Web Graphics Membership » make my own website

Important Rules in Website Design

Designer Eric — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 02:19:42 +0000

When it comes to making a website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are few important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

Don’t use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. In truth, they are just that — pretty vases with no real purpose. Don’t give your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Do not confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work fine.

Follow the above rules when you build website online and surely your website will perform very well

How Do I Start Making My Own Website?

Designer Eric — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:51:24 +0000

When I was first starting to learn how to make my own websites, I was honestly a bit intimidated. Maybe you are curious and asking yourself “Now How will I make my own website?”, you can find a simple method by following these simple steps below that will put you on your way to making your own website!

First of all you need to procure a domain name. When people want to go to your website, they will type your domain into the address bar. Godaddy.com is my personal favorite place to get a domain but there are many others out there.

A solid web hosting plan is next in the line of what you need to get a website up and running. There are plenty of sites offering web hosting as well. When online this is the “home” of your website. In case any questions arise, be sure to sign up with a company that has a great customer service department and consistently gets good reviews.

Start making your site! There are great site builders, or maybe you could use WordPress if you want to do it an even simpler way. Fill up your site with unique content that has not been copied and pasted from other websites.

Now, optimize it! You have to check through your site to make sure everything is in working order, so that visitors have no trouble navigating it.

The last step is publishing the site. Doing so will allow you to be indexed by major search engine sites like Google! This will usually happen automatically, but you may want to post some articles to article directories to speed up the process.

This is all you need to know to learn “How to make my own website“. By following these steps, you will be able to create your very first site and start getting visitors.

Ways To Create Your Own Web Site

Designer Eric — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:05:26 +0000

Making a website has become much more easier than ever before.With a variety of types of webframework and desktop softwares one can easily build a website in less time than ever before.

To have a website you need a server and a domain. Server is the place where you host your website so that the whole world can access your website from anywhere in the world.Your web hosting service provider will give an IP address whereby one can access your website. However, an IP address is harder to remember so to make things easier, you use a domain. A domain is just like a wrapper over your IP so that your website address is easier to remember. For example, Google a big name in search engine’s, it has the domain google.com, it’s real address is 209.85.229.147. If you type the IP on your web browser instead of the domain, you will see Google.

You can buy your own a domain at Namecheap, Godady or some other sites. There are lots of cheap domain registration websites if you just look around. A lot of web owners prefer .com domains. At less than /year you can get your very own. So, get a domain name for yourself so you can stand out in the crowd. Next is to get a webhosting package. You should try to compare different packages offered so it matches your budget. Be careful in choosing the right one as there are some who profess to offer cheap hosting but after a few days or weeks you get a server down message when accessing your site. You normally get what you pay for.

Okay, let’s now move on to how to make your own web site. First of all choose what you want. Do you want a dynamic website or a static one? These days most of the websites are dynamic. They use databases to save things and use php, asp or jsp to fetch, process and display your site. If you go for a static one, it means that when you create them, you upload those pages on your web-server for display without any server side processing. There are many softwares available for this. From structuring to deployment an all in one solution is Dreamweaver a software from Adobe Corporation (An American computer software company you've probably heard of).You can do almost anything using this software, from website layout to coding. It also supports server side scripting like php etc. Basically if you have some knowledge on html, css, building a static website is not a big feat.

If you choose dynamic pages, then you should get a web hosting package that has a server side scripting language with a database access. If you know server side scripting then you can build a website without any software using web php framework like symfony. If it is tricky using a framework then you might consider CMS as your friend. In this, you don't really need to learn anything new. Everything is made for you. Just tailor the site to your own taste. Joomla is an example of a php driven CMS. It is a lot more flexible and more customizable. There are thousands of templates and plugins on the internet. You can give it any look that you want. It will be good if you use templates that match your website theme.

So, give a try. If you think it's a bit hard, then you can use WordPress. It is mainly created for blogging although recently many website owners use wordpress for their business website. It’s not just for blogging anymore. To get an understanding on how things work on wordpress you can create a free account at WordPress.com and begin exploring.

Making a website is actually less trickier than you think. These days, even grade school kids can make their own web sites. So give it a try, I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun exploring and learning new things.

