web design

Web page design is a process of conceptualization, planning, modeling, and execution of electronic media content delivery via Internet in the form of technologies (such as markup languages) suitable for interpretation and display by a web browser or other web-based graphical user interfaces (GUIs).

The intent of web design is to create a web site (a collection of electronic files residing on one or more web servers) that presents content (including interactive features or interfaces) to the end user in the form of web pages once requested. Such elements as text, forms, and bit-mapped images (GIFs, JPEGs, PNGs) can be placed on the page using HTML, XHTML, or XML tags. Displaying more complex media (vector graphics, animations, videos, sounds) usually requires plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, Java run-time environment, etc. Plug-ins are also embedded into web pages by using HTML or XHTML tags.

Improvements in the various browsers' compliance with W3C standards prompted a widespread acceptance of XHTML and XML in conjunction with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to position and manipulate web page elements. The latest standards and proposals aim at leading to the various browsers' ability to deliver a wide variety of media and accessibility options to the client possibly without employing plug-ins.

Typically web pages are classified as static or dynamic.

* Static pages don’t change content and layout with every request unless a human (web master or programmer) manually updates the page.

* Dynamic pages adapt their content and/or appearance depending on the end-user’s input or interaction or changes in the computing environment (user, time, database modifications, etc.) Content can be changed on the client side (end-user's computer) by using client-side scripting languages (JavaScript, JScript, Actionscript, media players and PDF reader plug-ins, etc.) to alter DOM elements (DHTML). Dynamic content is often compiled on the server utilizing server-side scripting languages (PHP, ASP, Perl, Coldfusion, JSP, Python, etc.). Both approaches are usually used in complex applications.

With growing specialization within communication design and information technology fields, there is a strong tendency to draw a clear line between web design specifically for web pages and web development for the overall logistics of all web-based services.

History

Tim Berners-Lee published what is considered to be the first website in August 1991. Berners-Lee was the first to combine Internet communication (which had been carrying email and the Usenet for decades) with hypertext (which had also been around for decades, but limited to browsing information stored on a single computer, such as interactive CD-ROM design). Websites are written in a markup language called HTML, and early versions of HTML were very basic, only giving websites basic structure (headings and paragraphs), and the ability to link using hypertext. This was new and different from existing forms of communication - users could easily navigate to other pages by following hyperlinks from page to page.

As the Web and web design progressed, the markup language changed to become more complex and flexible, giving the ability to add objects like images and tables to a page. Features like tables, which were originally intended to be used to display tabular information, were soon subverted for use as invisible layout devices. With the advent of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), table-based layout is increasingly regarded as outdated. Database integration technologies such as server-side scripting and design standards like W3C further changed and enhanced the way the Web is made. As times change, websites are changing the code on the inside and visual design on the outside with ever-evolving programs and utilities.

With the progression of the Web, thousands of web design companies have been established around the world to serve the growing demand for such work. As with much of the information technology industry, many web design companies have been established in technology parks in the developing world as well as many Western design companies setting up offices in countries such as India, Romania, and Russia to take advantage of the relatively lower labor rates found in such countries.

5 Steps to Understanding HTML

HTML is a relatively simple language, but that doesn't stop people from having problems with it. Why is that? It's mainly because, while the HTML tags themselves are easy, creating an HTML document that works as intended on a web server requires you to know a few extra things that aren't often explained. Here, then, is a guide to understanding those parts of HTML that they just don't tell you about in the books.

Step 1: Understand Doctypes.

It isn't often noted that valid HMTL documents don't actually start with the tag – they have one extra tag before it. This is the doctype, and it must be present right at the top of your document for it to be valid HTML.

There are only really two doctypes that you really need to know about. The HTML4 doctype looks like this:

The XHTML one looks like this:

These versions of the doctypes that are a little more forgiving – if you're a purist, you can use the strict ones instead by changing the words 'transitional' and 'loose' to 'strict'.

But what is the doctype for? Well, its purpose is simple enough: it tells web browsers exactly what version of HTML your page was written in, to help them to interpret it correctly.

Step 2: Understand HTTP Errors.

A truly shocking number of people writing HTML pages don't know how HTTP works – and they quickly run into trouble because of it. HTTP is the way a web browser communicates with a web server, and this communication includes information about your pages, such as cookies.

You don't need to worry too much about the internals of HTTP, but it's worth knowing that it works by the browser sending a request to the server for a certain page, and the server then responding with a code.

Your website should be set up to handle error codes well. For example, a 404 (page not found) error should show a page with links to the most useful parts of your site. Other common error codes include:

200 - OK
301 - Page moved.
403 - Forbidden (no authorisation to access).
500 - Internal server error.

For more information, visit www.w3.org/protocols.

Step 3: Understand MIME Types.

MIME types are another part of the HTML header – an important one. Also known as the content-type header, they tell the browser what kind of file they are about to send. Browsers don't rely on HTML files ending in .html, JPEG images ending in .jpeg, and so on: they rely on the content-type header. If you don't know about this, you can have problems if you need to configure your server to send anything unusual.

Here are some common MIME types:

text/html - HTML.

text/css - CSS

text/plain - plain text.

image/gif - GIF image.

image/jpeg - JPEG image.

image/png - PNG image.

audio/mpeg - MP3 audio file.

application/x-shockwave-flash - Flash movie.

Step 4: Understand Link Paths.

One of the hardest things to understand about HTML is all the different things that you can put in an 'href' property. Abbreviated URLs are created using the rules of old text-based operating systems, and there are plenty of people writing HTML today who are completely unfamiliar with these rules.

Here are some examples. For each one, the assumption is that the link is on a page at http://www.example.com/example1/example1.html.

- links to http://www.example.com/example1/example2.html
- links to http://www.example.com/example1/example2.html
- links to http://www.example.com/example2.html
- links to http://www.example.com/example2.html
- links to http://www.example.com/
- links to http://www.example.com/example1

To put it simply, one dot means "in the folder we're in now", while two dots means "in the folder above the one we're in now". This can get confusing fast – just look at the difference one dot can make! Be careful with it.

Step 5: Understand How to Insert Things That Aren't HTML.

One of the most common HTML questions is how to insert things like Javascript and CSS into an HTML document. This is one of the easiest questions to answer: you simply use the link and script tags, like this:

Designing Your Website

‘First impression lasts’ is very much true for online business. Website content (texts, graphics and animations) must create a 3D picture of product/service in the mind of the consumers, and entice them to buy it. Content can make a business click or sick on internet.

A website is like your online shop, your virtual interactive portfolio. For web design tool, it is important to determine your target audience and then design for speed, quality, and impact.

Speed

Keep the graphics to the minimum. Remember graphics don’t entice customers to pay up, the content does. The rule of graphics is use only where necessary.

Quality

A customer cannot see you or touch your product or service. He can only see what is presented to him visually on the website. Your product or service has to make an impact as to be able to make purchase it. Quality here matters a lot. Nothing but the best is the rule when it comes to quality.

Impact

The rule of website usability is that your website has just 20 seconds. You either make an impact on your customer or you don’t in these 20 seconds. To make an impact on your customer you need to get the right mix of graphics, colors, content and layout.

