Simple Tips To Help You Design Great Web Pages

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Simple Tips To Help You Design Great Web Pages
If you want to design a website as a hobby, for your business or even as your own career, a solid foundation of knowledge will help you get your foot in the door. From learning HTML to knowing search engine optimization techniques, there are many facets to web design.

Read on to find some advice which will cover all of the basics.

Don't neglect cascading style sheets. Using a style sheet makes it easy to give all pages of your site the same look and feel. It also reduces the file size of your pages, as the CSS file can be accessed once on the server and then from the user's local cache thereafter.

Have your website prominently feature a tagline. This lets people know about the site. This will give the visitor a quick first impression of what you're about.

Avoid using frames. Most sites have abandoned frames on their own as better alternatives have become available, but there are still sites out there that are trapped in 1996. Alternatives to navigational frames include fixed-position navigation panels, having navigation in multiple areas (e.g. left and bottom) or simplifying page structure so that navigational links are never far away.

Break up long text blocks. Having a huge wave of text is unnecessary for any site, especially when you can break it up by using images, or even separating it into different pages. Boring your viewers will only make them leave, so keep things as simple and fresh as possible.

Make sure that you get rid of any material that is outdated on your site. If your home page features an event that already took place, people will not be interested in reading more of your content. Visitors want to visit sites that have the most up-to-date information, and leaving up outdated information shows that you are not committed to that. Set a schedule to review the site, to ensure that outdated information is removed, and fresh new content is added in its place.

Use a style sheet to stay consistent. There is almost nothing more disconcerting than being sent to a page that looks at nothing like the site you were just looking at, even if it is concerning the same subject. Style sheets help with saving your formatting, so each page looks similar to the rest.

While you might be inclined to add a lot of bells and whistles to your website, flashing graphics, loud music and neon colors will just distract from the purpose of your website. Visitors who are bombarded by too many sights and sounds might be inclined to leave your website before they even start browsing. Keep the colors simple and the content relevant and your website design will be a winner.

To make a more attractive website, try using your own pictures. Pictures help your site seem more approachable and user friendly. Folks will be more apt to stay on your site when they look forward to viewing all of your photos.

Use breadcrumbs and make it so that clicking on the site logo returns you to the homepage. Breadcrumbs are markers that show where the visitor is in the site structure. For instance, the breadcrumbs might read "home > furniture > beds." When the user clicks a link in the breadcrumbs, he can return to a page further up in the site hierarchy. Clicking on a business logo should generally take the visitor back to the homepage as well.

For your image tags, always try to include a brief description in the ALT attribute. Not only is this good for search engine optimization, but it is also beneficial to the sight-impaired users who rely on screen readers to describe image tag contents. Make your description short and as descriptive as possible.

When choosing your hosting service, you should review the package you are purchasing carefully. The things that are important to know are bandwidth, CPU usage, disk space and any other areas that they highlight in their package. Be certain to know exactly what you will be getting.

Development platforms create your code for you, but some of them are not as reliable as a classic text editor. The reason for a platform is to design all the features of the site, so that you can then paste the code that is generated. But if you desire a true creator experience and want to reduce errors, stick with classic text editors.

You've read the advice here and are ready to put it into action, so get ready to design your site! Start by sketching out a design and making lists of the content you'll need and you'll have your website online in no time.

Don't forget to keep reading and learning so you're never left behind.