WEB DESIGN 101

So, you want to build a web site! Well, you've come to the right place. This site explains in very simple terms how to design, build and publish a web site. If you haven't done it before, Internet publishing can appear rather daunting. In fact, it is not difficult at all.

There is very little you require to build a web site and everything you need is available free on the Internet. In other words, you don't need to spend huge sums of money purchasing expensive software packages, programming manuals or web server space. You just need to know where to start.

Here is a list of what you do need:

basic computer skills
access to a personal computer
access to the Internet
An HTML Editor (a web page construction tool)
a place on the world wide web to publish your page

There are eight steps involved in publishing a page. They are:

define your objectives
design your web pages
download an HTML editor from the web
construct your site
find a web server where your site can be published
copy your pages to the web server
promote your web site
track your hits and fine tune

Define Objectives

There are many good reasons for building a web page but it is important that your goals are clear. Your objectives should drive the content and the design. Many people build home pages as a hobby, purely for their own personal development. Others build them to promote business, social, cultural, humanitarian, or business objectives.

Knowledge of web page development can help you in your career. Many businesses today have their own corporate Intranet sites, which are simply internal Internet systems used to share corporate information. The ability to communicate electronically is a valuable skill to employers.

There is also potential for generating income from the web pages you develop. This is done by publishing interesting pages that attract large numbers of visitors and then selling advertising space, goods or services from those pages.

Judging by the vast number of home pages that contain little more than the builder's name, age, and a photograph of the family cat, it would appear that many web page developers have not clearly defined their objectives!

Design your Web Site

Once you know exactly what you intend to publish and who the targeted audience will be, the next step is to determine the mood of your web site. Should the ambience be informal, professional or high tech? Will you use graphics, animation or music? How will the text be structured and which fonts will be used? How will visitors navigate through your site? Whatever you decide, try to maintain the same theme and conventions throughout your site.

The most important part of your web site is the textual content. What you write should add value and make the visitor want to return. Review your web page objectives and your target audience and make your message suit that audience. Don't forget to check your spelling and grammar before publishing your pages. There are a few tricks to keep in mind regarding word repetition, use of headers and titles but these will be discussed later. At this point, focus on content!

Publishing on the net is different from writing for a newspaper in that you are able to take advantage of multimedia capabilities. Photos, graphics, music and video can make your site interesting. Be careful, however, not to overdo it. Graphics, for example are often large files that take time to download. Most people won't wait more than five seconds for a web page to load.

Don't forget that people use many different types of personal computers, modems and versions of software. A web page that loads quickly on your machine might not function quite as well on another. When writing web pages, the golden rule is: small is beautiful!

You can find graphics for your home page on the web by searching for "Index of GIF files" or "GIF library". When you find something you like, copy it to a directory on your hard drive by right clicking on the graphic and selecting "save picture as". To find appropriate music, search for "midi" and the name of the singer or composer. The names of these two file types terminate with ".gif" and ".mid". If you suspect that a graphic or song is copyrighted, you should ask permission from the owner before using it.

To keep life simple, all pictures, animations, graphics, music, etc. that you plan to use on your home page should be stored in the same directory as your main HTML program file. If you haven't already done so, create a directory on your hard drive to consolidate all the software components that you will use on your page.

The use of tables to group and align text can help make a page more attractive. Tables are fast to load and are easily generated from most HTML Editors. The spacing between table cells and the borders around the cells can be altered or made invisible. Text and graphics within table cells can be right justified, left justified or centered.

Information gathered from http://build-website.com