Impact of Content

Content is king, it is said. It either converts a visitor into your customer or it doesn’t. Content can make or break a website. The power of the written word has been witnessed many a time. Products have become success stories, resumes transformed into high profile jobs, a 10-cent brochure into millions of dollars just because of the right word. Content should always be professionally managed by people who understand how it will impact your customers.

Impact of Colors

Pink is so feminine, ouch! Cute and light.

Blue defines power and professionalism. It’s also for space and networking.

Red is associated with love, passion, warning, excitement and action.

Green is for money, nature, animals, health, healing, life and harmony.

Grey is associated with neutrality. A sense of being reserved.

Website design tools

Serverplex.com features an excellent web design tool - http://www.serverplex.com/webdesign.html. No coding knowledge required. No HTML tags or any complicated code. A simple interface where you type in what you want. Add pictures. And you have your webpage ready. The icing on the pudding is yet to come. This tool is free!

Perfect Web Designer 101

So, you've decided that your company needs a web site. Now what? Since we are ultimately talking about your "online business image", unless you yourself have web design experience, finding that perfect web designer to create your company site is a very important next step. If you've never had a web site created before, you will find that there is quite a lot to consider if you want your site to be successful, and you may have to do a bit of homework to find the right person for you.

Regardless of the type of site you want, to be successful, your site will need to do, at least, these 3 things:

- Look professional
- Function properly
- Get good positioning on the search engines

In achieving this goal, there's good news and bad news.

The bad news is that there are all kinds of designers out there, offering all kinds of services, and prices are pretty much across the board. The good news is that there are some simple points you can follow to help make this process easier.

So, how do you go about finding a designer?

Since there are so many different companies offering web design, you might start by making a list of what your specific needs are. Every site is unique so it's a good idea to know what you need before you start calling around or sending in estimate forms. Some things you might need to know are:

- Will you be selling a product online?
- Does your site require a database?
- Do you also need web hosting? or a domain name?
- Do you want to have your clients contact you through a form?
- How many pages do you think the site will be?
- Are there any pages or features specific to your business that you would like to have on your site?

Also, write down a couple of URLs of sites that you like. Or maybe you've seen a specific feature on another site that you would like to incorporate into your own site. Having a rough idea of the kind of site you're looking for will help you find the right designer for your project.

Referrals

One of the best ways I've found to find the right designer is to get a referral from someone you know personally who has already had their site designed and they are happy with the site, and their experience with the designer. So let your friends and family know that you are shopping around for someone to help you create your online business image. People who have had a good experience with their web design company will be more than happy to pass the information along.

If you do get a referral from someone, go and look at the designer's site and see what else they've done. If you're interested, you can fill out a free quote form on their site, or email the designer with the specs of your project.

Job sites

There are a number of online sites that will help you match your project with a number of designers who will then bid on your project. The one thing to be aware of is that these sites have all types of designers listed with their service from those with years of experience, to those who just bought themselves the latest version of Dreamweaver and have now labeled themselves "web designer".

Although these job sites do make it harder for less experienced people to be listed as a serious prospect, when they ask for your project description, you can include on there that "only serious professionals need apply". You can sometimes eliminate the amount of riff-raff that will send in proposals for your project.

The biggest problem people have with using these job sites is that potential clients are usually overwhelmed with the number of quotes they receive for their project. Be aware that you may have to rifle through a lot of proposals that are not what you are looking for.

These sites usually offer a Designer's Profile and some kind of a rating system, which can help you learn a bit about a potential designer. Reading the reviews listed from previous clients can also help shed some light on your choice of designers.

Yellow Pages

Yellow Pages ads are expensive so chances are that you will find professional design firms to successful web design individuals listed there. They will usually list their URL in their ad and it's always a good idea to go to their site and see what they have to offer before contacting them.

What you should be looking for in a designer?

Possibly you have a couple of designers you are interested in. But how do you know for sure? There are a few specific things that you should be aware of when picking your designer.

Portfolio

First and foremost, you want to check out their portfolio! This is the body of work that this designer has recently created and it tells a lot about what they offer. All web designers should have an online portfolio that you can easily access.

Take a good look at their own site and other sites they've created. Do the sites look professional? Is the style of the designer something you would like to have on your own site? In addition, you can contact companies that have had their site designed and ask them about their experience with this designer.

Price

Another thing to consider, although this is not the top priority, is price. Although there is no clear-cut rule as to what an "average" price for web design is, this is one situation where, in most cases, you get what you pay for. This is simply not the time to cut corners. So in considering price, also consider that you are paying for this individual's expertise, as well as their time and experience.

It is more important to create a successful site that has a good position in the search engine and one that you are very happy with the look and function of than to save a couple of bucks. If you get a good site, your site will be able to grow with your company and, hopefully, that's for a very long time!

Search engine optimization

The number one mistake that most first time web site owners make is that they don't know what to do with their site after it's designed. It is very possible to have a beautiful site designed for you and no one ever sees it.

A good designer will not only help you create a professional looking site, they will also ensure that your site gets a good ranking with the search engines so that your site can be easily found online. Make sure that your designer will optimize your site for the search engines and submit it to the major search engines.

Specialized services

Will you be selling your products or services online? Will you need a database driven site? How about Flash or embedded video or audio? Not everyone offers these services; be sure to ask specifically about what you will need for your site.

A couple of other things to consider is web hosting and domain name registration. Make sure if you need these services that your designer can help provide them too.

Compatibility

Lastly, when you are talking to potential designers, it should be someone you seem compatible with. Does the designer seem friendly and are they willing to answer all of your questions? Do they respond promptly to your emails and/or phone calls? Basically, is this someone you "click" with?

Communication with your designer is crucial. You need someone who is willing to answer any questions and keep you up-to-date on the status of your web design. A good designer will keep in touch with you every few days, at least. You don't want to get down to the final days of creating the site only to find out you don't like it!

Testimonials

Most designers will have testimonials from previous clients on their web site. It's a good idea to see what their customers are saying about their services, and again, calling one or two clients regarding this web designer's services is a really good idea.

Summary

There are many factors involved in finding and picking the right designer to build your company's web site, but the key is to remember that this is your business image, one that you hope to have for many years to come, so you want to pick your designer as you would pick a real estate agent to find your "dream house". If you pick the right designer the first time, you won't be looking for someone to redesign your site in 6-9 months.

Be thorough, ask questions, look at samples, and you'll find the perfect web designer for you!

Backing Up And Restoring Your MySQL Database

If you've been using MySQL database to store your important data, it is imperative that you make a backup of your data to prevent any loss of data. This article shows you how to backup and restore data in your MySQL database. This process can also be used if you have to move your data to a new server.

Backing up your database

The quickest and easiest way to backup and restore your database would be to use MySQLDump. If you've got shell or telnet access to your server, you can backup MySQL data by issuing the mysqldump command. The syntax for the command is as follows.

mysqldump -u [uname] -p [pass] [dbname] > [backupfile.sql] [uname] - this is your database username [pass]- this is the password for your database [dbname] - the name of your database [backupfile.sql] - the filename for your database backup

To backup your database 'Customers' with the username 'sadmin' and password 'pass21' to a file custback.sql, you would issue the command

mysqldump -u sadmin -p pass21 Customers > custback.sql

Issuing this command will backup the database to custback.sql. This file can be copied to a safe location or a backup media and stored. For more information on MySQLDump, you can check out : http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/mysqldump.html

Restoring your database

If you have to re-build your database from scratch, you can easily restore the mysqldump file by issuing the following command. This method will not work if the tables already exist in your database.

mysql - u sadmin -p pass21 Customers <>

If you need to restore existing databases, you'll need to use MySQLImport. The syntax for mysqlimport is

mysqlimport [options] database textfile1

To restore your previously created custback.sql dump back to your Customers Database, you'd issue

mysqlimport -u sadmin -p pass21 Customers custback.sql

Make Money From Your Website

Are you a webmaster and don't know how to make a profit with your website? Or do you want to create a site but don't know how to get started?

