. Start with a content strategy. What are you trying to accomplish with your content? Don't forget to include a search engine strategy that defines what your key words are and how you will leverage them in your content. Is all of your content working toward your goals and objectives? Too often I see meaningless stock images like the ubiquitous handshake. Web users are jaded amd images like these just distract the user from their mission. Do yourself and your users a favor and leave it out. Instead, use images that are meaningful and I'm not talking about the butterfly that signifies growth.
Only once all of the above steps are taken should you even start to think about design. So many web design companies lead with design. Then the client ends up with a site that may be gorgeous, but doesn't support goals and objectives. It is also of the utmost importance to design around content rather than creating a design and then stuffing the content into it. Your design should support your brand and serve as the wrapping paper to the gift. And again, make sure the design supports those key user paths; the first question your web designer should ask you is, "What's the first thing you want users to do when they come to your site. Don't forget to integrate the look and feel of your site with your offline materials-- if you don't, you'll just end up diluting your brand and your marketing efforts.
Your planning is still not done. The last bit is to plan the actual work--who is going to do what when. Who needs to give approval for what when. Throw in some milestones, stakeholders, and deliverables and you're done. In other words create a project plan. And by all means, plan the launch of the site. Make it deliberate, not an incomplete, rushed event because someone has it in their head that this just must be done before the end of the year, or else Create some buzz and PR for the launch of your new gorgeous and effective web site. Remember, you only have one chance to gain or lose users; if a new user comes to the site and does not see what their looking for, they're gone, forever, and you've just lost a possible new lifetime customer.
By planning, and doing it right instead of quickly, you'll have an end result that is not only effective but also matches everyone's expectations-- your boss, your sales team, your marketing people, and most importantly your users and your bottom line.
Do You Really Own Your Web Site? Maybe Not
By David West
Here are some important tips for you to remember and some questions to ask your web site design or development company. If you don't understand the 'ownership' issues when you are buying a web site design or web based application, this is must read material for you! Don't get caught paying twice.
I recently interviewed a new client who was looking to add the functionality of a database to their existing web site. Their current webmaster had completed a business logo and designed the initial interface for the site. The clients asked their webmaster for a quote to add the functionality to the site and he returned a price that far exceeded the clients' budget.
Long story made short, we found a great application that already exists that would meet the clients' needs for substantially less than custom development. The client advised the previous webmaster that they were moving services. Do you think they got to keep their original web site? Nope. We had to start over again, which unfortunately meant that this customer had to pay for extra design time that they had effectively already paid for.
Here are some important tips for you to remember and some questions to ask your web site design or development company.
Web Design Source Code
When you hire a web designer or a developer they are going to produce a web site or web based application that your business is going to be dependant on. In fact, a web application may be your whole business. This is absolutely the case where a business is 100% online and depends on the process built into their web site. E-commerce stores are a perfect example of a whole business online.
Web designers create web pages with a compilation of images and hyper-text markup language (HTML). The HTML is a text based standard language that most every web designer in the world knows. The HTML is what is used to hold the structure of your web site together. It keeps the pretty pictures and text all in the right places. Your web browser interprets that HTML and shows you the web site images and text.
Your web designer will start your design by "drawing" your web site in a graphics program. Macromedia Fireworks and Photoshop are two tools that are very often used by professionals. Your designer will draw the site using shapes, colors, images and fonts that are all piled up in layers to create the final "look and feel" for your new web site design. The designers will then slice up the images and use the resulting smaller images to build your working website using HTML to hold it all together.
Here is the key. You need the original art file that was used to design your web site in Macromedia Fireworks or Photoshop or whatever software your designer uses. If you don't get the source file, your next web designer will have to start your design from scratch if you want artwork changes. This is no walk in the park if the original images that were used are not available. Macromedia Fireworks source files have the extension .PNG (yourWebsite.PNG). Photoshop files have the extension .PSD (yourWebsite.PSD).
Another design issue that you may run into in the future is fonts. If your designer uses fancy fonts that are not installed by default on your computer or your future designers computer, you will have to substitute different fonts. In some cases, choosing a new font is not a big issue. However, if you could image that the font used in the logo for Coca-Cola® became unavailable because Coke® changed designers it would most likely cause them real damage. They need the font used in their logo or corporate branding and so do you!
Questions to ask your web designer
1) When you are finished designing my web site will you provide me with the source files used in the design of my new web site?
2) Will you transfer the ownership (copyright) of these source files to me or my company? Or at least give me perpetual license to continue using them and to make revisions?
3) Will you provide me with the names and files for all non-windows fonts used in the design of my new web site? At the very least, because there may be real copyright issues with transferring the fonts, you need to know the names of the fonts and where you can buy copies of them for your project archive.
Web Application Source Code
Web developers create programs that work as applications on the internet. They create code that is compiled, usually in real-time, at the web server. The code will, for example, connect to a database and extract a set of data. The data will then be compiled into an HTML table (so that it is readable) and then sent from the web server to your web browser as pure HTML. You will not be able to "view source" and read the scripting language because it never leaves the web server. If you "view source" from the web browser, you will only see the HTML.
