If you want to start your own website but aren't sure how to go about it, this article will teach you the 5 necessary steps to get your website up and running. Having your own website is THE key element to your online success and the ability and knowledge to customize it will help you become successful in your online endeavors.
As a newbie on the web you probably don't have a lot of money to get your first site up and running. The good news is that web services today are lower than ever and you can get a site set up and running for about $50. The monthly cost for web hosting is around $6; add in a yearly domain fee of about $10 and you're ready to roll. Is that cheap enough for you??
Let's get started...
Step #1: Brainstorm ideas and put them in writing.
Outline your websites structure. Don't worry about what your site will look like yet, just get the basic structure down and the overall layout. What do you want in your website? At the minimum, you'll need a main or home page, a product description page, an "About Me" page and most of all an order page.
Once your outline is complete, you'll need to figure out a way to get that information into your computer. There are lots of resources to help with this step.
"HTML" (Hyper Text Markup Language) is the programming language used for your website. You can hire a web programmer to program your site, but that can be very expensive. You can go buy a book like "HTML for Dummies", which will teach you how to code your website, but that is a difficult and time consuming task and we want to do things the EASY way. The EASY way is to use a program like MS Frontpage, which is included for FREE nowadays on many new computer systems. Frontpage is a text based system that allows you to type your webpage in plain English and then have it converted to HTML for viewing on the web. With a few hours of practice you can have your website coded and ready to upload.
Step #2: Use a professional website template.
If you utilize a pre-designed template you can have a professional looking website in a matter of minutes. Templates provide the online graphics and overall look and style of your website. A professional pre-designed template can be purchased for under $40 and can save you many hours or even days of design time. If that price is too high there are also many professionally designed FREE web templates available, although they are very basic in style and may not be suitable for your website. Even if you have a small budget, purchasing a professional template is an efficient way to begin.
Step #3: Purchase and register a domain name.
Your ideas are ready and you have adapted them to your professional template, so now it's time to purchase a domain name for your website. Registering a domain name allows web surfers to view your website by entering (www.yournamehere.com)
You'll want a catchy domain name that is easy to remember and tells a little bit about your business (ex. LowCostAutoInsurance.com). You'll need to choose a name registrar such as GoDaddy.com to register your name and if you are having trouble finding a name they even have a domain name suggestion tool that will help. You can register your domain name for less than $10 a year and once it's registered, that name is yours for as long as you pay the annual renewal fee.
Step #4. Choose a web host.
Your site is ready, your domain name is registered and you're ready to go, Now What...
You need to hire a company to host your website. There are hundreds, if not thousands of web hosts available and your job is to sort through them and choose the right company. Since your web host is your 24 hour connection to the web, you'll need to make sure they are very reliable. If your web host has technical difficulties, your website will be invisible to all your customers and you will not be successful. Monthly hosting fees can range from FREE to hundreds of dollars depending on the services you choose. Most beginner websites can be hosted for under $10/month by a quality web host.
Step #5: Upload your website.
Now that you have chosen a web host you need to transfer your new webpage’s from your computer to the computer at your web host so they are visible on the internet. While this may seem like a confusing and technical process, it really is quite simple. One of the easiest transfer processes is to upload your site using "FTP" (File Transfer Protocols). One of the easiest "FTP" programs is CuteFTP, which allows you to drag and drop files from your computer and place them in your web directory at your web host. Take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with your "FTP" program because as a webmaster you will be utilizing it quite frequently.
That's it. Your site is now up and live on the web. While the process may seem technical and difficult you'll find that with practice this will become an easy and rewarding experience. Practice with your new tools and you'll be an expert webmaster in no time.
Sunday, 31 October 2010
A Little Extra For Your Customers
As a web designer I try to give my customers a little something extra whenever or wherever possible. No, not so that they take advantage of my kindness, rather to show that I go the extra mile for them. Hey, it is a competitive market out there and I don't want to grow complacent!