If you fit in the latter, here's a few suggestions:

- Choose a topic for your site. Preferably, you should choose a topic that you are familiar with and that you enjoy. The worst thing you can do is choose a topic you are not comfortable with and your site will suffer. So, if you are an avid fisher, why not create a site about fishing? If you love music, create a music site.

- Choose a reliable host. There are tons to choose from. We suggest that you do your research, and remember, Google is your friend. Be sure to Google every hosting company you are considering. Read what others have to say about them. You might even find good deals in the process.

- When choosing a host, be sure to buy the correct hosting package. Importantly, monthly bandwidth and diskspace. For small sites, it's safe to purchase a package with 5-10 gigabytes worth of monthly bandwidth. Similarly, be sure the hosting package provides enough disk space for your site to grow and expand. 200 megabytes of space should be sufficient for small sites.

- The key to any successful site is content. Try provide original and interesting content that people would actually need and/or read. Copying and pasting content from another source doesn't cut it, and you could be infringing copyright laws. Be creative.

How Do I Make Money?

After your site has been developed, it's time to make some money. There are various ways of doing so. The most common ways are through direct sales and advertising.

If you have something to sell that is related to your site's topic, sell it on your site! For example, if you have a fishing site, why not sell fishing poles, bait, or hooks?

But what if you have nothing to sell? Then why not sell yourself! If you have a skill that you can provide to others, why not offer it? If your site is about webdesign, why not offer a service where you design sites for customers? If you have a knitting site and can knit yourself, why not offer knitting services?

What if you have don't have merchandise or a service to sell? Then the most popular method of generating a profit through your website is by selling advertising space. There are several affiliate programs that will "buy" space on your site for you to display banners in various sizes. Most of these companies pay monthly and are a good source of steady income. Below are a list of recommended affiliate programs.

Sign Up with Affiliate Programs

Below are a list of recommended advertising affiliate companies to join. Most require a site with decent content and a top level domain. Be sure to read each companies Terms of Service and Frequent Asked Questions (FAQs) for further details.

PayPopUp.com : PayPopUp is one of the smaller but very reliable ad agencies. They offer standard size (468x60) and leaderboard (728x90) banners. Not only that, they offer layer ads, popups/popunders, and interstitials. To top it off, they pay for raw impressions!

Casalemedia.com : Casalemedia offers one of the highest quality popup and banner ads. They support leaderboards (728x90), skyscrapers (120x600) and medium rectangles (300x250). They offer great rates and even provide real time statistics.

MammaMediaSolutions.com : MammaMedia is another fantastic ad agency. They offer CPM and CPC campaigns. They support skyscrapers (120x600), standard (468x60), and leaderboards banners (728x90). Similiarly, popup and interstitials campaigns are available.

Google Adsense : Google Adsense is the premier CPC program. Look no further than Google. They support every banner size imaginable.

Bargain Web Design Services

Many people are looking for a bargain, when it comes to finding themselves a person or company to build and design them a website. In this article I write about where to go to find this website design bargain.

The market place for website design is very competitive, for this reason there are plenty of bargains to be found. There is no longer any reason why people should pay huge amounts of money to obtain a website.

The next question is trying to find the bargain of course. This would be my advice:

The search engines

The search engines is the first place I would try, searching under the search term of bargain web design service. The results on the right hand side of the search engine Google are the paid advertisements and are called Google adwords. These companies are actively seeking business and are therefore likely to offer you a bargain. The results on the left hand side are normally the more established companies who will probably try to charge a lot of money for their services. It still could be worth sending them an email however, if you do not ask, you will not get.

Internet auction websites

I know of many people who have found themselves a bargain on auction websites, like ebay. People or companies at times offer their services for a very cheap rate, normally to drum up some very much needed business. This is especially true around Christmas time.

Other areas to look are in places like the yellow pages, bargain pages, newspapers or by asking family or friends.

In my opinion for a basic website you should not be spending over £100. There are many great deals to be had out there for people who are willing to make lots of phone calls or send lots of e-mails and who are patient.

When finding a company or person to build the website always take a look at their portfolio as this will give you an insight into the work they do. Obviously if you are not impressed, there is no point in carrying on, even if it is very cheap.

Lotus Notes Domino and Web design

Lotus Notes Domino and Web: application development – tips for programmers

Beginning with Domino version R4 it has integration with the Web, and the server itself becomes a HTTP-server. The next releases of Domino Web-server add new functionality (for example servlet managers, supported JVM versions upgrade, etc). To give you general picture and abstracting from details we’ll talk about two major Domino Web-server functions:

1. Domino Web-server is the full-featured HTTP-server. In other words, it can provide static (or conditionally static) files as the reply to HTTP-browser’s requests (including HTML, image, JavaScript, applets, etc);
2. During the browser’s requests to Domino dynamic resources by specific URL, the server can create in passing HTML-pages, making the Domino object visible.

For sure, it is reasonably simplified model (we mentioned that, for example, Domino Web-server supports servlet technology), but this model allows to discuss the major issues in creation of Web-applications based on Lotus Domino technology. Following the major problems are:

• in Domino-based Web-applications creation developer is strongly limited to use built-in program languages’ possibilities. Thus, from 380 inbuilt @-commands of @-formulas language nearly 40 are supported in Web. LotusScript is supported only in three types of Web-agents, etc;
• application security problems. The standard authentication, authorization, coding, digital signatures, etc. mechanisms are simplified in Web or do not work. So SSL + x.509, etc. certificates are to be used in such cases;
• applications efficiency. HTML-pages generation in passing surely takes the server resources, so if the application is poorly constructed, it may cause the server failure. For example, if the first page of the site is generated by an agent, then concurrent request from rather big number of users may cause the service failure situation. Developers are to take care themselves for loading balance putting into different parts often changed and more static data;
• result of HTML-pages generation in passing from Domino resources is not every time obvious. Often such a procedure issues appearance in generated page «additional» by developer point of view tags (for ex., , , , etc). As a consequence, most developers put on Domino only those features which can not implement themselves. If look through the codes of full-blown Web-sites, designed on Domino technology, then, for example, in Domino forms we see only fields, all extern design is based on DHTML.