Some Ways To Make Your Own Website

Designer Eric — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:50:46 +0000

Before you begin to make your own web site, you need a website address (domain / URL) that is memorable so internet users can easily visit your website. Domain is the name of the website, such as yahoo.com, google.com, etc… You initially register the domain that you like, for instance yourdomain.com. After you have registered your domain, then you need a web hosting service. Web hosting is a place to store website files on the internet so the pages will be accessible by all internet users in the world at any time. Just like when we go to someone’s home, the home address is the domain, and the home is the web hosting. Web host service provides a place where you put up your website. It’s much cheaper to hire a web host than to acquire your own web server. This way, you do not need to hire engineers for the maintenance of your servers. The web hosting companies provide the equipment hardware, software, bandwidth, data center and technical services you need.

The next thing to do to make your own web site is to prepare the design that you wish to use for your website. The design that you create can use certain software such as macromedia dreamweaver, fireworks, etc… You also may collect the materials you will fit in the website in the form of text, images or voice . All this file will be accessed by internet users. In addition, if you want your website to be dynamic you have to make the script with the program such as PHP, Javascript, or ASP to run your website. Besides the program, the database will be used is also determined according to the program that you use for example MySQL, Microsoft Access, or such other kinds of database. The dynamic page provide more benefits in long term. It needs more time and effort at the first stage, but, this will be paid off with the ease of updating information, simple development, extensive flexibility, and also your website will appear more intelligent.

The easiest method to build up the site is using a CMS (Content Management System). By using a CMS you do not need to build a site from scratch. You simply configure the CMS to fit with your wishes. You choose the data you want to display in your site. CMS will normally run immediately after you copied the file into the specified folder. With CMS you can easily put in or subtract features, with ways to set up and turn on a particular module, or to uninstall or deactivate it. In general, CMS has been equipped with login facilities and registration of members, sending articles, guest books, statistics, administration site, theme, feedback and various other interesting features. Some of the popular CMS using PHP are WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, PHP-Nuke, etc.

Another way to make your own web site is to use web site builders. Web site builders can be people or softwares. People can be freelancers or professinal web designers. Softwares can be softwares which are built-in with your hosting provider or programs that you can use yourself like the ultimate article site power kit.

When you’re done, you can upload the your file to your web hosting service. Usually they will give you an ftp or cpanel account to upload and maintain your website. So find a good and professional web hosting services who will be ready to help you in case you have a problem with the service.

Building Your Own Business Website

Designer Eric — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:56:44 +0000

Would you like to know how to make your own website? Are you unemployed and would like to have a small business of your own? Are you a small business owner and would like to publicize your merchandise but you don’t know how to build your web page highly ranked so you can bring lots of traffic and translate it to sales? In this article I will explain some important steps on how to design, build, publish and promote a website.

If you are thinking that building a website is so hard or something that you can’t do as you know nothing about it, don’t be surprised if I tell you that all of those things will turn out to be untrue. You will see that building your own website is very easy. Although it would be convenient to use web development companies, as a business owner it is a great edge if you also know the basics of making a website.

First of all you should make a list of what you need:

Basic computer skills

1- Access to a personal computer
2- Access to the Internet
3- A free HTML Editor
4- A place on the World Wide Web to publish your page (Web hosting – Domain name)

The Process:

1) Planning: You should define your objectives, the reason why you are going to build a website. You should think thoroughly about the content that you will put in the webpage. Your virtual real estate should be competitive and analytical. Think of anything you like and love to do every day, a topic that you have a very good knowledge of. Write every thing and every post in your own words. Don’t limit yourself. Be open minded. You should know that when people search for information they use different keywords to get various results.

2) Design your webpage: This is the next action after you have brainstormed of what your web site should be. Now you should think how your website will look like? Think about something different to attract visitors. Don’t forget that the textual content is the most important factor and it should be valuable.

3) Optimizing for the search engines: there are some steps to optimize your webpage for certain keywords:

a) Title tag: It should be 5-10 words and the keyword should be the first word in the title.
b) Meta Description tag: It is a short description of the page. It must also contain your chosen keyword.
c) The regular text of the page: Put not less than three hundred words on the page. And be to the point.

4) Domain name and hosting: You need a domain name as it will give your site credibility. Don’t make it too long and make sure that it contains the main keyword that is appropriate to your website. If you are on a low budget, you can go for free hosting but a paid small business web hosting is a hundred times much better for your business.

5) Promotion: It is the most important step in your online business’ existence. You should submit your website to the search engines to bring visitors to your site and to position well, therefore, attract advertisers. Article marketing is one of the best methods but there are myriad of other techniques.