So, exactly what am I talking about? Blogs. That's right, I enjoy blogging so much that I have decided to include a "blog option" as part of my web package for clients. It doesn't cost me any money for the software, but it will cost me approximately one hour's time to set up each blog.
How about you? Are you expanding your offerings or are you standing in place? Is there something extra/special which you can offer to your clients at no cost to them?
If you are thinking of short term gains then you are missing my point. Invest in your clients and they will return the favor to you in the form of loyalty and increased exposure: happy clients tell other clients of their good fortune, which is you and what you offer to them -- top notch service!
So, exactly what am I talking about? Blogs. That's right, I enjoy blogging so much that I have decided to include a "blog option" as part of my web package for clients. It doesn't cost me any money for the software, but it will cost me approximately one hour's time to set up each blog.
How about you? Are you expanding your offerings or are you standing in place? Is there something extra/special which you can offer to your clients at no cost to them?
If you are thinking of short term gains then you are missing my point. Invest in your clients and they will return the favor to you in the form of loyalty and increased exposure: happy clients tell other clients of their good fortune, which is you and what you offer to them -- top notch service!
The new Internet World
The Internet has been around for sometime but its popularity started a little more than five years ago as more people gains access to public domain. As more Americans engage in online activities such as gaming, surfing, communicating with relatives and friends, and stock brokering, new companies are created. Now you have companies offering web design, web development, website hosting and SEO services. Aside from this, our age is growing up to careers like graphic design and web designers, types of work, which were inconceivable a decade ago.
Now you may be asking: What sort of work do these new companies engage in? Web development is the general term used to refer to all the activities I mentioned about. Any activity related to the creation of a website can be categorized under this term. Some professionals, however, insists that web development refers more to the technical side such as coding and networking.
Webdesign services are involved with the layout of a website. The web design is the first thing people notice when they visit a page. It is also one of the major factors considered by repeat visitors. There are four aspects of design: the content (basically this is the information on the site), the usability (the functions and features of the website), the appearance (should be enticing to readers0 and lastly, the visibility (people must be able to find your site!). The main goal of a good website designer is to make information readily available to his readers in a form that is very easy to understand.
SEO services are basically a marketing strategy used by sites to get more traffic, or in laymen's terms, to get people to visit their sites. Say for example a person goes to Google and types in SEO, they should be able to find sites relating to search engine optimization and the those sites at the top of the list has the highest page rank, meaning, these are the sites which is visited most often. There are other websites which are not indexed or listed in Google, MSN or Yahoo. This means that unless you know the website's name, no one will get to visit that site. To make your site popular, you need to build links to your site, and this is what companies engaged in SEO does.
Now, let's talk about something less technical. Did you know that more people are spending more time with the internet than watching TV, reading the papers and listening to the radio? For one, you can do all these three things while sitting in front of your laptop. Now you no longer need a Tivo or a subscription to the local paper because now, you can get anything from the web for free! You can now do your shopping online; you can even gamble or take out loans from the internet. Aside from this, work is no longer confined to the office. When you need to beat a deadline, the internet gives best solution – bring your work home and let your VPN put you right back to work!
Surely, we are entering a new world – one where everything has its virtual counterpart. From teachers to bankers, friends and dates, everything we need is now online. But how has this affected our society today? In a study of 4,000 respondents, it was reported that internet usage was averaging at 2-5 hours a week while those in the extremes spend more than 10 hours in front of their computers. This has caused the 15% decline in social activities and another 25% who are spending lesser hours in talking to their friends or their families. Truly, this world has become a digital world of conveniences, and a world where people are losing contact with their social environment.
Now you may be asking: What sort of work do these new companies engage in? Web development is the general term used to refer to all the activities I mentioned about. Any activity related to the creation of a website can be categorized under this term. Some professionals, however, insists that web development refers more to the technical side such as coding and networking.
