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Archive for the ‘Web Design’ Category

These days, almost anyone can build a website quickly and easily. It doesn’t require a great deal of expertise or years of training. The fact that web designing is easy for everyone does not mean that everyone can do it effectively, though. It might be a breeze to toss up a site, but creating a good site still requires some knowledge.

A great deal goes into effective web designing and its obviously well beyond the scope of any single article to cover every detail. There are three points that do stand out as real keys to effective design.

First, navigational clarity. You want people to be able to get around your site without becoming lost, confused or annoyed. That makes obvious navigational aids a must. Whether you do it with a sidebar or as a series of tabs or links across the top of every page, it’s essential to have a good navigational system.

Second, readability. That doesn’t refer to the Flesh-Kincaid score for your content. It refers to creating a site that meets basic usability requirements. We’re talking about adequately-sized text presentation, use of white space to increase clarity and avoidance of overcrowding a page and making it too “noisy” to easily interpret.

Third, quality coding. You want your site to render correctly on browsers. You want search engines to be able to find and read it. You want it to load quickly for visitors. That means you need to make sure that its underlying code is written optimally. We can argue over the necessity of complete compliance with validation standards, but there’s no way to dispute the fact solid coding is a necessity.

If you create a well-coded site that’s easy to navigate and that adheres to basic usability standards, you’re in good shape. These are three core principles that lead to effective web designing.

Web designing is not rocket science when you get your advice from the best in the business.

Get the inside scoop on web designing now by visiting this powerhouse site! You will be glad you did. http://askdrsmiley.com/ask

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More and more people are developing online presences every single day. Some of them start with a solid knowledge base and a strong set of skills. Others try to make their mark with nothing more than the idea that they want to be online. While the process of web designing is easy for some, it’s a massive struggle for others.

How can inexperienced folks get online without all of the headaches? Here are a few pointers that might come in handy. If you keep these three recommendations in mind, you don’t need to struggle to create a fully functional website, even if you don’t know the difference between HTML and URLs.

First, start simple. The nice thing about a website is that you can always rearrange it, repair it and expand upon it. Nothing is carved in stone. So it makes sense to start your web designing with a simple structure. There’s no need to worry about all of the bells and whistles right off the bat.

Second, use good tools. If there’s one thing that makes creating a website easier today than it ever has been before it’s the presence of great tools, many of which are free. These can make building and managing a website incredibly simple. The difficulties that used to plague novices are now avoidable thanks to these resources.

Third, ask questions. One of the best things about the Internet is the fact that there are so many helpful people out there who are willing to lend a hand and to supply good advice. Anyone who feels stuck while putting a site together can go to any one of many sites and forums to look for support and good recommendations.

Simplicity, tools and asking questions. Those three steps are all it really takes to make web designing easy for almost everyone.

Web designing is not rocket science when you get your advice from the best in the business.

Get the inside scoop on web designing now by visiting this powerhouse site! You will be glad you did. Lauras Basics to Webdesign

Having a good website layout is a must no matter what type of website you are building. Keeping things uniform throughout your website makes it look nice, but more importantly it makes it much easier for your visitors to read and follow through what you want them to do.

There are many dos and don’ts you should follow when deciding on your website layout -

1. Headers – this is the top part of your website. Do Not make this huge and wild looking. Keep the height of this no more than around 100 pixels. This can be a graphic you have designed for you, or just a colored background with words on it.

2. Your Headline – use the h1 tags of html to write your headline, if you don’t know what this is, then ask your designer or learn it. Search engines look for h1 or h2 tags to tell them about the website. Your text should be easy to read, don’t make it fancy looking, keep the color usually to a red, this usually makes peoples’ eyes attract to it.

3. The body of your website – too many times a lot of website designers makes this way too colorful, and this makes it difficult to read. Most people want to know exactly right now what is in it for me, not all the fancy stuff. Keep your text family to one type, do not change this around. The norm for this is Times New Roman or Arial. You do not have to stick to these families but the important rule here is to use the same family for your entire website.

4. Images – please do not plaster your website with graphics! This is so annoying and distracting. An important rule to remember when using images on any website, is the size of the image, if your image is large it will take the site a long time to load and people won’t stick around to wait. Make sure that your images are clear and relative your website theme. Another important fact that most do not use, is the alt tag, this tag is inserted so if your visitor doesn’t have the ability to see images the words will display, also, search engines do not see images, so by using the alt tag within your image will tell the search engines what is there.

