The Simple Site Design Blog

So you want to know how to build a website? Well, if you are interested in this topic, it is because the subject of building your own website is actually getting increasingly popular these days. You see, with the explosion of the Internet, more and more people are developing a logical interest in how to build a website, too. Some do it for profit while others do it merely for fun, but the agreed-upon reality is that the process has become quite simple these days.

First things first: You have to select an ISP when you want to build a website. You are going to need the services of said ISP in order to host your very own website! When you are looking for an ISP for this hosting purpose, you have to look at various hosting services and consider a whole bunch of different web hosting criteria. For example, you should look at the terms of the service, the reputation of the web hosting provider, the accessibility of the service and the issue of maximum space.

The next step in your quest of how to build a website involves picking and then downloading a webpage editor. You should rejoice at the fact that many webpage editors are out there for free, one example being Netscape Composer. Such an editor empowers you to preview what your website is going to look like while you construct it. Thus, this saves you the trouble of having to learn HTML or other kinds of programming language. Said webpage editor is also going to provide you with exact instructions with regard to how you name your website, how you create various sections on it, how you establish backgrounds, how you include links and how you insert any images.

With regard to the images for your new website, you can make them yourself by way of just composing said images via the paint program on your PC or even by utilizing a scanner for your photos and various hardcopy images. If you need to have an image from another website for your website, remember to first ask the owner of the website in order to get permission. Because of copyright laws, you must gain this permission from the owner to legitimately use said images for your own purposes.

To publish your new website, get any File Transfer Protocol program. Open said FTP program and log in by inputting the username and password. Go to the directory where your own homepage is located. Once you are there, just start the process of uploading each and every webpage and graphic of your new website based upon the exact instructions of FTP program and, of course, also the actual host server you are using. There, you have done it! After this last step, you have succeeded in the process of how to build a website.

For more great information on how to create a website we have a range of great tools and a free step by step guide on our website http://yourhowtomakeawebsiteguide.com so visit us today.

If you want to make your own website, you are not alone. Making one’s own website has really been on the rise in the last decade or more since the Internet has found its way into more and more homes in both the U.S. and around the planet. Some people might be discouraged from attempting to make your own website, simply because they are of the belief that they need a lot of computer expertise. They could not be further from the truth, as building your own website is entirely doable even if you just possess basic computer and Internet knowhow.

First, you have to select your ISP for the purpose of hosting your own website. It is in your best interest to check out a variety of web hosting services. While you are doing so, be certain also to analyze the most important factors of choosing an ISP. They are the maximum space that you will be permitted, the terms of service of said ISP, the accessibility and the reputability of the ISP.

After you are confident that you have located the best ISP that you could have possibly found, the next step in your quest of how to make your own website is the selection of your webpage editor. This webpage editor has the job of allowing you to see what your website is going to look like while you are in the process of building it up! Its benefit is that it spares you from having to spend time on learning HTML and other programming languages. This webpage editor also comes with exact directives on naming your website, making various sections of the site, establishing backgrounds on the site, putting in some links and even including some images.

On the issue of images, when you make your own website, you may be tempted to include images on the site. You can do this by way of composing the images yourself through the use of your PC’s paint program; in the alternative, you may also rely on the scanner for your photos or hardcopy images. If you spot an image on another site and want to use it on yours, be sure to obtain allowance from the owner of that image first!

Finally, you are ready to publish your new site, the last step in your quest to make your own website! Before you can publish this new site, however, you have to get a File Transfer Protocol program. After you open this program, log on to the host server through putting in your username and also your password. Now, you have to gain access to the directory where you homepage is located. After you have this access, simply start uploading every webpage and accompanying graphic of your new site based upon the explicit directives of the host server and the File Transfer Protocol program.

For more great information on how to create a website we have a range of great tools and a free step by step guide on our website http://yourhowtomakeawebsiteguide.com so visit us today.