Webdesign services are involved with the layout of a website. The web design is the first thing people notice when they visit a page. It is also one of the major factors considered by repeat visitors. There are four aspects of design: the content (basically this is the information on the site), the usability (the functions and features of the website), the appearance (should be enticing to readers0 and lastly, the visibility (people must be able to find your site!). The main goal of a good website designer is to make information readily available to his readers in a form that is very easy to understand.
SEO services are basically a marketing strategy used by sites to get more traffic, or in laymen's terms, to get people to visit their sites. Say for example a person goes to Google and types in SEO, they should be able to find sites relating to search engine optimization and the those sites at the top of the list has the highest page rank, meaning, these are the sites which is visited most often. There are other websites which are not indexed or listed in Google, MSN or Yahoo. This means that unless you know the website's name, no one will get to visit that site. To make your site popular, you need to build links to your site, and this is what companies engaged in SEO does.
Now, let's talk about something less technical. Did you know that more people are spending more time with the internet than watching TV, reading the papers and listening to the radio? For one, you can do all these three things while sitting in front of your laptop. Now you no longer need a Tivo or a subscription to the local paper because now, you can get anything from the web for free! You can now do your shopping online; you can even gamble or take out loans from the internet. Aside from this, work is no longer confined to the office. When you need to beat a deadline, the internet gives best solution – bring your work home and let your VPN put you right back to work!
Surely, we are entering a new world – one where everything has its virtual counterpart. From teachers to bankers, friends and dates, everything we need is now online. But how has this affected our society today? In a study of 4,000 respondents, it was reported that internet usage was averaging at 2-5 hours a week while those in the extremes spend more than 10 hours in front of their computers. This has caused the 15% decline in social activities and another 25% who are spending lesser hours in talking to their friends or their families. Truly, this world has become a digital world of conveniences, and a world where people are losing contact with their social environment.
A Career in Graphic Design
Creative Director
Lets start at the top and work down. Art directors, or Creative Directors are responsible for a creative team that may design work for magazines, television, advertising graphics, websites, or on packaging. A creative team can consist of layout artists, graphic designers, photographers, copywriters, and menial staff to do the work. An Art directors job is to make sure that each of these workers do not slack off down the pub and complete their work to a deadline and to the client's needs. Art directors also make major decisicions along the lines of should the background be slate grey or cobalt blue, issuing dictates and changing their mind several days after a deadline has passed - leaving co-workers resolutely glum about their position in the grand scheme of things. Art directors will inevitably have come from some kind of marketing or sales background and need no prior graphic design knowledge or skill.
Senior Designer
A Senior Designer is mainly concerned with the visual aspects of a company and will probably have been promoted on the basis that she is fun and a 'great team player' (despite this being far from the case). A Senior Designer will usually insist on having a larger widescreen monitor than the rest of the team which will be decorated variously with fluffy pink bits marketing people send through on a daily basis. A Senior Designer will be involved in the elements of a company’s look such as business cards, stationery, packaging design, media advertising graphics, promotional design, and sticking up pictures of topless 'hunks'.
Graphic Designer
The job of a Graphic Designer is to provide a new and exciting way to express the key information of a company or product through a dynamic image or use of typography. Graphic Designers take the scant information given to them by the client and using the internet to scab some free clip art, fashion their own ripped off logo designs in order to fleece the client for all they are worth.
Layout Artists and Artworkers
The engine room of the design world. These scumbags have been buried away with their dusty macs for decades, remorselessly churning out pages and layouts. Inevitably some clueless muppet will send over a 100 page brochure layed out in microsoft word and it will be the Artworkers thankless task to make it publishable. They will need to recognise a font at 50 yards, be able to colour correct the dreariest of images and take a good bollocking every now and again to keep them on their toes. The Artworker must have the ability to design magazines, design brochures, design flyers, design books and design posters. He harbours murder fantasies.
Illustrators
Illustrators generally speaking will have long greying hair and be influenced by prog rock. Working from home among the dungeon and dragonns figurines and manga comics they will attempt to put their own unique spin on whatever brief they are given. What you will be presented with is a semi clad girl with oversized boobs. You will have waited several weeks for this. You will never learn from previous mistakes.
