"Graphics Notes for Website Creation" by Dipen

Graphics Notes
       Graphics that take too much time to download can cause visitors to leave your site before they get a chance to see it. The combined size of the text and graphics on any Web page should not exceed 50 KB.
       Some people turn graphics off in their browsers to save time, so you should provide all of your information in text as well as graphics. Use descriptive Alt attributes in your image tags. The Alt text will load in place of the images when the graphic does not display for any reason.

"Navigation Notes for Crating a Website" by Dipen

Navigation Notes
      Ease of navigation is very important to your site. Provide a navigation bar at a consistent location on every page that links to all of the major pages of your site. Make it easy to get from one page to any other.
      Search engines can index any page from your site, so your home page might not be the first page visitors come to. Never have dead ends where viewers scroll down a screen or two of information only to find that they must scroll all the way back to the top to move on (because you have no links at the bottom of the page). A consistent-looking and wellpositioned navigation bar with functioning links is the key to efficient site navigation.

"Color Notes for Website Building" by Dipen

Color Notes
      Keep your online and offline image consistent. Be consistent with your use of logos, corporate colors, and other marketing collateral associated with your company.
      Choose your background and font colors carefully. Using backgrounds that are too busy obscure your text and do not provide a pleasant viewing experience for your visitors. Only certain colors show up properly on certain backgrounds. A light background with dark text is easiest on the eyes.

"Text Notes for Website Building" by Dipen

Text Notes
     The tone of your text and the design of your graphics conveys your intended image. When determining the text content of your site, be mindful of the fact that your own biases may preclude you from placing information on your site that is second nature to you, but important for your visitors. Review all text content on your site to ensure that you have not omitted anything crucial.
     Also, keep text brief. Almost 80 percent of Web users scan text online as opposed to actually reading it. Therefore, make your key points quickly and succinctly, and use lots of

"Content Notes for Building a Website" by Dipen

Content Notes
        Make your contact information readily available. Consider including contact information on every page. This includes your address, phone and fax numbers, and especially your e-mail address. Make it easy for people to get in touch with you.
        Avoid “Under Construction” pages on your site; they are of no value to the visitor. When you have information, post it. Until then, don’t mention it. “Under Construction” can actually hinder your search engine placement with some of the popular search engines and directories.
      Include security information. Explain to your customers when transactions

"Detailed Web Site Planning" by Dipen

          In the previous articles you learned how to develop your storyboard. The storyboard is your blueprint for the site, but now you need to think about construction. For each page of your site, you need to develop the content—the text and the graphics. Generally you (yes, you) will develop the first draft of the text for each page. You know your target market best—you know what makes them buy, you know what they want, you know the buzz words for
your industry far better than your Web developer.
          The next step is to have this text reviewed and edited by an online copywriter. Online copywriters usually have a background in advertising, where they learn to get the message across in as few words as possible. They know how to grab the reader’s attention. Internet

"All about Storyboarding to Programming" by Dipen

Your storyboard is the blueprint for your site, but there are many steps to take before you can start construction. In Web development, the majority of the time should be spent in the planning. In my next blog articles I will

cover:

• • Detailed planning of your site before a line of code is ever written

• • Content guidelines

• • Text guidelines

• • Color guidelines

• • Navigation guidelines

• • Graphics guidelines

• • Visual guidelines

• • Other guidelines.

"How to Plan your Website" by Dipen

The Unique and important information this article contains,

• 01)The Fundamentals—Objectives, Target Markets, and Products and Services 

• 02)Common Objectives 

• 03)Advertising Your Products or Services 

• 04)Selling Your Products or Services Online 

• 05)Providing Online Customer Service and Support 

• 06)Providing Product or Corporate Information 

• 07)Creating and Establishing Company Identity and Brand Awareness 

• 08)Other Primary Objectives 

• 09)Other Objectives to Consider Up Front 

• 10)Designing Your Site to Be Search Engine Friendly 

• 11)Including Repeat-Traffic Generators on Your Site 

• 12)Getting Visitors to Recommend Your Site 

• 13)Using Permission Marketing 

• 14)Creating Loyalty among Visitors 

• 15)Including “Stickiness” Elements

• 16)Including Interactive Elements 

• 17)A Final Word on Objectives

• 18)Target Markets 

• 19)Products and Services

• 20)The Fundamentals 

• 21)Using Competitor Sites to Your Advantage

• 22)Storyboarding Your Web Site

• 23)Detailed Web Site Planning 

• 24)Content Notes 

• 25)Text Notes 

• 26)Color Notes

• 27)Navigation Notes

• 28)Graphics Notes

• 29)Visual Notes

• 30)Other Notes 

• 31)Internet Resources for Planning Your Web Site

How to start using RSS feeds?

             Well, the first thing you’re gonna need is a news reader. There are many different versions of these, some of which are accessed using a browser, and some of which are downloadable applications. All allow you to display and subscribe to the RSS feeds you want.
             My top picks for news readers, listed by the operating system they work with, are:
1. Mac OS X: newsfirerss This is a simple yet elegant Mac-like aggregator that any one can use, yet it’s powerful.
2. Windows: rssreader A very simple tool, but it delivers the goods.
3. Linux: liferea.sourceforge The best very aggregator for GNOME.
4. Web: www.google.com/reader Enough said.

