Web Design Is Not For The Squeamish: 9 Things You Should Know
Before Designing A Website
The internet has become an integral part of our lives. Everyday
more and more websites are going online. With the advent of
online sitebuilders included with many hosting packages, anyone
can easily create a web presence and feel comfortable knowing
that the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor is pretty
simple to learn. You don't need to know how to write HTML
because the sitebuilding software generally has a word
processing type of interface and all you need to do is pop
things in here and there. But soon you'll realize that there are
many limitations to what you can and can't do. If you're
satisfied with these limitations, then nothing anyone says will
matter.
Ignorance may be bliss, but knowledge is freedom. Freedom to
create a website exactly the way you want it to look and perform
the way you want it to perform. Of course, there's more to web
design than writing HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) code and
putting pretty pictures on a webpage. It takes time, skill and
patience to master the concepts needed in order to create an
effective website.
I've listed at least nine items that I feel you must know a
little bit about before seriously embarking on designing a
website. They aren't listed in any particular order of
importance as each web designer has his/her own opinion as to
the importance of each one.
1. HTML. One must learn the HTML language, which is not
difficult, but nevertheless a necessity, since this is the only
way that the browsers (i.e. Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox,
Netscape, Opera, etc.) will be able decipher the code in order
to view a webpage. There are numerous places to learn HTML for
free on the internet. The one place I would recommend would be
to go to the W3C website. Here is where all the standards are
written. You can find them located here
http://www.w3schools.com/.
2. CSS. It would be a big advantage for you to learn CSS
(Cascading Style Sheets). CSS gives you total control over the
style and layout of your webpages. By learning CSS, you would
only need to edit one file in order to make some changes in all
of your pages. You wouldn't have to go into each webpage
separately to change fonts, or background colors and images.
It's really kind of neat when you think about how much you can
do with the inclusion of just one or two lines. I like to call
it my 'magic file' because that's what it does...it performs
magic instantly!
3. TITLES,META TAGS and KEYWORDS. There has been volumes
written about these items. But for my purpose here, I will just
mention what each are and where they're located. Suffice it to
say that knowing a bit about each one will only enhance your
learning experience in designing an effective webpage. Every
webpage or HTML document must have a title. The title should be
representative of what your website is about. It is located
between the and area at the top of your document.
HTML tags which describe the content of a webpage and utilized
by search engines are called META Tags. They provide useful
information to the search engines such as Author, Copyright,
Description, Expirations, Language, Keywords and Robots. There
are others but those are the basic ones used. One of the more
important META Tag used is the Keyword META Tag. This is where
you put your specific keywords and key phrases. The keywords you
choose which best describes your webpage is what the search
engines look for. They also notice how often these keywords and
key phrases are used within the webpage. One must be careful how
the keywords are used because too many and it's considered
spamming the search engines, too few and they aren't even
noticed.
4. DOCTYPE. DOCTYPE is short for "Document Type
Definition", or, DTD, and it informs the web browsers which
version of (X)HTML you are using in order to process it. The
DOCTYPE must appear at the very top of every webpage that you
design. You can check W3C's webpage here at
http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html for a list of
recommended DOCTYPE's.
5. COPYRIGHT INFO. You can find out all about the
copyright laws here at http://www.copyright.gov/, but what it
basically boils down to is - if you didn't write it, you will
need approval of the person who did in order to use it within
your website, or there could be real problems for you with
copyright infringements. It's against the law to take what
someone else wrote and pass it off as your own. This goes for
everything from photo's, clip art, designs, website templates to
articles and website content on other websites.
6. CONTENT. I'm sure you've heard the statement that
"Content Is King". What this means is that whatever you write
within your website (the content), not only does it have to be
original but it should possess a number of your keywords and key
phrases. These keywords and key phrases should fit in within the
content and make sense with whatever it is you're writing about.
This content will not only explain to any visitor what you're
website is all about, it will be used by the search engine's
that rate how important your content is in relation to the
keywords listed.
7. LINKS. Links within your website are important,
whether you're linking to other websites or other websites are
linking to you. However, with Google's new update "Jagger",
Google is placing more importance on credibility and
added-value, rather than the amount of links you have. Google
continues to change their algorithms by which websites are rated
and it's becoming almost comical that many a website owner must
scramble to figure out the best way to make changes in order to
either keep their high rankings or even get noticed. It will be
interesting to watch what happens here.
8. VALIDATION. There is much to be said about being
validated. There are some web designers that feel it's not
important, but know that I feel that it's extremely important.
What exactly does 'being validated' mean? Simply put, it means
that the coding of your website has passed the test in utilizing
the W3C conformance standards by which web documents have been
written. It places no value on the content, just the HTML or
XHTML structure. There is also a validation service for passing
the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) conformance standards. Both of
these services are provided for free by the W3C (World Wide Web
Consortium).
9. SEO. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the key
factor by which your website will be rated by Google, MSN, Yahoo
or any of the other search engines. Quite simply it's optimizing
your website for the search engines to notice you. Again, the
importance is placed on content. There are many SEO companies
that promise high rankings, or worse, they promise you number
one ranking if you hire them to optimize your website. Be wary
of anyone that makes those statements. Know that there is no
possible way for them to make such promises because there is no
way to know how a website will rank. You an submit your own URL
to some of the major search engines yourself at no cost. Now
whether or not you get noticed is another story entirely, but
know that eventually your website will be indexed by the various
robot programs that most search engines use anyhow.
In summary, there is much to consider when designing a website.
It's not an easy task and the importance of the items I've
listed should not be ignored. It also takes a bit of ingenuity
and creativeness in addition to the semantics, but with
practice, patience and knowledge, it can be done.