 Category :: Web Design Articles |
Author :: David Fitzgerald  |
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| Article Title :: Controlling Search Engines with Robots.txt |
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Introduction
As mentioned in previous articles, search engines can be great
source of traffic to a standard business or personal website.
What would happen though, if you didn't want to appear in them?
This is the purpose of robots.txt files.
While they generally do not help you get listed, they can help
ensure that you don't get listed if you wish not to be. What is
a robot?
A robot (also shortened to just "bot", or called a spider) is a
computer that goes around collecting information from websites.
Different bots do different things, depending on the owners
reasons for having them. In the case of search engines, the
robots purpose is to collect information about what your site
conta (read full article) |
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| Category :: Web Design Articles |
Author :: Lee Asher |
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| Article Title :: Finding a Good HTML Editor |
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Once you've decided to write your own HTML, and you've got some
idea of how it all works, there's one thing left to think about:
which program are you going to use to do it? While you can use
programs like Notepad or Wordpad that come with Windows, they
don't have any specialised HTML editing features, and that can
slow you down more than you'd think.
The choice of HTML editors out there, though, is bewildering:
there are literally thousands. Here's a guide to things you
should look for when you're searching for your perfect HTML
partner.
Syntax Highlighting
One of the most vital features for any editor is syntax
highlighting. This means that it understands how HTML works, and
will make (read full article) |
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| Category :: Web Design Articles |
Author :: Lee Asher |
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| Article Title :: Encryption and Security with SSL |
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When it comes to accepting online payments and other sensitive
information over the web, normal HTTP just doesn't cut it. It's
an insecure method of communication where everything is sent
over the wire in cleartext - it's completely trivial for anyone
in a network administrator position at a business or ISP to gain
access to the network, and most networks are even vulnerable to
'sniffing' by non-privileged users of the network.
Things are bad enough that you really shouldn't even transmit
any passwords without taking additional security measures,
unless the things the passwords give access to are entirely
trivial - put simply, as a webmaster, you need to be worried
about encryption and se (read full article) |
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| Category :: Web Design Articles |
Author :: Lee Asher |
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| Article Title :: Dreamweaver: Your Professional Touch |
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Dreamweaver is sometimes seen as FrontPage's main competitor
but, really, there's not even a comparison to be made.
Dreamweaver might be expensive, sure, but there are serious web
designers out there using it and getting work done - I can
guarantee you that no real designer has ever used a copy of
FrontPage to design a website. Consequently, Dreamweaver is way
out in the lead in terms of market share, with about 80% of the
users.
So what do you sacrifice to get a better WYSIWYG editor? Well,
apart from the higher price tag, you also sacrifice a certain
amount of simplicity. Once you get used to it, though,
Dreamweaver isn't as hard to use as you might think.
>From the People Who Brought Y (read full article) |
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| Category :: Web Design Articles |
Author :: Lee Asher |
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| Article Title :: HTML for Beginners |
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For some reason, HTML seems to really frighten a lot of people.
Some have seen complicated HMTL that's been produced by an
editor program, or they've clicked 'View Source' on a few pages
and been scared by what they've seen.
What you have to realise, though, is that HTML was designed from
the beginning to be a very simple language to learn and to use -
just because automated systems for producing it have a tendency
to make it over-complicated, it doesn't mean that your code has
to be that way. The best way to get started with HTML is to get
over any fears you might have and just get stuck in.
Note that you will need to save files as filename.html before
you will be able to open them in (read full article) |
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| Category :: Web Design Articles |
Author :: Lee Asher |
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| Article Title :: Designing for Search Engines |
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When you design a website, it's easy to focus on what your
visitors are going to see. What you have to realise, though, is
that you're going to have another kind of visitor with a
completely different agenda: they're not going to be looking at
your pretty logo and they're not going to be passing judgement
on your background colour. What they're looking for is the
content and structure of your page.
They're the search engine spiders, and they are in control of
probably the largest section of your traffic. You need to please
these spiders if you want your site to be successful. Here's how.
Make Your Structure Clear
Resist the temptation to lay your page out in non-standard ways:
you want (read full article) |
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| Category :: Web Design Articles |
Author :: Lee Asher |
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| Article Title :: Designing for Sales |
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One thing that lots of designers don't seem to understand is
that there's a big difference between the kind of design you
should use if you're trying to present information (usually with
ads), and the kind of design you should use if the aim of your
website is to make sales. This distinction causes a lot of
confusion, bad design, and, ultimately, lost sales. If you're
trying to sell, then there's a whole other set of design
principles that you need to follow.
The Headline is Everything
If you want your website to make sales for you, then the first
thing you need to pay attention to is the headline on your sales
page. It needs to be large, to stand out, and to grab the
visitors' attention. (read full article) |
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| Category :: Web Design Articles |
Author :: Lee Asher |
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| Article Title :: How to Make Your Website Load Faster |
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So your web pages have great content, a nice design, but hardly
anyone seems to click through from them to any other part of
your website. In many cases, the problem is the load time -
people are abandoning your site for the simple reason that it
just takes too long for the thing to load.
How Fast Does It Need to Be?
Fast load times are extremely important: usability studies say
users rate them as one of the most important things about a
website. Users would much rather use a quick-loading site of
average quality than a great one that loads sluggishly - no
doubt you've done this yourself at some point.
What's the limit? Well, studies say that over a third of users
will leave a website th (read full article) |
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| Category :: Web Design Articles |
Author :: Chris Swemba - |
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| Article Title :: The 7 Components Of Effective Website Design And Marketing |
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| 1. Target Audience: (Who Buys From You?)
The foundation of effective web marketing is the 'who.' Determining your target audience, their needs, wants, level of knowledge, goals, etc is critical to creating a website that will be effective at either lead generation or e-commerce.
2. Core Message: (What Exactly do You Offer?)
Flowing directly from who you want to target, is the question of what you want to say to them. Your core message delivers your value proposition in a clear and compelling way. Your core message is not a mission statement, or an executive summary of your strategic plan. Your core message is essentially a list of the reasons that people do business (read full article) |
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| Category :: Web Design Articles |
Author :: Lee Asher |
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| Article Title :: CSS and the End of Tables |
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In the bad old days of the web, the only way to create even
slightly complex layouts was to use tables. Some sites featured
silly numbers of tables, one inside the other, to create
relatively simple-looking effects. With CSS, though, tables can
finally be replaced.
What's So Bad About Tables?
If you've ever worked with a site that uses tables, you'll know
just how difficult it can be. Your HTML becomes a mess of
confusing rows and columns, with no clear markers of which parts
of the page do what. If you want to redesign the site, you're
forced to try to extract your content from the HTML and start
building the tables all over again. With tables, building web
pages felt a lot like building (read full article) |
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