How to start a website

[alex1*]

I want to post in this topic the things you need to know before you start your website. Often enough we find websites on the internet (even proffesional ones) that simply don't reach their goal, so here is my thought on how to start with a website. Ooh and i have built quitte a few myself so i am not inexperienced lol.

Lots can be told about webdesign, all i want to do here is to give you some advice in a few steps you could follow.

Step 1: Start by thinking what do you want to achieve with your website, will it be a fun one or is it commercial. What message do you have, is it about hobby or do you want to sell a product.

Step 2: When you know your goal you should think about what should it look like then. Commercial for instance wants to sell and that means the product must be eyecatching, while hobby can be containing loads of stuff. So should it be straight without any distracting stuff or will it be filled with advertisers and pictures.

Step 3: Now you gotta decide the structure of the website, is it gonna be one long page with anchors or will it contain more pages like this website. And when it contains more then one site, will you build like this site frames into frames or will it be a oneframe site. This all will have effect on the looks and the working of the website so it is important.

Step 4: When you know the mainstructure you gotta decide what sections to put on the website. Links, contact, a page to explain what you do and who you are and so on. They call that a treestructure, its important to know because its like the buildingplan of a house, and it will tell you what pages have to link to each others. It even best to document it for the future.

Step 5: Now you can start building but there are a few hazzards to think about.

A. What fonttype and how large do i choose.

Take a fonttype that is normal on every PC, if the visitors PC does not have your fonttype it will automatically take the next in line and it might majorly disrupt your website for the viewer.

About the size, you build in your screenresolution, the viewer looks in his resololution so the size might be way to big or small for him. Its best when during building you try to use more then one screenresolution to see how others would see the website. And let others have a glimp to if possible. But at least stay openminded to feedback on it.

1024x768 is the most used resolution to give you a clue. But 800 x 600 is often used as well.

B. Usage of pictures and graphics.

Pictures and graphics are the sugar in the websites, however they are a hazzard as well. To many pictures are annoying but even more you should remember that people with a low connection will need more time to load your page.

So more pics takes longer. Its important to choose wisely in the number of pictures and graphics. Even more important is it to make sure that the sizes of the pictures are very small, pictures up to 40kb is about the most. A good program to adjust picture size in the easiest way is in my opinion Microsoft Photo Editor. (an extension of Microsoft Office) One tiny remark, when you resize pictures you are losing the quality of the picture. Know then that to a certain level the internet will let the pictures look better then they really are so just try some things out thats best.

C. Make it look smooth.

In order to make it look smooth its nowadays very common to put your content into tables. You can simply add tables with invisible lines (or off course visible lines) in your websites, you can add pictures and graphics into them as well as text. Each cell can be adjusted and thats why its often used.

It will make your site look in the end more smooth then without tables.

D. Saying to much.

Sometimes we have the tendency to simply say to much on a website. Thats why this is my last remark. To much text will annoy people and is not inviting, people will lose interest and will leave. And that is not what we want. Think about it that when you want to explain a huge topic then make a page where you give a short hint of what you have to tell and then make a button or hyperlink that says go here, to the page with the full explanation.

The easiest way to avoid all these hazzards is to write down what annoy's you when you visit a website. That will tell you what others will annoy as well. Try then to avoid those thing when you build.

By the way i love to build with Microsoft Frontpage 2003 but you can use other stuff as well, as Dreamweaver for instance.

Good Luck!!

[battye]

Good post, moved to FAQ

[Rat]

I thought I'd add a few things to this:

Step 3: Now you gotta decide the structure of the website, is it gonna be one long page with anchors or will it contain more pages like this website. And when it contains more then one site, will you build like this site frames into frames or will it be a oneframe site. This all will have effect on the looks and the working of the website so it is important.

Very important. Let's put it like this. If you use frames, some users will not read your page because their choice of browser software will not permit it. Fact. On the other hand, remember that most users are running browsers that can use frames and that those users are getting increasingly lazy with regard to web sites. Having a links frame to the top, bottom or side of your page will let them navigate the site more easily.

A. What fonttype and how large do i choose.

Take a fonttype that is normal on every PC, if the visitors PC does not have your fonttype it will automatically take the next in line and it might majorly disrupt your website for the viewer.