It is not so bad. There are a lot of sites, supporting large number of users, accessing Domino data. Domino technology from release to release offers new possibilities for Web-design (for ex. JSP custom tag library, inbuilt HTML-editor, etc). The author himself used Domino to create portals with requests with more than 2000 visitors per a day. Summarizing the own and my colleagues experience in Domino Web-design field, I can recommend the following:

• Before creation of Web-project on Domino it is necessary to evaluate the whole Domino infrastructure in frame of concrete organization. If the Domino infrastructure at this company is on opening or initial stage, than Web-design based on Domino is hardly appropriated. The fact that Domino Designer is the environment for rapid application development (RAD), including Web- applications, can not be the reason to create Web-projects on Domino;
• as far as possible allowing to Domino transfer in passing only objects, which can not be or hardly implemented by using other Web-technologies (so-called HTML-design is to be developed by programmers). The author thinks that, if a site needs to operate with Domino data, then to view them it is necessary to avoid the use of standard URL working with Domino objects. In this case exchange of data between site and Domino can be done by using any integration technologies supported by Domino (ex., XML, CORBA, JDBC, etc). In other words, Domino will play a role of data storage and their viewing is to be done by other mechanisms. Implicitly, the issue is confirmed by IBM. In R6 Domino Don't allow URL open feature may be assigned to databases , so the usage of standard URL Domino is protected in Web-applications;
• attention needs to be paid to Web-application security. Even when your site does not allow non-authorized access to information via Internet, you can expect hackers out there challenging your web-site security;
• only the tested by loading technologies are to used in Web-applications;
• minimize as much as possible the traffic Web-server browser. In Web-design the issue is to be considered that Internet channels are usually narrower than local channels Domino Lotus.

Fire Your Web Design Agency

Fire Your Web Design Agency ... A Story From A Dallas Web Design Company

The headline could have been a slight over reaction on my part. You are not going to fire your Web agency entirely. However, you can reduce your monthly maintenance costs by performing Web updates in-house. MAC Advertising and Design offers various Web support and maintenance packages at a fraction of the cost of hiring a full time employee to perform similar activities with the Content Management Tool.

Today’s web sites are no longer a one time build. Successful web sites and web campaigns require ongoing support, updates, case studies, Blogs, RSS Feeds, new looks, product launches & updates, forums, events, company news and much more.

Our Content Management Solution allows any admin the ability to log in and make changes and updates to their web site through an easy to use module, similar to editing a WORD doc. This requires about 2-3 hours of initial training, and then subsequent changes can be made easily, whenever you need them and as often as you please for a fixed cost.

MAC Advertising and Design has been in business since 2003 and has produced countless quality Web sites. From lawyer web site design to realtor web site design, we have an in-depth portfolio. Although located in the Dallas area, we are able to offer professional Web site design services anywhere in the United States. MAC is a professional, affordable Web site design Web site design company that offers Web services to businesses nationwide. We are a Web design firm specializing in flash Web design, ecommerce Web site design and HTML Web site designs that are SEO friendly. We are the Dallas Web site company that other Web firm professionals come to. We work with your company to define objectives and develop graphic design objectives for their Web sites and interactive tools to achieve them including bilingual Web site design to reach a broader customer base for your business. Our clients range from realtors to law firms; from construction companies to personal trainers.

MAC Advertising and Design is a premier Web site design company in Dallas offering Web site design and development. We service both small and large companies with custom Web site designs that are affordable for every budget. Web site design and development: Dallas area and nationwide.

We take pride in offering the following Web site design services:
• Fast-Loading Web sites
• Clear and Clean Navigation throughout
• Professional and Custom Web site Design
• Excellent Web design satisfaction

Visit and see why MAC Advertising and Design should be your choice for Web site design and development, as well as your other advertising needs.

Nathaniel McLaughlin
MAC Advertising and Design, Dallas Web design
http://www.macadv.com

Nathaniel McLaughlin is Creative Director for MAC Advertising and Design, a Web and graphic design firm in Dallas. MAC Advertising and Design is a premier Web site design company in Dallas offering Web site design and development. We service both small and large companies with custom Web site designs that are affordable for every budget. Web site design and development: Dallas area and nationwide.

Top Tips for Web Design

This article takes a look at the top 10 web design tips for users at any level. It will give you 10 complete different points to contemplate when you next begin a site design or when talking to your web design consultant/employee.

Design is never straight forward and web design has the additional unpredictable complication of technology thrown in. This means that you need to consider the consequences of your design decisions and how it will effect the most important people who see your site, the users themselves. The following tips should help you consider this and have a positive effect on your site and its users.

1. Navigation & Functionality

You should never sacrifice overall functionality for artistic extravagance. It is highly unlikely your site will ever achieve its purpose if the people who visit it cannot clearly and easily navigate around it.

Your site should look good but first and foremost consider how someone who knows nothing about the site would think when they landed there.

Something occurring in website frequently these days is Mystery Meat Navigation. This is a term coined by Vincent Flanders and it is used to describe site where navigation structures are so obscure and difficult to process that users cannot identify them at all and end up running there mouse across whole sections of a screen just to identify hyperlinks.

2. Images

People say images are worth a 1000 words and in web design that’s true in 2 ways. Firstly an image can do a lot more than text in some situation but secondly they are much, much bigger files with a higher download time.

It is widely accepted users will click away from a page that takes longer than 5-10 seconds to load and every time you put an image in a page you are increasing the likelihood of this happening. Additionally each image you imbed into a page design activates an additional HTTP request to your server so dividing an image into smaller ones or using lots of small images across a page does not solve the problem.

ALT tags should also be factored into the code of a website. They are a huge help to people who have either images turned off in a browse, mobile broswers that can’t read the images or a random error preventing the image from showing. They also hold a small SEO benefit.

3. Tables

It is advised that you use CSS and not tables to format a document but in some cases tables can be necessary. Remember one thing however, a table cannot be displayed until it has fully loaded. This can potentially cause a huge problem for users as they wait for the page to load, nothing appears then out of nowhere the whole page is done.

Someone is much more likely to click away when nothing is loading than when they can see progress.

4. Fonts

Don’t design sites to use fonts only you have, chances are they will be converted into some dull font and ruin the effect you were trying to achieve. Save special fonts for specific headers and convert them to images. Make the rest of your site in standard fonts so that as many browsers as possible will see it in the way you meant it to be. Recommended fonts for high scale compatibility are Arial, Verdana, Courier, Tahoma and Helvetica.

5. Plug-Ins

Plug-ins hold a lot of potential for both users and designers but it can easily be misused and misguided.

Plug-ins have a many forms and uses, the most popular being Java and Flash Player. I have heard a lot of people say that these plug-ins are “safe” and that everyone has them but this is simply not true. Every plug-in has a stack of different versions and connects differently depending on the browser the user is surfing with.

Think if your users will really want to browse to other sites to download a plug-in, restart the browser then navigate back. If the answer is no use other tricks at your disposal to make your page unique and save the big guns that are Flash and Java for times where it is essential.

6. Tags

The “tags” I am referring to hear are meta keywords and description, title, alt and h1 tags. Together these tags help manage your sites search engine optimisation (SEO) potential and this is defiantly something not to overlook. Helping people find your site will bring more traffic in and more conversion if you are a retail site.

The higher search engines rank you the more traffic will filter down and the more successful your site will be. Try to keep a constant theme running through all your tags but do so in a subtle way. Splashing the same word 1000 times on your page will only have negative effects so make sure you strike the correct balance between informative and spammy.

7. Browsers

In a perfect world everyone would use the same browser and your website would look the same on everyone’s screen but unfortunately this is not the case. Every browser has its own specific functions and styles and learning to make you code cooperate with both can present some serious problems.

The three you really need to concern yourself with are Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. These make up a good 95% of the browser market at the very least and while there are some additional popular browser I would not recommend you spend time optimising code for the rest.