Web Designers
Web designers create the pages, layout, and graphics for web pages, they will be technically minded to the point of absurdity. They will insist on using c++ coding language to impress other geeks and will beaver away doing whatever it is geeks do for hours on end. Web designers also design and develop the navigation tools of a site which will for design websites involve tiny text that makes your eyes bleed. Web designers are far too clever for their own good and should never be encouraged.
Lets start at the top and work down. Art directors, or Creative Directors are responsible for a creative team that may design work for magazines, television, advertising graphics, websites, or on packaging. A creative team can consist of layout artists, graphic designers, photographers, copywriters, and menial staff to do the work. An Art directors job is to make sure that each of these workers do not slack off down the pub and complete their work to a deadline and to the client's needs. Art directors also make major decisicions along the lines of should the background be slate grey or cobalt blue, issuing dictates and changing their mind several days after a deadline has passed - leaving co-workers resolutely glum about their position in the grand scheme of things. Art directors will inevitably have come from some kind of marketing or sales background and need no prior graphic design knowledge or skill.
Senior Designer
A Senior Designer is mainly concerned with the visual aspects of a company and will probably have been promoted on the basis that she is fun and a 'great team player' (despite this being far from the case). A Senior Designer will usually insist on having a larger widescreen monitor than the rest of the team which will be decorated variously with fluffy pink bits marketing people send through on a daily basis. A Senior Designer will be involved in the elements of a company’s look such as business cards, stationery, packaging design, media advertising graphics, promotional design, and sticking up pictures of topless 'hunks'.
Graphic Designer
The job of a Graphic Designer is to provide a new and exciting way to express the key information of a company or product through a dynamic image or use of typography. Graphic Designers take the scant information given to them by the client and using the internet to scab some free clip art, fashion their own ripped off logo designs in order to fleece the client for all they are worth.
Layout Artists and Artworkers
The engine room of the design world. These scumbags have been buried away with their dusty macs for decades, remorselessly churning out pages and layouts. Inevitably some clueless muppet will send over a 100 page brochure layed out in microsoft word and it will be the Artworkers thankless task to make it publishable. They will need to recognise a font at 50 yards, be able to colour correct the dreariest of images and take a good bollocking every now and again to keep them on their toes. The Artworker must have the ability to design magazines, design brochures, design flyers, design books and design posters. He harbours murder fantasies.
Illustrators
Illustrators generally speaking will have long greying hair and be influenced by prog rock. Working from home among the dungeon and dragonns figurines and manga comics they will attempt to put their own unique spin on whatever brief they are given. What you will be presented with is a semi clad girl with oversized boobs. You will have waited several weeks for this. You will never learn from previous mistakes.
Web Designers
Web designers create the pages, layout, and graphics for web pages, they will be technically minded to the point of absurdity. They will insist on using c++ coding language to impress other geeks and will beaver away doing whatever it is geeks do for hours on end. Web designers also design and develop the navigation tools of a site which will for design websites involve tiny text that makes your eyes bleed. Web designers are far too clever for their own good and should never be encouraged.
Web Design History
Remember the days when every PC was beige, every website had a little Netscape icon on the homepage, Geocities and Tripod hosted just about every single personal homepage, and "Google" was just a funny-sounding word?
The mid-late 1990s were the playful childhood of the worldwide web, a time of great expectations for the future and pretty low standards for the present. Those were the days when doing a web search meant poring through several pages of listings rather than glancing at the first three results--but at least relatively few of those websites were unabashedly profit-driven.
Hallmarks of 1990s Web Design
Of course, when someone says that a website looks like it came from 1996, it's no compliment. You start to imagine loud background images, and little "email me" mailboxes with letters going in and out in an endless loop. Amateurish, silly, unprofessional, conceited, and unusable are all adjectives that pretty well describe how most websites were made just ten years ago.
