1. A Few Tips To Help Style A Professional Site
Though many people are trying website design, they do not fully understand most of the techniques.
Are you looking for a career change, or just improve a personal site? Either way, the tips below will
help you out.
Make sure your text and background has the
proper contrast. There's evidence showing that
white text on a black background is easiest for
most people to read, but other colors are fine so
long as they're readable. Also keep in mind that
people with visual impairments may not be able
to read your site if the contrast is poor. Check to
see if your site complies with various contrast
standards using the tool at
http://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.h
tml .
Speed is important in the Internet, and this is why you need to see to it that your website loads fast.
Visitors can quickly become impatient and leave your site if it loads too slowly. They will often move
on to another site and usually never return to yours.
If you are not feeling confident in any area at all when you're designing a website then go ahead and
ask for help from someone. You can either find help from a friend or from strangers on places like
forums on the web. Just be sure you don't tackle anything without knowing what you're doing first.
Be sure your website works both with and without the "www" prefix. Some people will type this in
before they head to your site as a force of habit, and some may not. You should make sure that
customers will be directed to your site either way, or you may have some confused people on your
hands.
Pay attention to your background colors and your text colors when designing a site. Something like
red text on a blue background doesn't work well. And if you think that white text will pop with a
black background, it could be a little too bright for your readers. Go with something subtle.
Be wary of web hosting companies who claim that they offer unlimited bandwidth to their customers.
Usually there is something that is written in the small print that is far different than that. In many
cases people end up having problems when it comes to fair use policies.
Selecting the right server to upload your files, it is important for site design. You want a file server
that is reliable, secure and fast. The pros go with FileZilla Building Ecommerce Site Drupal because
it fits the bill in terms of speed and reliability. You can choose this or something similar; what's
important is that you have a reliable file server.
Selecting a good domain name is a very important aspect of website design. When you type an
2. address in the web browser, do you use the famous www sub domain? Most people like to just type
the address without using this, meaning you must design your site to be able to accept both.
Minimize the amount of clicking or scrolling visitors must do to access information. The more a user
has to click or scroll around to find the information they seek, the more likely they are to give up
looking for it. Aim for having at least 400 words on every page of your site by combining pages that
have content that falls below this number of words.
Stay in contact with friends who are knowledgable about design programs like Dreamweaver or
Photoshop to make sure that you don't forget how to use them properly. Make sure you understood
everything you learned so that you do not find yourself committing mistakes while designing your
website.
As you design your website, be sure that someone other than yourself is helping you check its
functionality as you go. When adding new features, have a few people test it to make sure it
functions like you want it to. Videos that take a while to load might not irritate you, but they might
bother your users. Ask someone who has no interest in flattering you to give you an honest opinion.
Check with your web host before adding videos to your site, as some hosts will not allow it. A lot of
services cannot spare the bandwidth or storage space for videos. The FLV files tend to take up a lot
of room on public servers. Be sure to check before doing anything so you are not wasting your
efforts.
Although having captchas are excellent for registering visitors, they should otherwise not be used.
Some captchas require the user to jump through hoops just to access content. Unless your visitor is
already devoted to your site, he or she will likely leave your page and go somewhere else.
Staying consistent with site maintenance can help you get rid of SPAM and negative content on your
website quickly. If you are running a forum or blog, this is very important. A professional website
designer will always be prepared to wipe away the trash and clean up the page.
You should set aside at least one day per week to update your website. If you're not updating it, you
should at least check up on it to make sure that it's functioning properly. As a site designer, it's up to
you, and you alone, to ensure that your site is in perfect working condition. If you fail to do so, you
could lose a lot of traffic.
If you expect many people to contribute to the content of the website, incorporating a content
management system (CMS) into the design of the website might be a good idea. A CMS will make it
easier for everyone to add to and update the content without needing a high level of technical
knowledge. These systems are easy to use, and can make publishing content on the website much
more efficient.
If you're going to choose a software program to aid in the design of your website, you can save some
serious cash by choosing a free, open source program. Open source programs are great not only
http://www.networksolutions.com/design-develop/index.jsp because they're free for public use, but
also because they're constantly updated and improved by users with a lot of web know-how.
Optimize every image you use for the web. If you look through the internet, you can find a lot of
examples of images that are too large and they slow down the webpage's load time. Make sure you
have optimized each image you use. Save the image as a JPEG or GIF and aim for the file size to be
somewhere between 5k and 20k.
3. As you have seen, the principles of good website creation are not terribly mysterious or difficult to
implement. However, too many websites still ignore these basic techniques. Do not let your site fall
into this category. Put these techniques into practice to design a website that you can be proud of.