The only thing you can do is do your best and stay away from browser specific functions, you’ll never make someone get a new browser.

8. Pop Ups

Something that is very important to remember is that the user should be in control of their browser and desktop. Do not place unnecessary pop ups and window opening links everywhere and the user will feel they have lost control of the site, become annoyed and close the windows.

There are some exceptions to using the (_blank) attribute but I would steer clear whenever possible.

9. Text Layout

Text is part of your design to and positioning it correctly on the page is very important. Try to get all the copy you need as early in the design process as possible. This means you will be able to design around the copy instead of trying to cram it into smaller spaces because someone wrote twice as much copy as they said they were going to.

Use the right alignment for the right situation, remember 99% of people will prefer left align and while justified look aesthetically better it can be very difficult to read in longer bouts.

10. Site Search

In this day and age finding what you want on a website in paramount. After you have followed the first tip on navigation you should also provide a search bar on your site so that a visitor who cannot immediately see what they are looking for can search. Many internet studies have seen the success of these smaller additions to your site and free ones are available from Google and many other SE operators.

Conclusion

Taking these 10 tips into account will help you design a more user-friendly and successful website, sometime it may seem like they are hindering your grand design but failing to take notice may result in your site being a very pretty stop sign for browsers. Just because you can find your way around your Flash menu system that takes 6 minutes to load doesn’t mean Mrs Smith who needs the product can.

SEO Success: Step One is Good Web Design

Creating a well-designed website is the first step in your internet marketing strategy. Once the website has been created and optimized, there are further techniques to employ that will drive traffic to your website for successful, long-term results. You wouldn't consider opening a retail store in a major shopping mall without signage and you shouldn't consider having a nice looking website designed without expanding your web presence in order to be found on the internet. But unless the website is designed correctly to begin with, follow-on SEO efforts will have limited results at best. The following strategy overview is designed to bring about productive SEO results:

- Create an attractive website that is complementary to your company image and provides your targeted audience with information about you, your company and your products and/or services.

- Design a website that has a call-to-action in the form of a purchase or providing you a contact, subscription or other commitment from your visitor.

- Create a successful marketing arm for your overall business promotion and marketing campaign to promote your business, products and/or services with the many follow-on strategies that drive traffic to your website.

- Become competitive in your industry and marketplace by meeting or exceeding the industry marketing standards and attracting a qualified audience for your products and/or services based on a strong reputation.

- Generate and maintain or grow internet traffic to your website resulting in a conversion of traffic into sales of your products and/or services by evolving as your market demands.

This search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is composed of several processes in three stages: 1) Good web design, 2) Attracting attention from search engines and directories, and 3) Creating long-term popularity on the internet. However, it all starts with good web design. Website design is the foundation and beginning of a successful internet marketing strategy. It is true that there are websites on the internet that are unattractive but somehow seem to work. If there are aspects of these websites that work, imagine how well they could do if they simply followed basic design implementation tactics that resulted in a good image as well as simply pushed information out to the viewer.

These basics are essential for Tier 1 success:

- Good web design will complement and enhance the company image and offline marketing campaign products creating a corporate branding if done well.

- Easy, logical navigation that leads the viewer deeper and deeper into the web of information provided by the website will keep the visitor on your site longer and give you more time to sell your products or services.

- Attractive but quick-loading graphics that are pleasing to the eye and meaningful to the website will guide the viewer along the route you decide is important for explaining what you offer.

- Keyword usage that is search engine-friendly depends on how the keywords are utilized, the placement of the keywords, the frequency of the most important keywords and their relevance to the website.

- Website coding that is lean, clean and without errors will keep the search engines happy and your viewer seeing exactly what you intended to offer.

- Relevance of content to the theme of the site is essential. Be concise, to the point and focus on your goals. If you have multiple themes and offerings, consider multiple websites to address the different markets, then tie each website back to the others by linking.

- Changing content that changes frequently and stays fresh keeps your viewer returning and prevents the search engines from treating your website as if it were stale news. A stale site will be ranked lower by the search engines.

Content is king -- it's all about content, content, content. But how that content is presented is what makes the difference.

5 Common Mistakes of Website Design

Huge Mistake #1: Creating a Website with Flash -- Did you know in a recent study, top internet marketers discovered that having a website created with Flash, actually decreased the response from prospects and customers by as much as 370 percent?

Here's why: Your prospects and customers are most likely visiting your website using all types of different computers, connection speeds and internet configuration settings...

What may look great to one visitor may not even appear for another! You could very easily have shelled out hundreds or even thousands of dollars to have a website created using the Flash technology, only to find out that some of your visitors will never see it! (Not to mention the loading times can cause your visitor to close your site, never to return again.)

Huge Mistake #2: The "Internet Catalog" Approach -- You see this everywhere. Good, honest and hardworking businessmen and women get online to sell their products or services, and have a site created for them that contains a link to just about everything they offer on one page. Their thinking goes along the lines of, "...well, I don't want to leave anyone out. If they come to my site, I want to make sure I have what they're looking for..." -- This way of thinking could not be further from the truth.

Here's why: There's an ancient rule that goes back to the very beginning of direct-marketing on the internet, taught by the richest, most legendary and well-respected internet marketers of all time...

"When you give your prospects too many choices, they become confused and aren't sure what to do next. Confused people never buy anything."

Huge Mistake #3: Optimizing Your Sales Site for the Search Engines -- You'll see this taught in nearly every "internet marketing" course, manual or eBook out there... "You must optimize every page of your website for the search engines!" -- In fact, this false teaching is accepted as 'gospel truth' so often that most web designers will offer to do this for you at no, or little extra cost...

What they don't understand is that certain words and phrases must be either re-worded (to make it "keyword rich") or taken out completely, just to be looked upon highly by the mighty search engines -- and this could kill your sales, literally overnight.

Here's why: When you or a hired web designer optimize your sales page (i.e. any web page designed to sell your products and services) to get a higher listing in the search engines, you're going to have to sacrifice the pulling-power of your sales copy (i.e. written sales material) just to get those higher listings. Sure, this can bring you more traffic -- but what good is all the traffic in the world, if your visitors arrive at your website and aren't compelled enough to read why they should order your product?

For years, it has been taught that you should always try to find a "balance" of SEO (Search-Engine-Optimization) mixed with promotional copy designed to sell your products and services...

Wrong Again! -- The truth is that you should never optimize your sales page for the Search Engines. Instead, you should create tiny "entry pages" for each keyword related to your product or service, (highly optimized for the Search Engines) and have them link to your main sales site! (We can show you exactly how to do this quickly and easily and get *massive* targeted traffic from the Search Engines - without ever *touching* your sales site!)

Huge Mistake #4: Having a "Graphics-Based" Website -- Sure, graphics can certainly help us to visualize a particular situation or circumstance, product or service... But did you know that having a graphically-driven website can actually distract your visitor away from your sales message?

After all, your sales message (or "web copy") is The #-1 most important factor in a website that makes money. If your visitors are paying more attention to your "professional graphics" than your sales message... you've just lost another sale.

Here's why: You've got approximately seven seconds from the time your visitor arrives at your site, to the time they decide whether to buy your product, get more information or leave. If you've got a graphically-intensive website, your website will most likely still be loading past your seven-second time limit.