Why were websites so bad back then?
Knowledge. Few people knew how to build a good website back then, before authorities like Jakob Nielsen starting evangelizing their studies of web user behavior.
Difficulty. In those days, there weren't abundant software and templates that could produce a visually pleasing, easy-to-use website in 10 minutes. Instead, you either hand-coded your site in Notepad or used FrontPage.
Giddiness. When a new toy came out, whether it was JavaScript, Java, Frames, animated Gifs, or Flash, it was simply crammed into an already overstuffed toy box of a website, regardless of whether it served any purpose.
Browsing through the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine, it's hard not to feel a twinge of nostalgia for a simpler time when we were all beginners at this. Still, one of the best reasons for looking at 90s website design is to avoid repeating history's web design mistakes. This would be a useful exercise for the tragic number of today's personal homepages and even small business websites that are accidentally retro.
Splash Pages
Sometime around 1998, websites all over the internet discovered Flash, the software that allowed for easy animation of images on a website. Suddenly you could no longer visit half the pages on the web without sitting through at least thirty seconds of a logo revolving, glinting, sliding, or bouncing across the screen.
Flash "splash pages," as these opening animations were called, became the internet's version of vacation pictures. Everyone loved to display Flash on their site, and everyone hated to have to sit through someone else's Flash presentation.
Of all the thousands of splash pages made in the 1990s and the few still made today, hardly any ever communicated any useful information or provided any entertainment. They were monuments to the egos of the websites' owners. Still, today, when so many business website owners are working so hard to wring every last bit of effectiveness out of their sites, it's almost charming to think of a business owner actually putting ego well ahead of the profit to have been derived from all the visitors who hit the "back" button rather than sit through an animated logo.
Text Troubles
"Welcome to…" Every single website homepage in 1996 had to have the word "welcome" somewhere, often in the largest headline. After all, isn't saying "welcome" more vital than saying what the web page is all about in the first place?
Background images. Remember all those people who had their kids' pictures tiled in the background of every page? Remember how much fun it was trying to guess what the words were in the sections where the font color and the color of the image were the same?
Dark background, light text. My favorite was orange font on purple background, though the ubiquitous yellow white text on blue, green or red was nice, too. Of course, anyone who will make their text harder to read with a silly gimmick is just paying you the courtesy of letting you know they couldn't possibly have written anything worth reading.
Entire paragraphs of text centered. After all, haven't millennia of flush-left margins just made our eyes lazy?
"This Site Is Best Viewed in Netscape 4.666, 1,000x3300 resolution." It was always so cute when site owners actually imagined anyone but their mothers would care enough to change their browser set up to look at some random person's website.
All-image no-text publishing. Some of the worst websites would actually do the world the service of putting all their text in image format so that no search engine would ever find them. What sacrifice!
Hyperactive Pages
TV-envy was a common psychological malady in 1990s web design. Since streaming video and even Flash were still in their infancy, web designers settled for simply making the elements on their pages move like Mexican jumping beans.
Animated Gifs
In 1996, just before the dawn of Flash, animated gifs were in full swing, dancing, sliding, and scrolling their way across the retinas of web surfers trying to read the text on the page.
Scrolling Text
Just in case you were having a too easy time tuning out all the dancing graphics on the page, an ambitious mid-1990s web designer had a simple but powerful trick for giving you a headache: scrolling text. Through the magic of JavaScript, website owners could achieve the perfect combination of too fast to read comfortably and too slow to read quickly.
For a while, a business owner could even separate the serious from the wannabe prospects based just on how (un)professional their business websites looked. Sadly, the development of template-based website authoring software means that even someone with no taste or sense whatsoever can make websites that look as good as the most biggest-budget design of five years ago.
Of course, there are still some websites whose owners seem to be trying to spark a resurgence in animated gifs, background images, and ugly text. 'll just have to trust that everyone is laughing with them, not at them.