5. Buy Buttons – too many times I’ve gone to a website, read through it, liked what I saw and read; now I want to know the price? Scroll to the bottom to find the buy button only to see no price at all! Make sure that your price is clearly seen, the best place to put your price is directly above or below the buy button. Make it clear exactly what the price, no hidden costs! The fastest way to lose a sale is by not telling the purchaser how much they are going to pay.

6. Closing – make sure that your name is clearly at the bottom, people want to know who they are dealing with. Having a professional taken picture of yourself is the best, but if you either do not want to do this or don’t have one, then make sure your name is clearly there. And a way for them to contact you if they have questions. Do Not put your actual email address on your websites!! You can put the words Contact Me and have them linked to an email address. Do not ever put your actual email address on your websites. There are spiders out there that look for this format and will spam you!

7. PS – Always, Always, have a ps or two. Recap what they are getting and restate your price and guarantee. It has been shown that by having a ps increase sales, so use it!

By sticking with these steps you will get a better looking website that will convert much better. It really doesn’t matter what market you are in or what you are selling, by having the a good website layout will make all the difference.

Dr Smiley

When it comes to building a website there is a lot to think about. Not just the technical stuff, but the purpose of your website and what you want from it.

Depending on what the purpose of your website is going to be will depend a lot on what you need to know how to do.

I won’t be going into a lot of detail here on domain registration or hosting, that is another topic all in itself.

What I want to discuss today is the development of a website.

There are tools you are going to have to have to do this, you will need a way to create or edit HTML code, you will need a way to upload these files to your hosting account, and you will need some way to capture a visitors information, and you might even need some way to accept payments online from your website.

None of these are hard to do once you understand their process, but it’s that learning curve most do not take the time to learn properly. They want to have a website up right now and that is possible with some of the software out there today and templates. But one thing I definitely learned, the hard way, sooner or later knowing just the basics to HTML coding and how a website works, is a life saver.

Okay you have your domain name registered and you have your hosting setup, now what?

Get yourself a way to edit or create HTML coding, an HTML editor, such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver or a free editor. There are hundreds out there, so do a search on your favorite search engine and see what is out there. Play around with some of the free ones to get a feel for them to see which one you are most comfortable with.

Now you are going to need a way to sending what you create in your editor to your host, this is called File Transfer Protocol or FTP. There are tons out there so do a search with your favorite search engine, most of these are free to use. Get to understand it and how it works before you begin. This shouldn’t take you very long, most are pretty easy to understand and have tutorials to help you get started.

The first thing you need to decide right now is whether or not you are going to put graphics on your website. This is an ongoing battle of whether graphics help or not, you will need to decide this for yourself and determine if your market is accepting with this. Testing is the best policy here. If you do decide you want graphics then, consider outsourcing this to a professional.

What is the purpose of your website? Are you going to just be collecting names and email addresses to build that list? Are you selling your own product or an affiliate product? These questions need to be answered so you know what type of website you are creating.

If you want to do both, then you will need 2 different websites. This doesn’t mean you need to register 2 different domain names, just 2 different sites. If you are collecting names and email addresses, do not put anything else on this page! If you are selling a product that is all you want there, do not attempt to get them to opt into something also!

Let’s build a website.

Since there are a variety of different types of websites, from squeeze pages, salespages, and information websites, I can’t possible walk you through each one here. But here are the main components of a basic website you should always have in place.

1. Your title of your website – use the code <Title> where you would replace the word Title with your website title. Should be keywords or keyword phrases
2. Your description – use the code <meta descriptionimg>description </meta description> again try to use keywords and keyword phrases
3. Your keywords – use the code <meta keywords>keywords separated with commas</meta> list your keywords using commas, do not stuff this with lots of keywords, keep to only 5 or so keywords.
4. The main body of your website – use the code <body>insert your copy here with any graphics you are going to use using code to define each part</body>
5. For any images you are using use the code <img src=”location of image”>
6. To define your text use the code <font> you can add words after font to define size, color, and family style. Make sure to always close your codes </>
7. To make words or a word clickable by your visitors, use the code <a href=”URL Link”>This is a clickable link</a> now the words This is a clickable link can be clicked by your visitors.
8. Want your text or image to be centered on the page use the code <center></center>
9. For headlines on a page you want to use the code <h1></h1> there are different numbers to place after the h depending on how big or small you want the text to be. The most commonly used numbers are 1 and 2.
10. To make a one line break in between lines use the code </br>
11. To make a new paragraph use the code <p>

These are just some of the basic HTML codes used in a basic website, there are hundreds more that can be used. Learning these will definitely get you started at understanding how a website is built and why it does things.