That's a "customer-killer" in and of itself - however, the real reason lies within the fact that the bigger, brighter and more beautiful your graphics are, the more they will distract your visitor from your sales message. And if your visitor is distracted even for one second, it could mean the difference between getting a sale, and losing a customer.

Huge Mistake #5: Designing a Website with Zero Marketing Experience -- Most web designers have no idea how to make money on the internet, with anything other than their design services. It's not their fault - they simply have no or very little marketing and sales experience. After all, they're just website designers...

However, having your website designed by someone with Zero internet marketing experience is like buying a street-car without an engine... it won't go anywhere, and it'll just waste your time and money!

Create Successful Business Website

Congratulation, you finely decided to upgrade your business with a website. This is really important step which can take your business to a new level structurally and financially.

1. Well built and properly advertised website can bring you hundreds of new customers who wouldn't have heard about your business otherwise.

2. Most of people do not search for services on yellow pages no more but open Google , Yahoo, MSN, etc. Therefore your presence on the net is a very important strategy to earn new clients.

3. Website is your face when it comes to clients who arrive to you via the net. If your website is well built, even if you are a small business owner, clients will be more willing to work with you.

Now that we understand the importance of a good, reliable website for a business, let's go over some basic steps to make sure your website will be a success story:

Determine your budget:

Website building can cost you nothing or cost you thousands of dollars. I think that the best site is the one which benefit will excel its cost. Therefore every business owner must determine his appropriate budget .

Some companies offer absolutely free websites. There are some advantages and some disadvantages in such a website. The first and the biggest advantage is the zero cost. If your website turns out useless , you don't lose any money. The main disadvantages of free websites are usually the limited storage space (which means you can't build a large website) and limited bandwidth (if many users enter your site at once, it might become slow or even unavailable).

If you have a large sum of money to put on your web site, you may go to a custom Web Design firm. They will usually offer you two or three unique design sketches which they embed in their Content Management System and a directions about how to enter your content into it. The problem about this option is it's high cost.

There is no second chance to create a first impression:

Design is naturally one of the most important aspects in website success. Website design must represent your business as a prosperous, impressive and trustworthy therefore there is no place to disregard it.

Quality content:

In order to be found in search engines and attract serious visitors you must fill your website with high quality content. We suggest you enter information about yourself , your business and products. Professional articles and further information from your field of interest might add more value to the website and present you as an expert in your field.

Keeping in touch:

Once you have earned clients you better keep in touch with them. There are number of fast and cost effective ways to do so:

1.By mail. Today spam mail is a felony, but once a customer signed up at your website and gave his agreement to receive your e-mails, you should keep in touch with him , informing him about new products, services and sales.

2. By SMS. If your business is very dynamic you might use the SMS technology to keep in touch with your clients at real time.

3. Keep in touch with your clients by blogs and forums where you can offer them technical support

Comprehensive Web Design Checklist

Your Web site needs to do more than make your company look good. It has to support your overall business operations - customer service, sales and marketing and collaboration. Whether you're planning an intranet or Internet site, don't start before you check your strategy against this comprehensive checklist.

The following checklist and the associated answers will facilitate the analysis process ofr designing and building the website that allows your company to turn the corner.

GENERAL

1. Where did you hear about us?

2. Do you have a domain name? If not, do you have ideas on one? If so, what is it?

3. What is your company name? Do you want to use the entire name on the site, logo, and graphics?

4. Do you have special features in mind like ECommerce shopping cart, BLOG, RSS, Forms with emails, EZine, Newsletter signup, autoresponders, advertising landing/call-to-action pages, etc.?

MARKETING

5. Who is your intended audience? Are they regional, industry specific, company size specific, etc.?

6. Do you intend to provide a call to action - make a sale, call in to your office, fill out a form, etc?

7. Describe your ideal client and the specific attributes that we'll be targeting in the website.

8. What are your website expectations, main emphasis and primary goals - increased sales, increased leads, etc.? Please prioritize.

9. What separates your company from your competition and what do you expect will draw clients to the website?

10. How do you plan to market the website?

11. What company properties do you want to emphasize on the website? Please prioritize.

IDENTITY

12. Do you already have a logo and other graphics to be used? If not, do you want to have one created?

13. Have you identified a tagline? That would be something like "Just do it", "Reach out and touch someone", etc. Here is some information on the subject http://advertising.about.com/od/copywriting/a/guesttagline.htm.

14. What keywords do you want to be found by in the search engines?

LAYOUT

15. Please provide a list of websites that you like and don't like. Why do you or do you not like these sites?

16. Please provide a list of competitors websites.

17. Do you have ideas of the colors to be used, and colors you don't like? Please provide example sites.

18. Do you have an intended website screen size - 1024x768, 800x600, or stretch to the entire width of the screen?

19. If the site isn't the entire width of the screen do you have a preference for left or center alignment?

20. Do you have a horizontal or left-side vertical preference for the main navigation?

21. Please provide the main pages you need in the website.

22. Have you created the copy text for any of your pages?

23. Do you have existing business cards or other printed material we need to match?

24. Are you leaning towards custom drawn artwork or photographs?

POST-CONTRACT

25. Once we start designing the website we'll need the following (Note that this information will be kept in strict confidence):

a. FTP access information - username and password

b. Hosting company and their tech support phone number

What is DotNetNuke®

The Future of Web Design - What is DotNetNuke®?

Have you discovered that within months your website becomes out of date and becomes a headache to maintain? DotNetNuke is the answer to your problems.

DotNetNuke® Overview

DotNetNuke® is a portal content management system (CMS) ideal for creating any type of website from commercial web sites, corporate intranets and extranets, online publishing portals, to a personal blog.

DotNetNuke® is provided free, as open-source software. It allows individuals to do whatever they wish with the application framework, both commercially and non-commercially.

The Static Website Problem

So you’ve created your static website using Dreamweaver, Frontpage, or programmed it manually in HTML?

Your next job is to promote your website and keep it up to date with lots of fresh content that the Search Engines love.

You soon discover that keeping your website up to date with the latest news and articles is a lot of work, within a few months your website becomes out of date and the site becomes a complete headache to maintain.

CMS – The Benefits

Using the DotNetNuke® Content Management system enables you to:

• Login to your website from anywhere in the world and update your content live
• Quickly and easily publish articles, images, documents, news, important information and more
• Save Money – Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) you no longer need to pay a webmaster to maintain your site
• Support for an unlimited number of content contributors (ie. Give permission to members of staff to login and update certain sections of your website)
• Easily change the look of your entire web site with just one click using skins
• Extremely extensible admin interface to add and move content, panels and more.
• Security - Every element of your website can have specific security settings applied to allow or deny users from seeing, editing, or administering the different parts of your site

Once you have used DotNetNuke®, you will not look back - your old web design programmes will gather dust!

What do you need for DotNetNuke®?

To run DotNetNuke® you need to use a web hosting package that provides ASP.NET and a Microsoft SQL-Server database.

The DotNetNuke® Community

An advantage with DotNetNuke® being open-source software is the vast number of users out there. There are many developers contributing in the form of improving the DotNetNuke® core code and ‘modules’ which provide extra functions to your website, such as photo galleries. There are designers creating ‘skins’ which you can use to change the graphics of your website, and there is also a central forum area where you can ask DotNetNuke® related questions.

This community is rapidly growing by the day and it demonstrates how DotNetNuke® is the web of the future.