By Kevin Alan Cohen

Companies and businesses have brought their products and services on the Internet to make them widely available and in the hope to increase profits. Thus, one of the ways that entrepreneurs are looking forward to be effective is the putting video on website. The video presentation will be very helpful for the consumers for them to get the actual picture of the product specs and how they work or if the website is concerned about explaining the processes, then a video presentation can greatly serve this purpose as well. Hence, should you wish to add video on your website, then you should know the easy steps in making them.

First, if your website aims to provide reviews to users about gadgets, for instance mobile phones, then you can produce a video that can show the features and functionality of such product. This can be done quite easily since you can set up your own video camera to capture what you want and you can start talking and discussing while you are showing the product and explaining what it does. Another way is to hire someone who will carry the camera and record your video. When this is done, you can then easily upload this to YouTube so that you can get more search traffic.

Second, you can add video on website by creating a simple slideshow presentation if you wish to explain things in much easier manner. This may take a while to make; however, you will find this easy to do if you get used to. You may utilize Windows Movie Maker for the creation of a video like this. You can also use the iMovie program if you are a Mac user. Adding a presentation video on website can be great if you like to explain situations further or show a lecture for the end users to better understand what you are talking about.

Third, there are programs that you can use such as ScreenFlow and Camtasia for producing videos and screencasting. These software programs can be easily downloaded. There is a trial that you can download so that you can try it yourself and see how they can help you to add video on website. However, when you don’t want to go into the work of doing the entire job yourself, then you can resort to the Samurai sales video. They will be the one to create the video suited for the content, product or service you want to advertise or make available.

Today, Internet users like to see videos on website as these can help them. However, in making in putting a video on website, make sure that you have a good presentation and one that is useful for users. It is up to you how you wish to present the information in a manner that’s going to get the attention of the users and make things easily understood. As much as possible, try to make it short but filled with the necessary information since buffering videos can be irritating. Good luck and do well on your endeavour of putting video on website.

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Hook potential customers in with juicy website content. Easier said than done, right?

Website copy writing that is clear, concise and engaging is of high importance for modern business success.

Whether your business is small or large, old or new… great website content has to be fresh and innovative to stand out in the vast ocean of websites.

Why is website content important?

The internet is fast, furious and fickle. Yes, your customers have a huge range of companies to choose from on the internet. A simple click here or there can make or break your company. Simple website content techniques can help your website keep afloat the sea of businesses competing for your customer’s attention.

Leigh Cooke Southampton says high quality website copy naturally generates website traffic, higher retention rates and positive sales conversion rates.

Need a kick start with writing website copy? Here are a few website content tips to get you going.

Let’s get engaged!

Reel those quality customers in by giving them want they want. Understand their needs and deliver it, immediately.

Smart and effective copywriting throughout your website will enhance credibility, retain visitors and increase conversion rates. Website content writer, Leigh Cooke Southampton suggests creating a ‘quality customer profile’ to help target the message, including; occupation, lifestyle and buyer behaviour.

Top website keywords

Ensure your website has a high level of keywords within the copy. Relevant SEO keywords to your industry make it easier for customers to locate your business, therefore boosting your search engine optimization (SEO) ranking.

Freelance writer, Leigh Cook Southampton recommends using Google AdWords as a starting point, to discover popular keywords used for your industry, products and services.

SEO for your website

There is a range of SEO writing techniques writers should consider using when creating website content. Being on the first page of Google and other search engines allows greater visibility and visitor rate.

100% original content

Lots of keywords and synonyms

Regularly updated information

Back links from other sites

Useful information

People love great websites that provide information which is clear, practical and easy-to-use. Earn brownie points with search engines, by providing useful and original website.

Unique website content is very important. Any form of copying or plagiarism (even your own website) is frowned upon by the search engine spiders.

Clear and concise copy

When people are searching online, they tend to get bored. Quickly! If the website content isn’t clean, clear and concise, a simple click of the mouse means you have lost your visitor and may never return.