The mid-late 1990s were the playful childhood of the worldwide web, a time of great expectations for the future and pretty low standards for the present. Those were the days when doing a web search meant poring through several pages of listings rather than glancing at the first three results--but at least relatively few of those websites were unabashedly profit-driven.
Hallmarks of 1990s Web Design
Of course, when someone says that a website looks like it came from 1996, it's no compliment. You start to imagine loud background images, and little "email me" mailboxes with letters going in and out in an endless loop. Amateurish, silly, unprofessional, conceited, and unusable are all adjectives that pretty well describe how most websites were made just ten years ago.
Why were websites so bad back then?
Knowledge. Few people knew how to build a good website back then, before authorities like Jakob Nielsen starting evangelizing their studies of web user behavior.
Difficulty. In those days, there weren't abundant software and templates that could produce a visually pleasing, easy-to-use website in 10 minutes. Instead, you either hand-coded your site in Notepad or used FrontPage.
Giddiness. When a new toy came out, whether it was JavaScript, Java, Frames, animated Gifs, or Flash, it was simply crammed into an already overstuffed toy box of a website, regardless of whether it served any purpose.
Browsing through the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine, it's hard not to feel a twinge of nostalgia for a simpler time when we were all beginners at this. Still, one of the best reasons for looking at 90s website design is to avoid repeating history's web design mistakes. This would be a useful exercise for the tragic number of today's personal homepages and even small business websites that are accidentally retro.
Splash Pages
Sometime around 1998, websites all over the internet discovered Flash, the software that allowed for easy animation of images on a website. Suddenly you could no longer visit half the pages on the web without sitting through at least thirty seconds of a logo revolving, glinting, sliding, or bouncing across the screen.
Flash "splash pages," as these opening animations were called, became the internet's version of vacation pictures. Everyone loved to display Flash on their site, and everyone hated to have to sit through someone else's Flash presentation.
Of all the thousands of splash pages made in the 1990s and the few still made today, hardly any ever communicated any useful information or provided any entertainment. They were monuments to the egos of the websites' owners. Still, today, when so many business website owners are working so hard to wring every last bit of effectiveness out of their sites, it's almost charming to think of a business owner actually putting ego well ahead of the profit to have been derived from all the visitors who hit the "back" button rather than sit through an animated logo.
Text Troubles
"Welcome to…" Every single website homepage in 1996 had to have the word "welcome" somewhere, often in the largest headline. After all, isn't saying "welcome" more vital than saying what the web page is all about in the first place?
Background images. Remember all those people who had their kids' pictures tiled in the background of every page? Remember how much fun it was trying to guess what the words were in the sections where the font color and the color of the image were the same?
Dark background, light text. My favorite was orange font on purple background, though the ubiquitous yellow white text on blue, green or red was nice, too. Of course, anyone who will make their text harder to read with a silly gimmick is just paying you the courtesy of letting you know they couldn't possibly have written anything worth reading.
Entire paragraphs of text centered. After all, haven't millennia of flush-left margins just made our eyes lazy?
"This Site Is Best Viewed in Netscape 4.666, 1,000x3300 resolution." It was always so cute when site owners actually imagined anyone but their mothers would care enough to change their browser set up to look at some random person's website.
All-image no-text publishing. Some of the worst websites would actually do the world the service of putting all their text in image format so that no search engine would ever find them. What sacrifice!
Hyperactive Pages
TV-envy was a common psychological malady in 1990s web design. Since streaming video and even Flash were still in their infancy, web designers settled for simply making the elements on their pages move like Mexican jumping beans.
Animated Gifs
In 1996, just before the dawn of Flash, animated gifs were in full swing, dancing, sliding, and scrolling their way across the retinas of web surfers trying to read the text on the page.
Scrolling Text
Just in case you were having a too easy time tuning out all the dancing graphics on the page, an ambitious mid-1990s web designer had a simple but powerful trick for giving you a headache: scrolling text. Through the magic of JavaScript, website owners could achieve the perfect combination of too fast to read comfortably and too slow to read quickly.