Some of the code that your developer writes will be protected by copyright. Your developer may also buy code in the form of server components, use code blocks for functionality from other programmers or purchase complete application in order to finish your program. You need to ensure that the developer tells you that you can continue to use the software that they develop for your business for an unlimited period of time, and that if there are any licensing restrictions or reoccurring licensing costs that they are disclosed to you before you start the project. Find out if you will be bound forever to a hosting or server plan for you application.
Here are some questions you may want to ask your web developer
1) Will you transfer an unlimited a perpetual license to me or my company to use the application that you develop for me?
2) Will you disclose any licensing restrictions to me regarding the application?
3) Will you write code using common standards or languages that I will be able to move to another hosting provider or eventually to my own server?
4) Can I move my application to another server in the future if it is necessary?
Use of Encryption
So your web developer says "yes" to the last four questions and you think, "great, I'm home free, let's get started". Then two years later you decide it's time to move your web application to your own servers because your e-commerce store is screaming busy and the cost of bandwidth and hosting is killing your profits.
You start the process to move your application to your new server and call up your webmaster for help, but he has gone to University in the states and "isn't doing that anymore". You think to yourself, "I guess I should have used a more established company." So you find a new webmaster. Incidentally, I am often told by new clients that I am their second, third and sometimes even fourth web developer. So we go to move the web site, but wait, something is wrong. portions of the source code are encrypted. Even the government couldn't decrypt it. We have to rewrite those blocks of code and the client has to pay. again.
If your web sites source HTML or application scripting language is encrypted then it may have to be rewritten or you will have no way to add functionality, or to fix bugs, without involving the original developer who holds the key to the encryption. They are quite clever, aren't they?
There are some good reasons to encrypt some portions of the source code, even on in a web application. Most web applications will contain, in the source code, the database, username and password within one of the files. This is a great example of a code block that should be encrypted before it is placed into a shared hosting environment.
If your web developer is going to encrypt portions of the source code, make sure you get a copy of the unencrypted source code for your project archive. In this manner you will be able to work with a new developer.
Questions to ask your web developer regarding encryption
1) Will you be encrypting any or all of the source code in the application you are developing for me?
2) Will you provide me with a copy of the original source code prior to being encrypted?
Technologies
There are a number of technologies used in the development of web sites and web applications they include Pre-Hypertext Processor (PHP), Active Server Pages (ASP), Active Sever Pages dot Net (ASP.NET), and Cold Fusion to name a few. All of these scripting languages facilitate connecting web sites to databases and accessing functionality on the web server such as sending mail or uploading files. All of these technologies are widely used, widely available and there is a great number of developers that know these languages. There are some lesser known programming and scripting languages that may be able to do a lot of the same things as the more widely used languages. The pitfall is that you may have a more difficult time finding a programmer that knows the language.
Some web scripting or programming languages like Microsoft's® Active Server Page or Active Server Page dot Net technologies are developed specifically for use on the Mircrosoft operating systems. These technologies are difficult, if not impossible, to run on a Linux operating system. When your programmer selects a language to develop your web application with, he may be marrying you to a long term relationship with a particular operating systems and software vendor. This is okay as long as you recognize the long term ramifications of these choices, some of which may be greater costs to you in the future.
Questions to ask your web developer regarding programming languages
1) Is the technology you use tied to one particular operating system or can I host my web site on my choice of servers with my choice of operating system? More specifically, can I host my application on a Microsoft web server and a Linux server?
Transferability
Make sure that you are able to move your web site to a server with comparable standards in the future should you wish to do so. Moving a web site to a new server is not necessarily due to a break down in the relationship with your web designer. You may be forced to move if your existing server can no longer handle your traffic bandwidth. If your costs become too high in a shared hosting environment you may find it more economical to setup your own web server and host your own application.
If you do choose to host your own application this is where the cost ramifications of your earlier choices will hit your pocket book. For example if your site was developed using PHP, an open-source scripting language for websites, then the cost of your new server will likely not include any software licensing because the operating system (Linux) is free. If on the other hand your site is developed using .ASP or .ASP.NET, you are going to have to buy expensive server licenses from the big guy.
Can You Use Your Site Into the Future?
If you commission a web designer or developer to complete a project for you make sure that you have an agreement in place that clearly specifies that you can continue to use the project and the related source files when it is completed. Check the service agreement that you have signed with your web company. Of course if there is no documentation then you will not know if you own you web site or web-based application.
In Summary
There are some good reasons for web designers and developers to protect their rights and to ensure their future earning potential. As the client or purchaser of web design services you need to understand where you stand with regard to choices that will be made on your behalf regarding your web site or web based application.
David West is a Director and the operating partner of eKzact Solutions Inc. A full service web site design and web-application development company. eKzact Solutions puts small and medium sized business online!
Visit us at http://eKzact.com
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