Keep your website pages uncluttered so they are easy on the eye. Huge blocks of copy put people off reading. Here are a few website writing layout tips:

Web page summary – provide a short summary of what you are offering on each page

Website headings – clearly titled pages and headings for quick and easy scanning

Concise – website copy should be to the point so the reader doesn’t have to find

Up-to-date

Outdated information is a massive turn-off for your customers. Ensure your website content is constantly kept up-to-date, including any product copy, terms and conditions, homepage information and blog content.

Regular content writing means your business is committed to providing the latest information to your customers.

Professional website copywriter, Leigh Cooke Southampton suggests starting a business blog, updating the blog posts a minimum of three times a week to keep your website active. A great technique for SEO!

Accurate website content

Accurate website content is essential for enhanced business credibility. When writing website copy, proof read your website content before setting it live.

Re-read it an hour later

Print it out

Get a colleague to proof read it

Check that the content writing for readability, accuracy and connection to customers. Leigh Cooke Southampton suggests reading the text backwards to check for spelling and grammatical errors.

Outsourcing website content

Professional freelance content writers allow you to focus on running the business, while your website benefits from creative, targeted website copy.

Many businesses find outsourcing the website content services highly beneficial. Freelance writers offer little overheads as they work remotely, while providing fresh and high quality website copy.

Freelance website writers can create a range of fresh, new copy for your website:

Website copy

Product descriptions

User guides and manuals

Regular blog writer

Article writing

SEO writing

Social media updates

Email copy

Nearly a decade ago, it was rare for the businesses or people to own a website. But today, it is quite essential for any business to have a website that provides accurate and necessary information. Pulling the clients is a big part played by a well developed website. However the website has to be function, appealing and up to date to be promising for any business.

Online free templates for website often lack all the necessary bells and whistles in order to design a professional website and therefore are not adequate for the job. The best option is to use website design software, it can do wonders to any website and make it more appealing and professional.

Any website should not be of just one home page, but should have links to various other pages containing information that provides satisfactory answers to various questions about their products, services and business.

Choosing the right website design software and tools is important in order to achieve the professional results you require. A big part of choosing what website designer software to be used will be influenced by the elements you will want in your website so it is important to think about this before you start building your website.

Mostly, you’d need a good photo editing software for editing the images that you intend to upload on your website. You will need to use vector image editing software if you plan to incorporate any line drawings, vector graphics or custom typography. Both these software types can be used in order to product mock-ups for website design as well as this will give you an idea of what your website will actually look like.

When designing a good website, any website design software can definitely help you. The WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) feature is included in most website design software’s along with numerous others helpful features. A well thought out and attractive user interface is also included. These web design software significantly reduce any requirement of the HTML knowledge by the user for building their website. Free website templates come preloaded onto many website design software packages so you can get started in no time. Many even offer the facility to do SEO analysis of your web pages to ascertain their search engine positioning.

Business is all about this and good website designing software will cater for this through features such as PayPal and affiliate links integration. There are numerous other useful features in a web design software that you can use while designing your web pages. You will be able to design professional looking websites that generate healthy business for you using the various useful options included in the website design software.

Search engine optimization, or SEO as it is quite often known, is explained ad infinitum all over the Information superhighway. World-wide-web authorities, digital marketeers, discussion forums and specialized blog pages are all overflowing with SEO assistance and viewpoints.

The chances are that, if you have made up your mind that you shall set up your very own website and you have performed any online searching for hints and recommendations, you will have stumbled upon a good few SEO write-ups and markers.

So, what is search engine optimisation and, in the course of the first few stages that you set about on the road to emerging as an Internet aficionado, should you be worrying about it?

SEO, is the practice of putting together your website’s pages as coaxing as possible to Google and the other search engines. If you prevail in this mission, then the likes of Google will want to position your Internet site highly in their search result postings – and that will result in more visitors for your Internet site.

