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| Tips on How to Create Your Own Web Site |
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I am one of the last likely folks to tell you how to create your own web site,
but in one respect, I am the best kind of person to help you. That is
because I, with no clue at first, did hours of studying and hands-on,
self-taught, trial-and-error practicing (and screwing up so badly I had
to start over) that I can give you a few hints on what to avoid, at
least.
Further, because I used the experts
who are revered as the net gurus of gurus, I figure I can at least
direct you to their advice on how to create your own website.
You need to make the site readable and easy to navigate (also known as easily navigable)—need to make your site user-friendly…especially if you are setting up a place where people will come for products or services you want to get paid for.
This means you need to cut out most of the whirling, flashing junk; make the font readable (Verdana is typically the best choice and size should be easy to read for everyone from kids to older people); and you should have a menu.
The menu should have clickable pages. And the color should change once the user has clicked. There is no need to make the header of the page the user is on clickable. That is, for example, if user is on the HOME page, the menu word, HOME, does not need to be clickable, or “live”. Color specialists and psychologists and advertising professionals have spent hours and hours and money and more money to figure out what colors work best on a website.
Many higher-end advice pages on how to create your own website will give you the stats and demographics (for which ethnicity or gender or age group, for example, is attracted to which colors). There are even cutting-edge, top-o-the-line reports on the latest color scheme successes.
But if you have little time or money, go with solid, crisp, unobtrusive colors and little (or NO) patterns. One picture—in the upper left-hand corner—will suffice. Keep each page clean. Stay left-justified (no paragraph indenting), and break up paragraphs often, using anchor text (that which catches the eye) by BOLD-FACING and using lots of subtitles (also called sub-headers, for the html geniuses). You do not need fancy, groovy, costly whistles, bells, or programs. If you own a pc, you likely have a program already which will be a complete package for building a site and which will also (typically) have a tutorial on how to create your own website. Look for WebBuilder or FrontPage. Read a lot. Read the site pages on how to build your own website at Jakob Neilsen’s site, useit.com/alertbox; Ed Zivkovic’s Work at Home Webmasters, at ezau.com; and even check out Robert Woodhead of Self Promotion.com, who not only gives clear and helpful advice on how to create your own website (keyword needs and all) but also offers a service to help you get your site listed with the major engines when you are done! Good luck and do it well! |
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