Does your website stand out from the others in your market?

There was time when fancy animation and flash were real big and everyone went out and put that on their websites, hoping to stand out from the crowd.

Things have definitely changed since then. Even the color of your text and your background make a big impact on how people see your website.

It’s important to understand these concepts Before you set out to build your website. Plan it carefully.

Here are some basic things you should keep in mind:

1. Do Not put flash and animation on your website! This has become to annoy visitors! Most nowadays won’t even stay at a website that has flash on it. And unless you know how to do it properly flash and animation take a very long time load. People today are in a hurry and won’t wait around for it to load

2. I’ve seen websites with all kinds of backgrounds and some are nice and fit the market the owner is with. But there have been some that are just plain ugly and make me leave. Be sure to keep your background image or color to what your market will appreciate

3. The text area is another big issue with some websites. You do not want to have a black background and then red or yellow text colors. This makes it very hard on the eyes and you need to consider who is visiting your site, do they have difficulties reading, are they older? The best combination so far is to keep your text area white with black text, this is the easiest to read through for most people. For important information you want to make sure some sees, make that text a bit bigger than the rest. Also, you should always have the size of your text set to 12 this will also make things easier to read.

4. Images, I have seen some pretty badly placed images, and some images that just don’t have anything at all to do with the market. Make sure you are using images properly. Do not make them very big, remember the size of most computer screens is 1024 with 32 bit settings. So keep you images within size, like around 800pixels this makes things easier for your visitor. Be sure that your visitors don’t have to move left to right to see your pages.

5. With videos there is a right and wrong way to go about putting videos on your website. Most do not want to go to a website and get blared out by the audio or video immediately. If you must have your video or audio start as soon as someone lands on your website, make sure that you have a pause or stop button in plain site and easy to find so they can turn it off if they choose. Keep your audio and videos down to about 2 minutes, so they can also read your website without spending a lot of time there.

6. If you are planning on selling products on your website, make sure that you place the buy buttons in easy to find plain site so there is no mistake as to what you want them to do and why. Also tell them exactly what to expect and when, so there is no confusion on what will happen once they purchase something from you. Place a call to action link in several places on your website also, this will entice them to purchase.

7. If your website is just for list building, make sure that is all that is on your website. Do not put anything else on there but an opt in form. If there is more than one action, your visitor might get confused and just leave even though they might of wanted your report or ebook or whatever you were offering.

These are just a few of the things you need to keep in mind when planning your website. If you do then your visitors will have a pleasant time visiting and will remember you and possibly tell their friends about your website and come back again.

When it comes to running a business online you need to have a name for your website. These are known as Domain Names, such as the link www.askdrsmiley.com the part in this link askdrsmiley is the domain name.

Once you’ve decided on a name and found that it is available, you need to find a company that will let you purchase it, these are called Registrars. There are thousands online today so you can do a search using your favorite search engine, but I have used http://www.godaddy.com for many years and they are the best in my opinion.

Once you find your registrar, just type in the name you wish to purchase and see if it is available, most registrars will offer suggestions if the name you chose is not available. Just keep trying variations of the name until one is available.

One important thing you should know while registering a domain name – DO NOT get hosting at the same place you are registering your domain name!!!! Why? If your registrar goes out of business, you won’t lose your website information as it is being hosted somewhere else, and if your hosting company folds you won’t lose your domain name.

Most of the time it is easy to transfer one or the other, but not both. If your hosting and domain name are in the same place you can lose everything!!!!

Stick with extension of .com or .net they are most popular and most people remember these.

Once you have purchased your domain name, there is one more step you must do!!! Get your domain name to talk to your hosting company. This is called DNS (Domain Name Server) this is how browsers will find your website. When you get your hosting, you will get an email with all your information in it, inside they will also provide you with your DNS information.