If SEO was an uncomplicated technique then you would very quickly have your web site high up in the search engine standings. Unfortunately, this is generally not the case.

Unless otherwise amended by the user, the search engine standard is to only show the top 10 results on their opening results page. Consequently, if your Internet site is directed at a competitive market sector, there will be many tens of if not thousands of competing Internet sites for those few desirable front page spots.

To further complicate matters, the algorithms whereby search engines analyse the value of any Internet site are incessantly shifting. As a rule, Google adjusts the computations its algorithm is established upon over 300 times annually. So, any person engaged in on-going SEO tasks is focusing on a continually switching target.

So, for most people, SEO is an incessant online battle.

In spite of this, before you even begin to look at any serious attempt at SEO, there are a trio of fundamental concepts that should demand your deliberation first. Meet these and your website will start off in good stead.

First off, decide what you want from your web site before you actually set in motion designing and filling it with content.

If you strive to create a place on the world wide web to further your passion or interest, and are not seriously troubled how other people or the search engines view your efforts, then go full blast ahead. You will have few hitches. Rejoice in the ride!

On the other hand, if you are banking on gain a second source of income from your cyberspace presence, or even intending to supplant your main job with the help of your online earnings, then carry out some market research before you embark upon your quest.

The boundless lack of prior market research never fails to shock me. In some such way, people appear to get fixated on a solitary idea that they expect will make them immediate millionaires and, from then on on, they are inclined to let their imagination run wild.

There is no point in throwing together a better dinosaur trap after all the dinosaurs have long since departed this worldly stage. In the same manner, do you really imagine that an Internet site aimed at promoting CDs is going to yield much revenue in the current digital age of downloaded mp3s and iTunes?

In a similar way, if you develop a website selling soda waters online, do not hope to take many orders. When most people are dehydrated, they want their thirst mitigated now – not in two days time courtesy of DHL!

Your second concern should be to ensure that your web site answers a need that your readers have.

Make you content productive, instructional, exciting and pleasurable. Provide pragmatic quick fixes to day to day problems. Give your reader the satisfaction of uncovering something fresh. Do not forget, a happy reader will more likely social bookmark your website and visit again. And, if your reader is happy, then Google is happy since Google’s main aim is to provide lists of websites that surfers will want to click on.

But nevertheless, awesome, unique content is not much use unless people can find and find the way to it easily. You can aid this by making sure that your web site has an user-friendly menu system. Regularly check for broken or erroneous links. Last of all, install and maintain a simple to find web site search facility.

Last of all, you should also remember to focus on quality.

Quality of content. Quality of focus. Quality of spelling and prose. Quality of hosting platform.

So many websites today are pumped up with hundreds of ill-focused, vaguely written webpages that fail to give any extensive information. These Internet sites are hardly more than web fluff; a collection of Internet tumbleweed that serves no purpose other than to digitally litter the Cyberworld.

Other web sites comprise of webpages that are crowded with spelling and punctuation mistakes. They are not checked – and, not a good enticement for deterring readers from journeying on to another, better, website.

There are also Internet sites that are hosted on charge free, or cut-price platforms, that take forever to respond to a user’s click. In fact, keepers of these web sites will likely discover that their potential customers can find the exit key much faster than the time it takes to service the webpages.

Hence, always regard your Internet site from your readers’ point of view. If they think it is slow responding, poorly written, error strewn trivia then that is precisely what your Internet site is.

Never forget, building and marketing a new website is not a short term venture. Conceive it with care. Treasure and sustain it with delicate love. Then, presently, you will have a recurrent stream of readers and your website will be ready for some resolute search engine optimisation.

These days, anyone with a computer can put up a website. The problem is that unless you have an understanding of design and basic graphic design, your page may not attract many visitors. You need to understand the basic design principles for web sites, as well as how to make an optimize graphics for websites, to gain and hold an audience’s interest.

