In todays day and age,where computer users are increasing by large numbers monthly,the website has developed as a means of self expression or as a launch point for business pursuits.
There are countless ways of learning
how to make a website using such tools as the
WYSIWYG(What You See Is What You Get)HTML Editor.This is basically a point and click to create program.If you want a website fast,try it.
Good places for these are myspace.com or your internet service provider.They can provide you with a free website where you can really be creative with there (what you see is what you get editor)
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and was the standard language when the graphical user interface(GUI)was implemented
into the windows operating system.
There are other languages that can be used to make a website,such as Flash,xml,dhtml and a few others.In my opinion,the most flexible language and most easy to learn is html.
A great online source to learn html is html goodies(http://www.htmlgoodies.com).The online tutorials found here are second to none and range from basic to advanced.This is where I learned basic html and I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn the language.
Lets talk about the basic layout of your first page of your website.
Is this a personal website? Will it be a website showcasing products that you intend to sell?
If this is a personal website,You can start by having all your links on the left side of the page,your text content can be in the middle with images if you like.On the right side of the page can be more links and images.You will need to divide the page into 3 sections to accomplish this.It can be done with table commands or with the divison command.Please go to the html goodies(http://www.htmlgoodies.com)site for futher explanations of these and future terms in this article for the best clarification possible.
Now,lets say you want to make a website for your small business that your starting.For example,your going to be selling computer games.
You will want people to know about your website and this entails submitting your website to the major search engines and directories,such as google,yahoo.msn,altavista and others.
Here is a great list of directories,both paid and free.
(http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/web-directories.html)
It is most advantageous for new online business's to register a domain name.This is important for two reasons. First,with a .com domain,your business will look professional.Secondly,from a search engine prospective,a domain name with a .com suffix is more prudent.
You need to pick a domain name that is the most relevant to your business.For example,your selling computer games and accessories.
How about http://www.best-computer-games.com ? You can do a search for available domain names at http://www.namesearch.com
Relevancy is a big factor in how the search engines will rank your site,so keep this in mind when choosing a domain name.
You want your small business website to be informative,to the point,and to keep your viewers interested at all times they are on your website..Nothing turns off a website visitor more than the link to a page they click on(yours)to be slow loading into there web browser.
There are ways to speed up the loading process of a webpage into the web browser.If you have alot of images on your website,you should always denote the height and width of the image in the link.
An Example: after the second quotation mark in the word alt.The opening tag is < This goes right by the letter i in the word image. If I do that in this article,I will receive an error becuase there is no such file,its just an example to show you.
Doing this will make your web pages load very quickly into the site visitors web browser.Have a question about the alt""? Ok,I will explain this to you.Lets say your image is of a computer game.
If you would type inside of the quotes of the alt command:
alt="This is the best computer game" Now,when the page loads and someone puts there mouse over the image,what you typed in the alt command will be displayed as text.You can type whatever you want in the alt command,but if your looking for search engine relevancy,I would type in one of your keywords thats relative to the product that displays as the image.
As mentioned before,for further clarification of images,go to the html goodies site(http://www.htmlgoodies.com)for there image tutorial.
To keep the viewer staying on your website,you need to make sure all your links are operational and not dead links.Meaning,there is a page not found error(404) that displays when someone would click on one of your links from your main page.
Meta tags and Keywords are important so your site can receive the highest possible ranking and relevancy. To learn more about meta tags and keywords,go to html goodies(http://www.htmlgoodies.com)This is another topic all together that I wont go into in detail in this article.
I would just like to say that The WYSIWYG(What you see is what you get)html editors are good for the quick fix website,I dont get the gratification of building a website using that method. I code all my webpages by hand in windows notepad. This will take longer but I do receive more satisfaction designing my webpages this way.
There is a site that I recommend you visit. There are
$0.99 video tutorials about website design tips and tricks.There are over 8 hours in video tutorials in all,plus other great memberships and programs.
Thank you all for reading and if you have any questions or seek advice,do not hesitate to comment on this article and I will respond to you providing you leave your email address.
