| |
|
|
| Webmaster Resources: Web Design Information | |
|
|
|
Fast Web Design For The Skint Webmaster
About two years ago, I had a go at commercial web site design. I put a medium-sized ad in a London classified ad paper. Nothing fancy: "Web designer seeks work ..." etc. This was expensive, about £500 for a month's run. Got a few replies. Lesson number one: advertise where clients of the calibre you want will see it. The clients I got thought £300 was a lot for a web site. They didn't want to pay web hosting. They wanted a lot of bang for their buck. 'Mission creep' was a term I grew to know and loathe. This set me thinking: how could I give these people all they could ever want, but not spend a lot of time and money? Lately, I realised how. So how can you get a full featured site up in a day? Easy (ish!). 1. Mambo Content Management System http://mamboserver.com I wish I'd found this software a couple of years ago. It's freeware. The default set-up allows people without web design skills to update the site. It has a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) option. This adds HTMLArea code to text input form fields. Each HTML code input box becomes a mini HTML editor. If you can use Microsoft Word, you can add formatted HTML code to the site. To get it running you need to know how to install MySQL databases, or have PHPMyAdmin as part of your web-hosting package. You can add articles, edit them, send emails to members, and be contacted by users. The only criticisms I have of this software are: 1. The admin interface is confusing. It's all there, just finding and using it is the problem! 2. You need to search around template sites to find ones suited to your site purpose. I wanted simple, clean, business ones. Most of those available seem to have a fat graphic which covers half the screen. There are more restrained ones out there. These are minor gripes, compared to the relief of finding what is essentially a web site in a box. It can be installed in an hour, once you get familiar with it. To add ecommerce to your site: Oscommerce Shopping Cart http://www.oscommerce.com Again, this is a full-featured, freeware software. You can add lots of freeware 'plug-ins' to it, to get a professional shopping cart. Therein lies the danger. Some of these plug-ins require altering or overwriting the default cart files. When you try to upgrade the cart version later, you may 'break' it, by overwriting a plug-in, thus creating errors. The trick here is to only install plug-ins that add files (rather than overwrite them) or that require minor alterations to existing files. What I do is download all the versions of the plug-in type I need e.g. a WYSIWYG editor. I then choose the one which has the least files, or which creates a new directory for its files. If it requires that important files be overwritten, or is complex, I chuck it. Mambo and Oscommerce. Don't try to integrate them! Hyperlink from one to the other. I've tried integrations of other softwares, like PhpBB and PhpNuke. Fine, when it works, but when you upgrade one or the other, arrgh! *Keep databases separate*. If one goes skew-whiff, then at least the other will still work. Same goes for adding chat rooms and the like. If they're all running off the one database, and that database becomes corrupted ... It may offend your sense of tidiness for your visitors to have to sign up twice at your site, but you'll thank me for this sage advice later. Remember KISS is the basic rule of computing (Keep It Simple, Stupid!). T. O' Donnell ( http://www.tigertom.com ) is an ecommerce consultant and curmudgeon living in London, UK. His latest project is an ebook on conservatories, available at http://www.ttconservatories.co.uk T. O' Donnell freeware may be downloaded at http://www.ttfreeware.co.uk
Add to these social bookmarking sites: 
MORE RESOURCES:
Web-Design - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Top Ten Ways to Use Audio on Your Site Audio can provide an added dimension to your site. It creates a warm atmosphere where visitors feel like they know you. Website Re-Design? My site is working fine. The links work. Web Design: Should You Hire Someone or Do It Yourself? So you need a website. You are not sure if you should hire someone or learn HTML and do it yourself. Top 10 Web Design Mistakes As a webmaster, you want to keep your visitors content so they'll come back again. Below you will find ten common mistakes made by webmasters that may deter people from returning. Ten Basic Steps For Building A Web Site That Works 1. Assemble a web site development plan that is integrated with your overall marketing processes; the content should be consistent with offline materials, the graphics/images don't have to be identical with traditional media, but should be consistent with your overall branding, style guide, usage of colors etc. .htaccess to Mask Errors on Your Website The .htaccess file is a control file located in your webservers directory. Keyword Density We can't emphasize enough the importance of including keyword-rich content on your site to increase your ranking potential. Simply put, keywords are the words and/or word phrases people use when searching. How to Use Sliced Graphics to Layout Your Web Site The problem with designing your site as a graphic, is that it would take too long to load. Your visitors would leave your site immediately and move to your competitors web site. Tableless Web Designs: Why I Switched Since I made the switch 6 months ago to a tableless design on my main site, I've noticed some interesting things: My search engine rankings have dramatically improved My bandwidth usage has dropped about 50-75% I can now make changes to the look and feel of my site easily by just changing the one file, the stylesheet. Let's look at why my search engine rankings improved. What Your Website REALLY Says About You And Why It Matters Everything you say and do says something about you. This has never been more true than in a text based environment like the Internet. The Top 8 Website Sins Part One They say the eyes are the window to the soul. Your website then is the window to your business. Choose & Use the Best Colors, The Psychology of Color Are you using the best colors for your web site? Many web designers often overlook the issues of color in web design. When choosing colors for your web site there are three main areas that should be addressed. Adding the Right Keywords to Your Website Content You've made your website, added a great title and keywords in the meta tags. That's it, right?Not quite. How to Convince Your Visitors to Return Often One visit does not make a sale. Be sure to make your Web site attractive to your visitors so that they want to come back. Maximising Web Site Viewability - Browsers With so many different configurations internet users have their computers set up with, it can be difficult to decide how web sites should be configured so that it is viewable in as many configurations as possible.So in the last 6 months i have been logging the statistics from my web design site to achieve as accurate a result as possible to answer this question. 6 Tips To Improve Your Business Website There are six important characteristics that can play a major role on the impact your website has on prospects. Outlined below is the importance of each characteristic and tips on how to maximize your potential. Affordable Web Design In Birmingham If you have a business, big or small you may be thinking of getting yourself a website.The world wide web is another way of spreading your message or selling your product. Making Good Websites that Stand Out Websites, there's literally billions of them out there in cyber-space. How many of them do you go to and just think this is boring, bland, or hard to use? It seems like too many to mention. Website Design: 10 Web Site Design Pitfalls To Avoid If you've a website that is not generating a lot of sales, it may be due to some design flaws.Below are website design flaws you should correct now, to empower your website:1. How To Boost Your Chances at Having a Successful Web Site New Web sites are springing up online by the millions. However, when they don't reach a level of success, the Web site owners assume that they can't make money off the Internet.
|
| Home | Site Map |
|
| © 2006 | |