"Blog and Ping" by Dipen

                Some of the very biggest buzz words on the internet right now are Blogging and Pinging. Many internet gurus claim these are the essentials for attracting visitors to your site and consequentially making those bucks through AdSense.
                The best kind of blog lets readers put in their 2 cents worth. People love to be able to voice their opinions, and tend to get frustrated when they can’t. Thus, the best blog is an online discussion web site that allows both you the web owner and your readers to voice their opinions on a specific subject.
                So where do you begin? Well, for one thing, your blog needs to be specific to succeed, unless you’re a celebrity. People will go to Paris Hilton’s site to read just about any fool thing she writes off the top of her head, but don’t think you can do that. I know it’s not fair, but that’s how it is.
                If you’re not famous, you need to focus on a niche topic. For instance rather than run a Blog on dogs why not specialize in black labs or some other breed? I guarantee you, if you put a cute picture of a black lab with a red bandana around her neck up, you’ll have all the other black lab owners dropping by to tell stories about their own dogs.
                Pinging, is how you tell the entire Blog community as a whole that your Blog site is up and running. Most Blog software has a feature that does this for you when a new post or comment has been made.
                To put Blog software on your own server and running it independently on your site, I have found Wordpress to be excellent software and this can be downloaded at http://www.wordpress.org

"Blogging" by Dipen

               “Blog” is internet shorthand for “web log.” They’re like online diaries. Unlike a real diary, however, the entire world gets to read them.
                You should seriously look into keeping a blog, or inviting others to blog on your site. Blogging is one of the hottest new forms of contents, and many readers find it positively addictive. In fact, it’s grown so fast that many traditional news sources such as newspapers and TV stations are seeing an increase in declining readers and viewers (it was already declining due to the internet, but it got worse) because users are finding out they can go online and read a reporter’s personal blog, which often gives juicy details that are not reported in formal news stories.

"Building a Virtual Content Empire to Display Ads On" by Dipen

             So now you’re ready to build your content-rich empire and start raking in the bucks, right? Sure you are! You don’t have to be a great writer, you just have to know where to get good writing. And heck, it really doesn’t even have to be great. Just good.

              Here are the steps you’ll want to take:

• 1. Pick a domain name – this requires some thought, since even though it’s not as critical as it used to be to have a catchy domain name, it still matters to some users. Once you’ve picked one, check with http://www.web.com, or http://www.whois.net to see if it’s available. If your favorite choice isn’t available in .com format, consider being flexible and having it in .net, .biz, .org, or some other form.

• 2. Reserve the domain name. Web.com and many, many others offer that service.

• 3. Get web hosting.

• 4. Set up your new domain, including your e-mail addresses.

• 5. Design your site, and start building pages.

• 6. Get some content. If you don’t want to write it yourself, check out:

ƒ                    http://www.ezinearticles.com

ƒ                    http://www.goarticles.com

ƒ                    http://www.freshcontent.net/

ƒ                    http://www.elance.com to hire a freelance writer who will write articles for you. Browse project postings first to see what other people usually ask for these articles—they are very popular.

• 7. For good RSS feeds, check out:

ƒ                  http://www.rsscontentbuilder.com/

ƒ                  http://www.feedster.com/

• 8. Update content at least weekly

• 9. Go to mailbox, get checks.

"How to Get More Visitors to your Website" by Dipen

            When you're running a website, whoever is surfing it is staring at the screen…but where? One of the biggest questions for website designers is, “Where are the user's eyes looking?” Where do your eyes go when you read articles on the Web? What do you notice and what do you miss?

          Well, we've got some answers for you, because this topic has been studied. Turns out that the upper left quarter of the screen gets the most attention, according to the Eyetrack III research of The Poynter Institute, the Estlow Center for Journalism & New Media, and Eyetools. But that's not all. There's more to it than that.

            People’s eyes have some very common behaviour patterns. It probably has to do with our hunter-gatherer ancestry.

Google’s Guidelines

           I wouldn't be doing my job right if I didn't caution you that using TE could get you thrown out of Google, and the AdSense program. That's why I've listed some cautions above. Here's what Google has to say about it in their guidelines:
            "Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

Extreme Content Sites by Dipen

            What is extreme content?“Extreme content” refers to very large sites ranging in size from 1,000 to 10,000…even 300,000 pages.

            Now why on earth would anyone go to the trouble to create anything that huge, other than trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records?                  They do it in order to have a ton of pages that will result in a massive saturation upon the search engines.

             Let's look at it this way: say you've got a nice little ten-page site. Those ten pages give you ten chances to get listed somewhere in a search engine's rankings. Contrast that with an extreme content site of 1,000 pages. That site has 1,000 chances of getting listed in the rankings, which means some of their pages will no doubt get listed up near the very top.

Website Creation Tips by Dipen

            First off, why would you want to build content-rich websites? The short answer is “Because it keeps people on your site for awhile, it makes them come back, and they tell their friends about that site.”
            But why? Well, for one thing, people will stay on a content-rich site because it takes awhile to read an article or two. Thus, while they're reading the material, their peripheral vision (off to the sides) notices little ads that happen to surround that articles.
            And if people start to realize that a certain site has good content that they like, and in particular, different content that constantly changes and is updated, then they'll check back to see what's new.
           The worst thing in the world to have is a stagnant website that never changes. People will visit it exactly twice—the first time to check it out, and the second one to see what's changed—and when they find out it hasn't changed, they most likely won't come back. Ever.

What are Content-Rich Sites and Why Have One?