For a while, a business owner could even separate the serious from the wannabe prospects based just on how (un)professional their business websites looked. Sadly, the development of template-based website authoring software means that even someone with no taste or sense whatsoever can make websites that look as good as the most biggest-budget design of five years ago.
Of course, there are still some websites whose owners seem to be trying to spark a resurgence in animated gifs, background images, and ugly text. 'll just have to trust that everyone is laughing with them, not at them.
Webmaster Tools For Free
Just about anyone with a computer and an internet connection can make a website. Creativity and purpose though, solely rests on the author’s shoulders. There are plenty of free web hosting services out there and you only have to look for one that suits your needs. Features like customizability, available space, uploading/downloading method and scripting are usually what sets these free hosting sites apart from one another. If you find these sites too limiting for you, paid web hosting sites are available and they do provide more advanced features like larger web spaces and a more intuitive interface for site management. The good support, bandwidth and uptime percentage absolutely makes the paid web hosting sites a favorite for people who are trying to create a website for their business.
Whether you are putting up a website for your business or if you are just a hobbyist, you will have needs that both the paid and free web hosting sites won’t be able to satisfy. That’s where tools that enhance your website comes in. Like a site director supervising in an actual physical site, the webmaster needs certain tools and apparatus’ that are essential in running a website. Basic web tools like guest books, counters and link checkers are some of the staple tools that every good website should have. Aside from increasing the efficiency of your website, these tools also enable site administrators to gather some statistical data that will help in the upkeep and development of the site.
A byproduct of that statistical data, personally, is the gratifying or dejecting experience to see how many hits you had (or lack of it) in your site for one day or since its inception. More advanced web tools like meta-tag generators, link popularity and Google predictors assist in making your site’s net presence more visible to a bigger and more relevant crowd. More utilities and tools that function to augment your website are out there. Fortunately, there are websites that exist for the sole purpose of being a “toolbox” for webmasters. These nifty sites are invaluable in that aside from providing free tools, they also include information about how to use the tools provided.
Nothing is more frustrating than having to figure things out for yourself in a trial and error manner, which consumes too much time. Crafting, constructing and designing will really be easier and faster with the aid of these toolbox websites. The time you save in formatting, organizing and devising your website can be used in making or researching for the content on your site. Content being the primary reason as to why people would visit your site.
What better way to get you started on the internet than by making your presence known via your own personal website. And, what better way to create the perfect site than to use free and readily available tools in the net. If you know your way around cyberspace then you’ll surely appreciate the advanced tools that make maintaining and gathering information from your website a breeze.
Whether you are putting up a website for your business or if you are just a hobbyist, you will have needs that both the paid and free web hosting sites won’t be able to satisfy. That’s where tools that enhance your website comes in. Like a site director supervising in an actual physical site, the webmaster needs certain tools and apparatus’ that are essential in running a website. Basic web tools like guest books, counters and link checkers are some of the staple tools that every good website should have. Aside from increasing the efficiency of your website, these tools also enable site administrators to gather some statistical data that will help in the upkeep and development of the site.
A byproduct of that statistical data, personally, is the gratifying or dejecting experience to see how many hits you had (or lack of it) in your site for one day or since its inception. More advanced web tools like meta-tag generators, link popularity and Google predictors assist in making your site’s net presence more visible to a bigger and more relevant crowd. More utilities and tools that function to augment your website are out there. Fortunately, there are websites that exist for the sole purpose of being a “toolbox” for webmasters. These nifty sites are invaluable in that aside from providing free tools, they also include information about how to use the tools provided.
Nothing is more frustrating than having to figure things out for yourself in a trial and error manner, which consumes too much time. Crafting, constructing and designing will really be easier and faster with the aid of these toolbox websites. The time you save in formatting, organizing and devising your website can be used in making or researching for the content on your site. Content being the primary reason as to why people would visit your site.
