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Developing Your Website
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Webmaster or Web Designer Webmaster is the person who manages a website whereas a web designer conceives and creates the actual site. Although it is common for one person to do both jobs, it is not mandatory. If you have a simple or moderately complex web site, you will probably be able to design it yourself (time and patience willing). If you don't have the time or require a more complex web site with custom graphics, flash animations or extensive Java scripting, you might consider hiring a professional web site designer. Then, once the site is built and uploaded to the server, you can manage your site by setting up e-mail accounts and editing and updating text and graphics. In general, all web sites should: 1- Attract the reader's attention |
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Determining Site Complexity
Like any design project, you
must first have an idea of what you want your outcome to look like
before you start and evaluate whether you have the ability, time and
aptitude to get the job done. It's a good idea to search the web for
pages that you like or draw an outline on paper before beginning. |
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Types of Web Sites A website can be anything from a basic single page to an elaborate interactive website that interacts with customer data bases or displays multimedia images. Here is a summary of some of the different types of web sites and their level of complexity. Basic Websites- Are the most common of all web sites and generally includes text, graphics and photo images. These sites can range from a simple single page to advanced layouts. Most people are capable of generating these types of websites and the only limits are your imagination, patience, communications skills and creativity. These sites tend to be fast loading and the most "Search Engine Friendly" of all the various types of websites. Multimedia Websites- Are more complex in nature , and often include an opening animation (flash) or video clips (real video) to better present your company, product or service. These are generally not recommended as they slow down web site load times. Multimedia sites are best left to more experienced web site designers with access to animation and video editing software tools. Data Based Web Sites- The most common of these are CMS or Content Management Systems. The major appeal to this type of website is that the design is managed by the CMS program. An admin area is provided where one or more people can enter text for the website which is then formatted and presented by the program. CMS systems also come with many pre-made templates and modules. Things like an events calendar, surveys, downloads section, etc. This allows non-techie people to manage the content of the site yet have a professional looking site. These types of sites lend themselves well to websites that will have content changes made to them frequently or where you want multiple people adding content to the site. The down side to these sites are that they all have a very similar look about them. E-Commerce Web Sites- If you are selling a product or service and collect money or orders directly from your website, then you will require an E-Commerce enabled web site. The type of E-Commerce system you use will greatly depend upon the type and quantity of product(s) or services you offer, the methods of payment you accept, and whether you will need more advanced features like real time inventory, shipping or order status. If you sell many different types of items, you will want to include a "shopping cart" to allow people to add items and check out when finished. If you collect credit card information you will want to have a means of offering a secure "encrypted" connection to allow your customers to send you their credit card numbers with more peace of mind. This can be done in a number of ways either on your website, or through an external link. If you have hundreds of different products, then a more sophisticated program may be required to create a data base of products and available quantities and then automatically create page templates and update available quantities or shipping charges in real time. ASP- Stands for active server page. These are websites that actually create web pages "on demand" based upon customer inquiry. These are generally used on very large and extremely complex websites and require both special programming and special servers. Hosting With Service does not currently offer ASP websites because they require MicroSoft Software running on the Web Server machine. We feel this is a major security problem to manage which would increase the cost of our services for everyone. Most things that can be accomplished with ASP can also be accomplished with other programming software like PHP and Perl, which don't require any MicroSoft Software. |
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Meta Tags
When building your web site, there is a section of hidden HTML code that tells search engines how to categorize your website. These hidden "tags" include key words that you choose to ensure that your web site will be found when people do a search for these special words or phrases. Using the right combinations of words in your meta-tags can make a big difference in how well your site "ranks" in certain search engines. Our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) solution gives you immediate access to 8 effective optimization tools. You can get more information about this on our SERVICES page. |
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Web Site Authoring Tools A website is made using a programming language called "html" (Hypertext Markup Language), along with various graphics and picture files. Html tells your web browser how to interpret colors, text, formatting, images and where to put them on each web page. Because html uses standard keyboard characters (ASCII), it can be seen and edited using any standard word processor, text editor or special html editors. These editors are used by advanced programmers to see the inner workings of web site code but are not of much use to the beginning web designer. Fortunately, there are many tools available today that allow a novice to build a website without having to understand the technical aspects of html programming. These WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) web site building programs allow you to place text, graphics and photo files anywhere you desire and preview your web pages without ever seeing the underlying code. Many of today's top programs like Corel Draw ™or MS Office 2000™ allow you to save a file directly as html and make it very easy to generate web pages. Other good WYSIWYG choices include Netscape Composer™, MS Front-Page™ or Macromedia Dreamweaver™. |
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Graphic Tools
Most web sites include some form of graphics and pictures. These image files must be saved in the proper file format and be set to the proper compression level to ensure the smallest possible file size. Generally, photographic files are saved in the Jpeg format and all other graphics are saved in Gif format. Proper use of the right image format, resolution, and bit depth are very important. In order to manipulate and crop your graphics you will require special software. There are many excellent graphics editors available today such as: Adobe Photoshop™ and Macromedia Fireworks™ and many more. |
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Web Site Optimization Most people still access the Internet via a 56k modem so it is very important that your web pages are optimized to load quickly. The average person won't wait more than 45 seconds for a page to load and delays can cause you to lose up to 50% of your customers! It is very important to optimize your website by compressing your graphics and html code for the fastest loading time. |
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