Do you need a website and don’t know the best way to start? You are thinking about incorporating a site where people can play videos or look at lots of photos, but converting that vision you have into reality is something you are not ready to do. This is why web design trips are useful. These tips will help you fill in the gaps in your knowledge.
Look at different forums for new information. You can also do a quick search online to find any information you seek on the web, and it is free.
Use a descriptive title. Many site owners forget to name their pages, or name them something generic, such as “Welcome Page.” Search engines do use title descriptions in their rankings, so make sure you are as descriptive as possible, without going overboard. Make sure it is usable for your viewers and the search engines.
Have a site map. These are useful to your clients and the search engines, as they give a detailed overview of your entire website. It can be a guide for viewers searching for a certain part of your site, and also allow you to keep track of its structure and layout.
Do not use images for your background. When you think about some of the biggest websites on the Internet, they do not have images as backgrounds. When you use image backgrounds, you represent yourself as someone who is not well-versed in web designing. Images as backgrounds also cause your site to load slower, which can lead to user frustration.
Provide a navigation menu on every page of your site. While this menu does not have to link every single page of your site, as this could be an exhaustive list if you have a very large site, it should provide links to the main pages. This ensures that your visitors do not have to return to the home page and start completely over when it is not necessary.
Your website’s load times are effected by which file types you use for images. Your graphics should be GIFs and JPEGs. PNG and BMP files offer advantages for web graphics, but the file sizes are too much for internet load times. Convert your images to file types that are smaller and easier to manage if you want a guaranteed great user experience.
One thing you want to think twice about is a website counter located on your page, as they have more negatives than positives. While this used to be a way for webmasters to show off their coding skill, it now only serves to make a site look dated. Get rid of it and use other tools to track your visitors.
Every website designer needs a good platform to test their work out on, and XAMPP is probably the best out there. XAMPP will allow you to run your test sites with PHP and mySQL, so you will always be able to spot anything that needs to be changed. XAMPP is a relatively light download and it’s also easy to figure out.
Even though development platforms provide you with code, some are not nearly as trustworthy as classic text editors. The idea with a platform is that you design the site features, and then paste the generated code. But if you desire a true creator experience and want to reduce errors, stick with classic text editors.
As you can tell, designing your website does not need to be hard. There are core principles that you need to master that will really bring together the entire process of designing a website. Utilize the tips in this article to begin understanding web design basics, and get started in adding some new features to your site.