This isn't *quite* true. Actually what happens is that the browser will look for the fonts used. If it doesn't find them it will look for the font 'family' used and use a font from that family. If it can't find a font from the right family it will revert to the default font for the browser... in the case of IE that means Times New Roman which I always think looks a little out-dated. Most people have Times New Roman, Arial and Garamond installed on their systems by default so these are safe choices.

About the size, you build in your screenresolution, the viewer looks in his resololution so the size might be way to big or small for him. Its best when during building you try to use more then one screenresolution to see how others would see the website. And let others have a glimp to if possible. But at least stay openminded to feedback on it.

Users of IE and most other major browsers at least have the option to change the font size used on the pages they're reading (check the view menu) and therefore have some influence over this.

1024x768 is the most used resolution to give you a clue. But 800 x 600 is often used as well.

From the data collected from my stats tracker (installed last year), this is true. Almost 50% use 1024x768. Bear in mind though that 36% are still using 800x600. The stats look like this:

1024x768 49.65%
800x600 36.31%
1280x1024 8.17%
1152x864 2.53%
Other 1.46%
1600x1200 1.07%
640x480 0.77%

C. Make it look smooth.

In order to make it look smooth its nowadays very common to put your content into tables. You can simply add tables with invisible lines (or off course visible lines) in your websites, you can add pictures and graphics into them as well as text. Each cell can be adjusted and thats why its often used.

It will make your site look in the end more smooth then without tables.

A word of warning about tables. Since the beginning, navigator based browsers (Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape) have had trouble with tables. In order to get tables to look right for navigator AND mosaic based browsers (such as IE) you have to set font type and size for **every cell in the table**. This is tedious and time consuming. One of the things that has helped alleviate this problem recently is the advent of cascading style sheets (CSS). Again, different browsers handle these differently and if you check my site where CSS has been employed you'll find that all the text is the same size and font with IE or Opera but that the size changes (depending on if you're inside or outside a table) with mozilla navigator and mozilla firefox and that in some cases even the colours and font type change if you view the site with netscape navigator. If you aim to use your website for business, it is perhaps worth taking the extra trouble to encode the text properties for every cell. If not, remember that more than 90% are using IE and will see the site in a uniform manner.

By the way i love to build with Microsoft Frontpage 2003 but you can use other stuff as well, as Dreamweaver for instance.

Or you can code manually in any text editor. I use notepad. Use of a web design tool such as Dreamweaver or Hotdog can take the backache out of site building and, if properly programmed, can even fix tables the way I mentioned above, but having said that, it's pretty hard to learn *how* a web site works without doing it the long way. It all depends on what you aim to achieve from your website. Mine started as a hobby to learn HTML which is possibly why I still hand code my pages. Again, if you're looking to make money from your site, it's probably going to be wise to either use a design program or go to a professional for help.

Apart from that, I agree entirely with everything Alex said. Nice article. Thanks.

For reference, my site is at http://www.rat-hole.org and is probably of little interest to anyone here. I have an unusual target audience.

[alex1*]

I am glad with the added notes, and i do support them as well, but i wrote this in fact for new users that are not so good in computers lol. I get many questions about this in my chatroom. This was only a basics explanation.

[Rat]

Don't worry Alex, I wasn't knocking what you wrote. I just wanted to add a little.

[alex1*]

No Offence taken.

[me here]

No offense taken...... hummmm.... i was all excited till i started reading this.... then realized this is way over my head.

In coming!!!! ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

[alex1*]

Comming where?? mrs cm here burger :PPP

[me here]

Ummm I dont know.... that is the problem.... lol. I somehow thought I might be able to do this one day.... I am thinking NOT....

[alex1*]

Hmmm now i am confused or my one braincell is on vacation already, i told him to wait one more week.

[Grinch]

Ummm I dont know.... that is the problem.... lol. I somehow thought I might be able to do this one day.... I am thinking NOT....

What you should do is get a copy of frontPage or Dreamweaver and make a site using build mode. Then you can switch to split mode where it will show you the code and your design in the same window. That way you can see the code and possibly learn how it works. That is what I did and I have learned quite a bit. Also, check out http://www.w3schools.com and go through the free tutorials.

[me here]

Wow ok... kewl Grinch thanks for that ...... I will check out the tutorial.... cause what you said to me makes no sense either YET....lol