Where do you get DotNetNuke®?

You can download the DotNetNuke® code for free from: http://www.dotnetnuke.com simply register with the website to gain access to the downloads.

How do I learn DotNetNuke®?

There are many resources out there supplying documentation, videos and tips from installation and programming, to web design using DotNetNuke®.

You do not need to be a programmer to use DotNetNuke®; the hardest stage is installing DotNetNuke®. This is just a matter of uploading the correct files to your hosting provider and setting up your SQL database. DotNetNuke® will then automatically install when you open your website.

All you now have to do is add the content!

Understanding Good Web Design Principles

We've all heard the line 'Don't judge a book by its cover'...but let's get real for a moment.

In the real world everyone judges you (and your business) by the image you project. The same goes for your website.

For many businesses, a website is the first point of contact for potential customers so it's vital that you make a good first impression.

The three key components of any web design are:

1)Presentation
2)Functionality
3)Usability

Presentation refers to the way your website looks.

Great websites are easy to spot because they:

- Look clean and professional
- Make sensible use of colors and graphics
- Attract the right target market

Bad sites are equally easy to spot, because they:

- Are difficult to use
- Make bad use of color combinations and graphics
- Have text that is too difficult to read
- Pages that take too long to load

Functionality refers to your website's ability to give users what they want.

For example, if you wanted to a book an airline ticket online, a site with good functionality would allow you to:

- Easily view the available flight times
- Compare pricing options
- Make a booking with your credit card

A less functional site, would:

- Not have the ability to check pricing or book flights
- Contain vague or ambiguous information
- Have a confusing payment process

And finally, Usability refers to how easy (or difficult) it is to use and navigate your website.

Have you ever visited a site that took too long to load?
A website where the text was too small and you struggled to read it?
Or a website where the menu system was confusing to navigate?

That's bad usability in a nutshell.

If you want to create a website that is functional, easy-to-use and quick-to-load, here are a few tips to keep in mind:

DO:

- Immediately tell visitors what your company does.
- Allow visitors to find information with a minimum amount of clicks.
- Keep your menu options clear and simple.
- Use decent font sizes that are easy to read.
- Keep sentences short and split paragraphs into chunks.
- Give your visitors relevant content.
- Use dark text on light backgrounds.
- Make liberal use of 'white space' as it helps break up the page.
- Keep your website quick-to-load by using graphics sparingly.
- Design for your target audience, not your own personal preferences.

DO NOT:

- Use more than 3 main colors on your site. Try to stick to a consistent color theme across your website.
- Use multiple font styles, sizes and colors. Stick to the one font style to keep your site looking consistent.
- Overuse graphic effects, flashy logos or sound effects - they'll simply distract users from the main message of your site.
- Use lots of industry 'buzz' words.

Four Critical Web Design Rules

When creating a new website or redesigning an existing site, there are four critical rules which the designer should follow to make the site effective and functional - and successful.

1. Easy to Read

When building a website, the first thing you need to be sure of is that your website is easy to read. When you write content, remember that most web site visitors don't read every word of a page - in fact, they only scan pages to find what they want.

Break up Your Content

Break up your pages and use headers between major ideas so people scanning your site can find what they want quickly. Use meaningful headers between each paragraph or major idea - this helps with SEO. Headers should be created with the H1 through H4 tags for SEO. Always use good writing structure. Additionally, avoid long paragraphs that run on. You should break up any long paragraphs.

Color and Fonts

To help readability, use high contrast colors between font and background. Black text against a white background may seem stark, but it is very readable. To make a website easy on the eyes, try an off-white background and a dark gray (almost black) text color.

Things to avoid with content color:

Avoid vibrant background colors like purple or yellow. Such back colors make text difficult to read.

Avoid using an image behind your text.

Avoid using bright text colors on bright backgrounds.

Fonts Matter

One simple statement covers the font issue:

Simple fonts are the best; the more fancy the font, the harder it is to read.

Since many browsers only have the standard font set, use standard fonts. In reality, there is no ""standard"", but there are certain fonts that are installed on most browsers. These include Arial, Verdana, Tahoma and Times New Roman. Your readers will see something different than you see if you use other fonts.

Standard Compliant Browser for Development

When developing and testing your site, use a Standards compliant browser like FireFox. If you develop your site to be standards compliant, it will work in most browsers, including MS Internet Explorer (IE). It is recommended that you test your site using the latest and last browser versions of IE (IE6 and IE7). To run multiple versions of IE on the same machine, TredoSoft has a free installer that will install multiple versions of IE. It works great!

2. Simplify Navigation

The menus and links make up the navigation that the visitor uses to get from page to page in a site. Always plan a site around how people will get from page to page. A visitor to your site should be able to get to what they want within three clicks of their mouse.

Multiple navigation points makes it easy to find things. Repeat the top menu and at the bottom. Also create a left or right menu.

Using links within your text to other areas on your site. You can create links so that they are good for search engine optimization (SEO). There are generally two ways to create links within your text:

The wrong way: ""For search engine optimization techniques, click here.""

The right way: ""Good techniques for search engine optimization are important to use.""

Using link text (anchor text) that describes what the link is about is the best way. Search engine web crawlers (programs that automatically index the contents of websites) visit your site, they ""read"" links. Spiders can index descriptive links into a subject or keyword category. Spiders have nothing to work with when reading a ""click here"" until it reaches the linked page.

This is Cross Linking - use it as much as possible when it makes sense to do so when writing your content.

3. Consistent Design

At most, one or two layouts should be used in your site design. As a reader browses your site, they should be able to get used to looking in the same place for your navigation, for your sub-navigation and for your content. That's all there is to say about that.

4. Lower Page Weight is Better

Page weight is the total size of a page on your site in bytes - code, text and images. Your site's page weight makes a big difference to your viewers. Lighter page weight is better for your readers because the page will download faster. The faster a page downloads, the faster they will get to the content.

What is Means to be Light

No large images. (unless the site's purpose is to showcase images, art or photos)

Fewer images are better.

Optimize images for the web at no more than 72 dpi

Use as small an image dimension as possible for the given design.

Use a table td bgcolor attribute or a background-color style attribute for solid color backgrounds.

Make gradients horizontal or vertical (not diagonal) so that you can use a small image ""strip"" and repeat it.

How ""Heavy"" Should a Web Page be?

Certain studies show that 64K is a good maximum webpage size. 64K is a maximum, however it is still, in my opinion, really big! The smaller the page, the better. 25K is good, 15K is even better. There is a balance between design and function. It is a good idea to focus more on function.

Try putting pages on your web host server as you build your site so you can test it as you go. For pages online, you can test the page weight to be sure you are on track.

Ways to make pages lighter:

Use linked style sheets

Use DIVs instead of TABLEs where possible

Use simple repeating backgrounds for effect

Summary

Visitors to your website should be able to find what they are looking for within about three clicks. Making a site easy to read with consistent page design, and easy to navigate will make it easy to find information. You will be on the way to building a readable, effective, functional and hopefully successful website if you follow these rules.