What better way to get you started on the internet than by making your presence known via your own personal website. And, what better way to create the perfect site than to use free and readily available tools in the net. If you know your way around cyberspace then you’ll surely appreciate the advanced tools that make maintaining and gathering information from your website a breeze.
How to get Content For Your Site
Content is really important for webmasters. Why? When people surf the web, they are looking for information. They aren't looking for you specifically, unless you're well-known. If they visit your site and don't what they're looking for, they will leave quickly. And they probably won't return to your site. Well, they might stumble back onto your site, but not on purpose.
Quality sites provide quality content. Quality content helps you retain visitors. Visitors may spread the word about your site and thus attract new visitors.
Adding new high quality content to your site regularly is also beneficial. With more content, you will have more pages indexed by the search engines. More pages indexed means you will have more opportunities for people to find you via search engines.
So how exactly do you get content for your site?
1. Your unique knowledge
Everybody knows something others don't. Use your own unique insight and knowledge to provide content. Think of what activities you've participated in the past. Think of what you've learned through past experiences. Any experiences can help, whether at home, school, work, or anywhere else. Of course, providing your own content regularly can be very difficult.
2. Personal stories
Personal stories are the basis of some sites and blogs. Want to connect with your audience and let them know more about you? Use personal stories. However, if you don't want to be too personal, make sure you inject your personality into your writing. Personality differentiates you from the rest and can keep visitors coming back.
3. How-to guides
People have problems and like to figure out how to solve them. Had some problem you struggled with for a while? Did you eventually solve it? The way you solved it could be written into a how-to guide. Or write a how-to guide about your expert area. For example, if you're a technical computer whiz, you could write a how-to guide for fixing computers.
4. Do research
Do some research on the web. Use search engines, search directories, and follow links to find relevant sites. Do some research at your local library. Grab some books about your site's topic and start digging through them. Find local experts, teachers, and professors and ask them questions about your site's topic. When you research, note down interesting ideas and you'll undoubtedly learn more. You'll have more unique knowledge that you can turn into content. You might even discover something earth-shattering!
5. Subscribe to newsletters
Good newsletters are a great way to keep informed about a particular topic. They can keep you informed of offers that you may be able to provide on your own site. As well, they can keep you on top of what's happening in your area by providing time-sensitive content.
Quality sites provide quality content. Quality content helps you retain visitors. Visitors may spread the word about your site and thus attract new visitors.
Adding new high quality content to your site regularly is also beneficial. With more content, you will have more pages indexed by the search engines. More pages indexed means you will have more opportunities for people to find you via search engines.
So how exactly do you get content for your site?
1. Your unique knowledge
Everybody knows something others don't. Use your own unique insight and knowledge to provide content. Think of what activities you've participated in the past. Think of what you've learned through past experiences. Any experiences can help, whether at home, school, work, or anywhere else. Of course, providing your own content regularly can be very difficult.
2. Personal stories
Personal stories are the basis of some sites and blogs. Want to connect with your audience and let them know more about you? Use personal stories. However, if you don't want to be too personal, make sure you inject your personality into your writing. Personality differentiates you from the rest and can keep visitors coming back.
3. How-to guides
People have problems and like to figure out how to solve them. Had some problem you struggled with for a while? Did you eventually solve it? The way you solved it could be written into a how-to guide. Or write a how-to guide about your expert area. For example, if you're a technical computer whiz, you could write a how-to guide for fixing computers.
4. Do research
Do some research on the web. Use search engines, search directories, and follow links to find relevant sites. Do some research at your local library. Grab some books about your site's topic and start digging through them. Find local experts, teachers, and professors and ask them questions about your site's topic. When you research, note down interesting ideas and you'll undoubtedly learn more. You'll have more unique knowledge that you can turn into content. You might even discover something earth-shattering!
5. Subscribe to newsletters
Good newsletters are a great way to keep informed about a particular topic. They can keep you informed of offers that you may be able to provide on your own site. As well, they can keep you on top of what's happening in your area by providing time-sensitive content.
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