The first element to consider before you begin creating a website is its overall design. All websites should have a distinctive look and theme. Ask yourself what the theme of your site should be. Some of the decisions about the mood and theme of your site hinges upon the audience for the site. For example, a website that sells Halloween costumes for adults could have a Halloween theme and a spooky mood, whereas a site for children might have a fun or playful mood.

Draw out a sketch of what the website will look like on a poster board. Refrain from getting too fancy or making the site design too involved. Web style gurus such as Jakob Nielsen recommend keeping a site simple and clean to help readers navigate the site effectively. A site with too much clutter or detail can look amateurish and can be difficult to read.

When you make your sketch, do not worry about adding content or individual graphics yet. Instead, focus on placing particular elements such as the navigation, the logo or main graphics, and the content. For example, mark out where the logo will go, even if you haven’t designed it yet. This sketch will give you a draft to work from as you refine the design and begin coding the site.

After you are satisfied with the general layout, begin designing graphics that complement the theme, mood and contents of the website. Unlike print, colour and graphics on the web are free so use colour where it is appropriate. Graphics for the web should be simple enough to view in low resolution but attractive and professional-looking. If you include text in the logo or graphics, make sure to test them in several resolutions to ensure that the text is readable.

If you aren’t sure where to start, don’t worry. There is help available and all web and graphic designers had to start somewhere. One of the best ways to learn web and graphic design for the web is to read some books that cover the topics. Your public library or university library probably has dozens of texts on these topics as well as HTML, XHTML, JavaScript, and any other coding language that you might find useful.

Alternately, take a course at a university. The advantage of university courses is that they teach you the latest graphic design software as well as web and design principles. You may also be able to purchase the software at a reduced price from the university bookstore.

Finally, the best way to begin designing a website and web graphics is just to dive in. Gather your resources and do your research, and then start designing. Just like writing an essay, you can always make additional drafts. If you keep the website design and the graphics simple, you can keep drafting until you have a well-designed and professional-looking site.

By Adrianna Noton

Since the industrial revolution, nothing has so thoroughly changed everyday life like computers and the internet. Getting noticed online requires a skill and education that a web design school can provide through various graphic design courses.

Because innovation is growing faster than the average person can keep up with, users who want to start a website often go the route of doing it themselves. There are indeed a number of sites with numerous templates that people can use to create their own pages, but the results are rudimentary at best and forgettable at worst.

There are millions of sites online and so to really differentiate yourself you need something more than just long pieces of text and some pictures to explain what your aims are and the services that you want to provide. Visitors, faced with a cookie cutter site will immediately be turned off and, most likely, will not come back.

Finding a good school to join with a good graphic design program, or recruit from is simple as there are many different institutions scattered throughout the country. It’s important to understand what a school’s particular strengths are before blindly signing up. For instance, an interest in graphic design programs should be fulfilled at a school that has a number of different classes in the this field.

The instruction at these schools can seem terribly technical at first, but working in the virtual landscape demands a different set of tools and a new language. Luckily, the language of coding is one that is easy to learn and just requires a good amount of practice.

These basics that give way to a more nuanced approach to interactive media and multimedia design. Many online users simply don’t appreciate, or even notice, the amount of design that goes into a successful site, but that is the intent of a designer. What they create is really a stand in for something that isn’t possible online and that is a face to face, real world connection.

Accomplishing a connection with visitors and customers alike requires that your page feel bigger than it is and this is done through a series of tricks like page linkages as well as having a large amount of interactivity. Flash animation creates a sense of movement and immediacy on your page and this makes the whole endeavor feel like more than just a run of the mill site.

Professional work is imperative to making a good first impression. Being ignored or worse, losing any audience you could have had through a large number of technical problems is simply not possible when you work with a proper designer. Whether you’re looking to start your own page or wanting to get into the field of web design, there are a variety of Graphic design program that can fulfill your needs and goals for finding success in the virtual world.

