Tips for building a Professional Website

Here are some of the steps that must be bypassed in order to build a professional website :-


Every Web developer has to know the building blocks of the Web:

* HTML 4.01
* The use of CSS (style sheets)
* XHTML - The Future of HTML
* XML - A Tool for Describing Data
* XSLT - A Tool for Transforming Data
* Client side scripting - Client-side scripting is about "programming" the behavior of an Internet browser. To be able to deliver more dynamic web site content, you should teach yourself JavaScript
* Server side scripting - Server-side scripting is about "programming" an Internet server. To be able to deliver more dynamic web site content, you should teach yourself server-side scripting.
* Managing data with SQL
* The future of the Web - One important thing to know is that the functionality of Web Sites will change very drastically. We will see a huge shift from sites displaying "static content" to data driven sites delivering "dynamic content".


Designing Your WebSite

Designing Web sites needs careful thinking and a lot of planning.

The most important thing is to KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE.

Users are Scanners - If you think a typical user will read the entire content of your Web pages, you are wrong.

No matter how much useful information you put into a Web page, a visitor will only spend a few seconds scanning it before they decide whether to leave it or to stay. If you want a visitor to read your text, be sure to make your point in the very first sentence of the page. After that you should try to keep them occupied with short paragraphs and interesting new headers all the way down the page.

Less is More - Try to keep all sentences as short as possible. Try to keep your paragraphs as short as possible. Try to keep your chapters as short as possible. Try to keep your pages as short as possible. Use a lot of space between your paragraphs and chapters. Pages overloaded with text will kill your audience.

Navigation - A common mistake made by many web designers is to develop a site on a local machine with direct access to the data, or to develop the site over a high-speed Internet connection. Sometimes developers are not aware of the fact that some of their pages take a long time to download. Internet usability studies tell us that most visitors will leave a Web page that takes more than 7 seconds to download.

Before you publish any content heavy pages, make sure they are tested over a low-speed modem connection. If your pages take a long time to download, you might consider removing some of your graphic or multimedia content.

Let Your Visitors Speak - Feedback from your users is a very good thing. Your visitors are your "customers". Very often they will give you some valuable wisdom, or advise you, completely free of charge, about what you could have done better.

Know Your Web User

*What Monitors do they have?

*What Browsers do they have?

*What Plug-Ins do they have?

*What about disabilities? - Some people have serious viewing or hearing disabilities. These users might want to visit your Web site. Some of them will try to read your pages with Braille or speech-based browsers. Remember that all of your visible content is lost if you don't provide them with some text based alternatives for pictures and other graphic elements.

Designing Web pages for people with disabilities is not an easy thing, but one small thing you can do - at least for people with poor eyesight - is to let your pages use a resizable font size.

Know the Web Standards

Web developers are often struggling with time-consuming double-coding to solve problems with different browsers versions. This situation will get much worse when new hardware (like mobile telephones and other handheld devices) and new software (like micro-browsers) start browsing the Web.

To make the Web a better place, for both developers and end-users, it is of paramount importance that both browser vendors and site developers follow standards when they develop new applications.

With its tremendous growth, the Web needs standards to realize its full potential. Web standards ensure that everyone has access to the same information. Future use of the Web, including applications that we only dream of today, will not be possible without world wide standards.

Web standards also make site development faster and more enjoyable. Future Web sites will have to be coded according to standards to shorten both development and maintenance time. Developers should not have to struggle with several versions of code to accomplish the same result.

To Web developers, the most important standard is ECMAScript, the standardization of JavaScript.

ECMAScript is a standardized scripting language to manipulate Web page objects specified by the W3C Document Object Model (DOM). With ECMAScript, DOM objects can then be added, deleted, or changed.

The ECMAScript standard is based on Netscape's JavaScript and Microsoft's JScript.

The latest ECMAScript specification is ECMA-262

Validate Your Site

Want to save yourself a lot of time? Make a habit of validating your pages with a validation service. Validation keeps your documents up to the standards and free of nasty errors.

W3C is the best markup validation service of web documents

What is W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) creates the WWW standards.

W3C's mission is to lead the Web to its full potential, which it does by developing specifications, guidelines, software, and tools.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), founded in 1994, is an international consortium dedicated to "lead the Web to its full potential".

• W3C Stands for the World Wide Web Consortium
• W3C was created in October 1994
• W3C was created by Tim Berners-Lee
• W3C was created by the Inventor of the Web
• W3C is organized as a Member Organization
• W3C is working to Standardize the Web
• W3C creates and maintains WWW Standards
• W3C Standards are called W3C Recommendations

Web Security

You are offering your IP address to the entire world at this very moment.

Make sure you are not offering access to your private data at the same time.

YOUR IP ADDRESS IS PUBLIC

Accessing the Internet is a security risk.

When you are connected to the Internet, an IP address is used to identify your PC. If you don't protect yourself, this IP address can be used to access your computer from the outside world.

A fixed IP address is a larger security risk.

If you're using a modem with a dial-up connection, you will get a new IP address every time you connect to Internet.

With an ADSL or cable connection users sometimes keep the same IP address for several months, this represents an increased security risk.

If you have a fixed IP address, you give potential Internet crackers all the time they need to search for entrances to your computer, and to store and share (with other crackers) information they might find about your unprotected private data.

For more info visit WWW Security FAQ


Web Glossary

Click here to know the list of useful terms used in web building. They are often encountered in this process.


Submitting Your Site to Popular Search Engines

Search Engines that will accept your URL

• Google
  http://www.google.com/addurl.html
• Yahoo!
  http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/
• Altavista
  http://www.altavista.com/addurl/
• AllTheWeb
  http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php
• Dmoz
  http://www.dmoz.org/help/submit.html
• Webcrawler
  http://www.webcrawler.com
• Dogpile
  http://www.dogpile.com
• MetaCrawler
  http://www.metacrawler.com
• LookSeek
  http://www.lookseek.com

Finally How to Win an Award for your WebSite ???

The best way to win an award is of course to have an excellent Web Site, but there are some pointers that can help you. There are award giving Web Sites where you can submit your URL, and they review your Site and decide if they will give you their award or not.

Award Sites:

TechSightings gives you weekly reviews of the Best High-Tech Sights on the Net. They review pages in different categories. If your site wins, you will receive a prize that you can add to your page. You can suggest your site or another site via an input form.

The DailyWebSite introduces websites that they find very useful and interesting. You can suggest your site or another site via an input form.

WebBuilder reviews Web Sites which you send them via e-mail. They also rate the award giving Web Site.

WebbyAwards is the Internet's Oscar Prize. The awards are given once each year, in several categories. Each category has 2 winners, The Webby Award given by the judges, and the People's Voice award, given by the people. You can suggest your site as a nominee for the next year's award.

The GoldenWebAward Presented by The International Association of Web Masters and Designers. In Recognition for creativity, integrity and excellence. The Golden Web Award is a free service, presented to those sites whose web design and content have achieved levels of excellence deserving of recognition. You can suggest your site or another site via an input form.

The Webmaster Award is a special Internet award given only to those elite webmasters responsible for creating those websites that keep us up so late night after night. You can suggest your site or another site via an input form.

The Surfers Choice is a Best of the Web Portal specializing in content rich, high quality Websites. The goal is to provide you with a special service that will promote your site in a small, manageable database where surfers can find the best and most relevant sites. You can suggest your site via an input form.

The Golden Crane Creativity Award (GCCA) is awarded to sites providing free instructional information in arts, crafts, music, and other creative activities. If you would like to nominate a site for this award, you can add the URL to their directory for review.

Click here for more comprehensive resources

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