I hope that this article has helped you in a way to know the basics of making a website for your business.

Build A Web Site

Designer Eric — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:23:12 +0000

Are you stunned at the countless colorful, remarkable, money-making sites you see each time you search the web? Wish you had one yourself to put up your personal stuff or even promote your small business? In this article I will teach you the fastest, most convenient way of how to make your own website without spending a penny. Yes, absolutely free.

Today some website hosting companies offer free hosting plans for individuals wanting to have their own website. The great thing about this is besides the free hosting, most of these companies also offer web site builders where you can design and build your website using innovative tools. So basically you can create your website and show it to people within just 30 minutes.

One such company that offers this service is Google. Bought in 2002 by Google, Blogger is a blog publishing system which you can use for almost everything from updating your friends and family about your life, giving your own advice column, discussing your political views, or relating your experience in any topic of interest. The best thing about Blogger, and I say one of the most excellent service I have experienced, is that you can actually customize the layout of your design by actually modifying the hard-coded html of your provided website. That is, you can remove the traditional design templates offered by Blogger.com and replace it with your own code.

Because Blogger is a web-log service, you can actually convert your web-log into a working website without any restrictions. Which means, you can have a professional-looking website with all the text, images and videos arranged according to your will, add to that, it’s ad-free.

So here is how to build a web site.

First things first, you need to have a Google account. If you have one, sign in to Blogger. You will notice that there are only 4 main menus – Edit Posts, Settings, Layout, and Monetize. For now, we will concentrate on the over-all look and interface of your website so let’s start on the Layout page. Here is the technique and where everybody else fails, we don’t like the simple, customary Blogger templates so you might want to have one of your own. There are hundreds of free Blogger templates which can be downloaded for free. Just Google for “free blogger templates” and you can select from the simple to complex designs that will suit your need.

If you have chosen one, remove the code from your Blogger designer under Layout -> Edit Html menu and put the provided code of your chosen template. By now you have completely changed the over-all appearance of your website. You can further apply changes like changing your website’s language, hiding dates, etc. by going to the Settings page. Next thing to do is to arrange the page elements of your website. Go to Layout -> Page Elements and from there you can modify the title, heading, link bar, side bar, and other elements of your website. Doing this is actually pretty easy with the on-board WYSIWYG editor where you can add gadgets like navigation bars, links and pictures to the sides of your website.

You can even upload your own designed image as your heading. Finally, you have to add the main contents of your website. This is done by going to the Post page. You can create and put several pages to your website by creating posts and opting to display only 1 post on each page. This will make each of your posts to be assigned to each of your pages. When finished with your first post, try to publish it and see how it looks. Be a little ingenious and make your web-log not look like a web-log but a full-featured website by playing around with Layout and Settings pages. You will be amazed at how much you can do with Blogger.com’s free blog service.

How To Make Web Sites- Where Do You Start?

Designer Eric — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:09:17 +0000

When I first learned how to make web sites, I can remember being rather intimidated by the all intricate processes. Maybe you are curious and asking yourself “Now, how do I make websites?”, you can find a simple method by following these simple steps below that will put you on your way to making your own website!

Domain name

A domain name is the first step to creating your own website. People will be sent to your site through this address called a domain name which is inserted in the address bar. Personally, I’ve found that the best place to buy a domain name is at godaddy.com, however there are hundreds of sites that you can buy them from.

Website hosting

After that you need to set up a web hosting plan. There are tons of web hosting sites out there as well. When online this is the “home” of your website. In case any questions arise, be sure to sign up with a company that has a great customer service department and consistently gets good reviews.

Site builder

Design your site! You can use any site builder, or you could even use WordPress if you want an easier way to do it. Fill up your site with unique content that has not been copied and pasted from other websites.

Optimize

Now, optimize it! You have to check through your site to make sure everything is in working order, so that visitors have no trouble navigating it.

Publish

The last step is getting your website published. Doing so will allow you to be indexed by major search engine sites like Google! Most of the time this happens by itself, you can speed things up however by posting articles in some article directories.

This is all you need to know to learn how to make web sites. Just follow these simple steps and you will be well on your way to a great website with many visitors.

You may also be interested in:

Make Your Own Web Site on Squidoo.com
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Make Your Own Website For Free