Looking to capitalize on your creative gifts? Learn from industry professionals in Graphic design courses and take your first step towards an exciting new career.

The style that you use when writing content for the internet is not nearly the same as the writing style that you used in high school or college. If you want to create content on the internet that is popular and successful, you may literally need to “unlearn” some of the things that you learned in school about writing. People do not typically enjoy reading things that are in a tone of voice that is too formal, and they want to find the information that they are looking for right away without it being too complicated. You are not writing a doctoral thesis here, you are writing valuable, informative, and entertaining content for regular people searching for information and who have short attention spans.

One important thing to consider is the sort of person that will be the target audience for the content you are creating. Depending on what you are writing about and who you are writing it for, take into consideration the reading level of your target audience. Also do not be afraid to create content that is visually appealing with appropriate pictures, since this will tend to be much easier to read and it will communicate the core message more effectively. Since the typical reader on the internet today is going to have a short attention span, the content that you create and the articles that you write need to be interesting enough to hold their attention.

As an added bonus, you can take a lot of the content that you have created for the internet and transform it in different ways in order to make it more popular and even get more traffic to your website. For example, you can take articles that you have written and make them available as documents in PDF format, which will give the search engines another way to catalog your content. If you take one of your articles and read it out loud into a microphone, you will now have this same content in audio format that can be used to create Powerpoint presentation videos of your articles.

When you want to write compelling and interesting articles, it is not just what you are saying but it is how you say it that also makes a big difference. A great writer can take a boring topic and make it sound interesting, which can capture the attention of a greater number of readers. By following the tips outlined in this article for writing and creating content for the internet, you should be able to increase the popularity of the content on your own website by making it more compelling and engaging.

Just what is a website exactly? Well by definition, anything connected to the World Wide Web. In reality it could be hand coded pages, a blog, a shopping cart, or any other number of database driven applications. But all most people see is a “website”.

A website is anything with a URL (Universal Resource Locator) or as you and I know them, a web address. Used to be a website was hand coded pages written in HTML. Things have evolved way beyond that. Now a typical web site is a mix of technologies and languages. A simple site with one index / landing page can take several languages, CSS for what the browser presents (what you see), JavaScript for any forms and form verification and a server script to format the form and either send it to email or a database. And, if we are using databases, that is a whole other side to a project. So you see, when a client comes to me and wants a web site it can mean many things.

What is the difference? Let’s start with a hand coded site. This is exactly what it says, hand coded, written by a human and, to get the most out the search engines, this is the only way to go. I say this because clean code is very important to search engine placement. This includes the placement of key worded content, images, and accessory scripts. And follows rules like content to code ratio and site load speed to name a couple. On the optimization side there are rules like the ratio of keywords in the content, page titles, and link text. This is the short list.

Next is application software as mentioned above. These are more akin to applications and are ‘installed’ rather than written. Artwork and content are added during the setup. Blogs and content management systems (CMS) are both software designed to let an end user modify and change their site. The CMS software being much more powerful in scope and options than blog software. Blogs are popular because they are easy to setup and more important to the end user, easy to use and update. There are many options and plug-ins available. On the optimization side they are quite limited. To help with search optimization we often create an index / landing page that looks like the application but actually links to it.

Shopping carts, reservation systems, point of sale systems (POS) called transaction software. Again these are database driven, artwork and content are added during the setup. The administration back side handles everything from credit card processing through inventory control. They also have many built in marketing and email tools. Again from the optimization side they are quite limited. As with blogs and CMS software we often create a search engine friendly landing page.

For a website to work it has to be a blend of design, scripting, marketing and it all has to be balanced correctly. You do not get this kind of expertise, control and level of optimization with application software. These include content management systems (CMS), blogs, shopping carts etc. What you get is less cost and minute control to do what you want when you want, but warning there is a steep learning curve especially with a CMS.

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