10 Terrific Tips for Web Design Beginners.

When embarking on the daunting journey to web design enlightenment it can be hard to know where to start. This short article is intended as a roadmap, outlining the significant tips all aspiring web designers should be made aware of. If you follow each of the following tips you will be well on your way to web design nirvana. However, you may possibly be an intermediate, or, hold your breath, advanced web designer – well if that is the case, be humble my good friend, peruse the following tips and you may surprise yourself and pick up a thing or two. So saddle up to your computer chair, make yourself a coffee, drink some chai tea if it tickles your fancy (it’ s certainly not my cup of tea), assume the full lotus position and prepare to be digitally enlightened.

-- TECHNICAL TIPS --

1. LEARN XHTML - Extensible HyperText Markup Language.

If you don’t already know, XHTML is the ‘markup language’ that every individual web page is made out of. Right click on your screen, and click on view source. Feel like Neo already? Yes, that’s right folks; every web page you view is simply a plain text file full of code stored on some dudes computer (sometimes otherwise known as a web hosting server).

Don’t be scared, XHTML is quite possibly the easiest programming language you can learn, so easy in fact XHTML isn’t technically classed as a programming language. Don’t take the ‘red pill’ and learn Dreamweaver – it may seem the easier option at first, but being completely honest once you learn XHTML you can create web pages in half the amount of time than it takes to in Dreamweaver, and you have more control over the final layout. Additionally, Dreamweaver adds quite a lot of unnecessary code and as a result increase the file size of the page, slowing down the loading time for all those poor sods still on dial up Internet. You can write XHTML code in a plain text editor, such as notepad, or notepad++ ( my favourite), however word processors such as Microsoft Word are entirely unsuitable.

If you’re rich, unlike me, pick up a cheap ( recent) XHTML book, otherwise browse Google for XHTML tutorials, or head over to http://www.w3. org/MarkUp/Guide/ for a brief introduction to writing XHTML by Dave Raggett.

2. LEARN CSS – Cascading Style Sheets.

Stop torturing you with all these programming languages you say? Don’t fret my friend, CSS is only a little more advanced than XHTML and most books on XHTML also cover CSS. CSS is the language that controls things such as the colour, background images, font attributes, and so on. The beauty of using CSS is you can control the aesthetic features of multiple web pages with a single CSS file.

If you would like another wonderful online tutorial, head over to http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/ Guide/Style for a brief introduction to CSS, by Dave Raggett also.

3. LEARN PHOTOSHOP.

All web designers know how to use Photoshop. I was actually born with a Photoshop watermark on my upper left thigh. If you are aspiring for a web design career you are going to need to learn Photoshop, hell – even my Nan knows how to use Photoshop. So Google away for Photoshop tutorials, or browse your local library to spice up your Photoshop skills.

The best piece of advice I can give you is to make up all of your web page designs in Photoshop first. Once you are entirely happy with the design start slicing and dicing your photoshop file for the images you will need, and coding the web page in XHTML and CSS. This saves stuffing around with markup code unnecessarily; it’s much easier to make changes to layout and colours, etcetera, in Photoshop first.

4. USE CSS INSTEAD OF TABLES FOR YOUR DESIGNS.

If you already know a thing or two about web design you are probably sick to death of hearing about using CSS instead of tables for your layout. Well I’m going to give it a brief mention anyways for all those web design n00bies out there. Use CSS to control your layout, don’t use HTML tables for your design. Tables add tons of unnecessary code, are time consuming and expensive to make changes to once the site is completed, and only affect the layout of the single page you are working on – as opposed to using a single CSS file that affects the layout of any page you want. Don’t bust your knuckles by typing the same code over and over again.

5. USE VALID XHTML AND CSS.

Valid XHTML and valid CSS is code that validates with the World Wide Web Consortiums coding rules. There is plenty of information on how to ensure your code is valid over at http://www.w3.org. It is important to keep this in mind, as most web design employers will not touch web designers with a ten-foot clown pole unless their code adheres with the standards of the W3C.

-- THEORETICAL TIPS --

6. LEARN ABOUT GRID THEORY.

Grid theory is basically the design theory that suggests that works of art are more aesthetically pleasing if they adhere to some sort of grid that controls its layout. Additionally, the rule of thirds, which is a theory that is related to grid theory, (it’s sort of like the relative that no one wants to speak to at family functions because of a foul and unpleasant body odour), suggests that designs are even more aesthetically pleasing if their visual form can be divided into thirds. When designing web pages in photoshop, I always start with a grid first to ensure my layouts align to the grid.

7. LEARN ABOUT TYPOGRAPHY.

Typography can be defined as the study of fonts. Learning about typography will teach you when and where to use fonts. Learning about letter spacing (kerning as they like to call it), line height, the serif and sans serif font categories, and more, you’ll have a truly lethal understanding of fonts in your web design arsenal.

It is important to keep in mind that there is only a small range of fonts that will display in people’s web browsers, so don’t rely on primarily using custom fonts in your designs, unless you plan on saving them all as images which can drastically increase the file size of your web site. Site visitors aren’t going to download custom fonts just to view your website the way you want them to, even if you are super polite. If you stick to using the following fonts for the actual text in your web page, you will be safe: Arial, Arial Black, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, and Verdana. If you want to be an extra lame nerd like me, you should print out all the variations of these fonts (in bold, italic, different sizes, etc) and stick it on your wall.

8. LEARN ABOUT COLOUR THEORY

Before I continue any further I must offer one small piece of advise. Please please please do not email me and tell me that I have spelled ‘ colour’ wrong. If you do so, I will slap you with a salami. Every time I write one of these articles I seem to get at least one email from a silly sausage that doesn’t realise words such as ‘ color’ and ‘optimize’ are spelled differently in different parts of the world. Well, on with the show.

Colour Theory, is, well, the theory of colours. There are many theories on how to choose a nice colour palette, and these will help ensure your web site won’t have the appearance it was designed by a colour blind… blind-man. Without getting into too much detail, one nice colour scheme to use is a monochromatic colour scheme. A monochromatic colour scheme is a selection of colours that features a colour (lets say cerulean blue), tints of that colour (cerulean blue with more white), shades of that colour (cerulean blue with more black), black and white colours (yes black and white are classified as colours my learn-ed friends).

A nice little tool to help you choose your colour scheme can be located at http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html. Mmmm, free tool.

9. GET INSPIRED

Browse the net for good web designers, don’t steal their designs, but analyse their designs and try to figure out what fonts, colour scheme, grids, and photoshop techniques they are using. A simple way to use this is search for web design in Google, and browse the portfolios of the top web design companies that come up in the search results. Digital art and poster websites also serve as good inspiration.

However you don’t need to restrict your sources of inspiration to the Internet. On the rare occasion when I venture out of my web design cave to eat something other than baked beans on toast, I like to analyse what grid, colour scheme, and font types that restaurants like to use in their menus. But hey, put me in a sack and throw me down a river if you think I’m just crazy.

10. PRACTISE PRACTISE PRACTISE

I shouldn’t have to say this but practise whenever you can. The more you practise, the sooner writing XHTML and CSS code will become a second nature to you, and you should also practise utilising the information from the various theories I have just mentioned too.

A good tip would be to make one web page template a week and submit it to http://www.oswd.org and other online free web page template directories. It’s a great way to improve your skills, and develop a nice little portfolio too.

Well that’s just about it for today, my avid readers. I hope the useful tips in this article have helped you well on your way towards web design enlightenment. If you need more information on any of the topics I have mentioned please don’t forget that Google and Wikipedia are your friends. And finally, please, never let yourself forget ‘There is a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path’.