If you have not yet set up your hosting you can read the article I wrote on How to Find a Good Hosting Company

Head over to your registrar and log in, choose your domain name and there should be an option for Domain Name Server, go there and enter your information you got from your hosting company. The DNS number should look like this – dns1.namehosting.com dns2.nameofhosting.com or ns1.nameofhosting.com ns2.nameofhosting.com

Now it can take up to 48 hours for your new domain name to be live throughout the Internet, so be patient. You can however, start building your website and uploading it to your hosting company right a way.

That is really all there is to registering a domain name and then getting your hosting to talk to your new domain name so the world can see it.

Dr Smiley

Let’s talk about finding the right hosting company today. This is a critical step in web designing, if you don’t have the right hosting then your site will suffer for it in the long run.

Too many people think about now and not about the future with hosting, it’s important to find the right hosting company that will grow with your website/business. And let me tell you, not all hosting companies are the same!

There are a few things you Must consider in your hosting company, here are just a few to look out for -

1. They Must have enough space available for your website to grow. Make sure they will upgrade your space when you need to add more to your website. Some hosting companies will either let you purchase more space on your current package, or they will let you upgrade your package to a more robust one.

2. They Must provide you with c-panel (Control Panel) access. You must be able to access your admin area of your website via a c-panel. This will give you more control and flexibility to manage your website. You can add a word press blog, forums, content manager system and much more through a c-panel, you will also be able to track your website stats and see how things are going for you.

3. They Must provide good quality support! This is a Must with any hosting company, especially if you are new to all this stuff. Support is the first thing you must look for! To see how well a company’s support is, find their support link, submit a question, and see how long it takes to get an answer, and see just how well they answer the question for you. Most hosting companies should answer your question within 48 hours max! Do they have a forum you can post a question? Go ahead and post one to see what kind of response you get. Check out their FAQs how well do they explain the answers, can you understand the answer?

4. What kind of features are you getting? This is probably another important thing to look for in a hosting company, just what are you getting for your money. You want to make sure they provide enough space for your traffic and your website, to get started you should be fine with no more than 300GB and 360GB bandwidth. It’s not too important you understand this, but it is within reason to have at least this amount. Can you add more domains later on? You want to make sure the package you choose, will let you add another domain name later as you grow. So see that this is available in the package you decide.

5. The Price? Make sure your budget can handle the monthly cost of your hosting. For what I’ve described about it should not cost you any more than $5 to $10 a month. Just make sure you can upgrade later easily and most hosting companies will help you with the upgrade so you won’t have to do anything.

A good rule of thumb here is to choose at least 3 hosting companies and do a comparision on them, write down the pros and cons of all of them, then choose the one that best fits your needs and your budget!

Again, you can do a search for hosting companies on your favorite search engine, but I highly recommend Hostgator.com they meet all the above and more.

Until next time Take Action and get yourself Hosting today!

Dr Smiley

Let me start with defining what a domain name actually is.

A domain name is the name of your website. Once upon a time, when the Internet started out, web addresses were actually numbers and not actual names. Since computers talk in hexadecimal coding everything was numbers. So for your website address could be something like 22.333.444.22

Well this was just to hard for the ordinary person to remember or figure out, so it was decided to assign actual names to these numbers. Hence we have Domain Names!

When it comes to picking a domain name for your business, there are a few things you need to keep in mind before you get a domain name.

1. Keep your domain name down to 3 or 4 words

2. Use your first and last name if possible

3. Use your main keywords within your domain name

4. Try to register your domain name as .com or .net they are most popular

5. Make it easy to remember

Choosing a good Domain Name can be difficult for some, take your time with this, as this will be your website address for many years to come. If you aren’t sure what your name should be try places like http://www.godaddy.com and http://www.nameboy.com here you will be able to type in different names and see what is available. Both places will give you suggestions as well.

It’s also a good idea to use words such as easy, fast, quick, and so forth in front of your actual domain name, just remember to make it memorable and fun.

Avoid names that can be hard to spell for the average person. Such names as Michael or is it Micheal, you never know for sure. Keep in mind that something that easy for you to spell correctly may not be that easy for someone else. Your audience is a wide variety of people and not everyone speaks or spells things the same.

This should get you off to a good start on picking your Domain Name, keep it short and easy to spell, have your keywords within the name if possible. Make sure it makes sense and relates to what your audience is looking for.

I hope the above has helped you better understand what Domain Names are and how to go about picking the right Domain Name for your business!

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