Your Website - Make It Yourself!

Your Website - Make It Yourself! by James Schramko

Many of you, your friends and colleagues have begun to find out just how easy it is (with the right software) to make your own website. Armed with the proper tools and tutorials, most of us can design and publish a simple website in less than an hour.

Advanced tools allow you to place professional features on your site and the better programs will have an extensive template library that allows you to have a site that looks like it was created by a professional graphic designer. With the use of templates, a site styled for you - all you need to do is add the content, then publish.

The publishing step is often the most daunting for newcomers, but if you really want to make your own website, you should be empowered to do this by your software.

What Do I Need To Publish?

First of all, it is important to note that your website design software is not server software. You need to register a domain name, and sign up with a web hosting service before publishing your website.

Registering your domain name will cost around $10-15, and your web host will charge you a monthly fee depending on which plan you select. Once you've done this, you'll find yourself with a web address and some basic log-in and password information.

In the old days, you'd have to go jump through a few hoops, set up a few extra uploading programs, and place your website on the server piece by piece. The good news is that these are times of user-friendly software, and the best ones ensure it as easy to upload your site as it is to create - read on...

Wizards Take It From There

When you're ready to publish your website, on your software's publishing page you simply need to enter just 5 pieces of information that you received when you registered your domain name and web hosting service.

Once that is done, you can publish your website at anytime with only two clicks! Imagine that! Should you decide you need to make some changes and want to get the new pages onto your website fast - no worries there, just a couple of mouse clicks and its done.

A progress window will inform you of how long the upload will take, and when its done, that window has a button that takes you directly to the site so you can review your work.

Keep It Organized

The best website software program gives you complete control over your website. From its file manager interface you can easily sort through all the files on your website (including images, audio, video, and others). This very handy and simple to use tool helps you monitor it all.

It is really bad business to skimp on software once you have decided to make your own website. By buying a package that is not only user-friendly, but powerful enough to grow with you, you will free yourself from the frustration that used to accompany creating and publishing your own website.



Be sure to get a bonus when you buy Xsitepro, the world's most user-friendly website design program - ideal for first-timers and experienced internet marketers alike.

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Using Flash Grid Navigation To Break The Mould

Using Flash Grid Navigation To Break The Mould by Pete Nisbet

Flash grid navigation will turn an ordinary looking website in to a triumph of modern design and navigation technology, that your visitors will be loathe to leave. Your stick rate will increase significantly, as your visitors enjoy navigating your site using this fantastic-looking navigation option.

If you're thinking about developing a website with images displayed, such as a photo gallery or thumbnail page, one of the things you really should consider is a form of interactive grid navigation using Flash. There's no doubt that if you get in early and take advantage of this very new style of delivery and presentation you will make sure your website not only stands out from the rest, but doesn't suffer from the same drawbacks other gallery websites do.

Thanks to the fact that most people now have broadband internet access, and the fact that the majority of cameras people are using are now digital, it has never been easier to get your images on the web for people to see. Whether that might be your own personal images of friends and family, or a showcase for your photography company, a gallery says a lot - after all, a picture paints a thousand words, and it's unlikely that people are going to choose reading a thousand words compared to looking at a few pictures that do the job just as well.

In fact, whatever your site or business, a gallery can say a lot. If you're in the design or fashion business, images of rooms or outfits that you have produced can say a great deal to visitors who may be unfamiliar with what you offer. If you're a school, then images of the grounds, the classrooms and of some of the activities and resources available will help to give a much better and more positive impression than words alone.

But galleries that do not take the form of a grid navigation structure using Flash tend to suffer from the same common problem, and that is the usual dilemma of whether to go for quantity of thumbnails, or size. Because the issue is that if you publish dozens of thumbnails, in order to fit them on the page you need to reduce them to a very small size, in which case, they're hardly recognisable and therefore of very little interest. On the other hand, if you include thumbnails that are suitably large, then you're limited to how many you can actually fit on a page, and so your range is not as enticing.

The other issue that you face is that once a visitor clicks on one of these thumbnails, they are taken away from the thumbnail gallery and to a page where the one picture they've selected is displayed. If the picture they've chosen is very appealing and exactly the sort of thing they're after, then you're in luck, and they may go back to the thumbnail gallery and choose another image. However, if the image isn't quite what they're after, then they may well simply close the page and go somewhere else; you've just lost a potential customer due to poor site structure.

Had you used a Flash grid navigation system then the chances are very small that this would have happened, and you are far more likely to have retained your potential customer for longer - perhaps long enough to tempt them to place an order.

So how does a grid navigation system work, or rather, what does it look like for the visitor, and how does that differ from a normal thumbnail gallery? To begin with the web page will look very much like any other gallery of thumbnails, although these needn't be in a traditional grid formation, but could be stacked in a pyramid or other shape. The images can be of good quality, and not too small - a good balance between quantity and size.

The difference between standard thumbnail galleries and a Flash based grid navigation occurs when the visitor clicks a thumbnail. Rather than being transferred away from the gallery, instead the image that they clicked on grows larger in a smooth, animated and dynamic way, simultaneously pushing all of the other images away, reducing the size of them to fit the image clicked on.

By then clicking on the image that has been enlarged, it reduces back down to its original thumbnail size, returning to its position in the grid, and allowing all of the other images to increase back to their original size and realign themselves within the original grid. This dynamic arrangement creates an interactive experience which not only keeps the visitor in the gallery section, rather than hiding all unselected pictures, but provides them with a surprise that encourages them to explore this interactive function, meaning they're far more likely to see more of the images in the gallery than they might otherwise have done,

In other words, incorporating a Flash grid navigation system for your gallery keeps visitors on your gallery page, rather than sending them off to other pages that only show a single image, and provide an experience which will intrigue them and encourage a more active interest in your page, and potentially, an increase in orders placed.



For more information on how to use Flash to jazz up your website and provide your customers with a great website experience, check out http://www.flashloaded.com - You will not be disappointed.

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What is the Future of the Internet and What Will it Hold for Us?

What is the Future of the Internet and What Will it Hold for Us? by Mark Hirst

As a novice web designer this question probably looms in your head. What are the ways to be a better web designer? Mastering the visual design, usability, utilization, and coding are some of the most important issues to have an effective design implementation of web site. Aside from those issues, however, knowing the basic details is an important element of essential web design; either you are just starting to work as web designer or a professional one.

Some of the most essential things every web designers should know:

Know your goal. As a web designer, what is your first goal that comes into your mind when building a website? Maybe, making money online or to tell a story with a personal website on the web. But wanting and building a good web site is another one. Your first goal therefore is to have an effective web design. In marketing sense, a poor web design has no sales. And no sale means no traffic and no visitors. A poor design is as good as a web site not existing.

Build a website and keep it simple. We always heard this dictum that simplicity is beauty. Simplicity must always be the first guiding principle when you start thinking and developing your ideas to your website. With all the tools and technology are just within our reach, it must be attempting to build a complex web design. This is a no-no. Visiting readers visits a website to find information and it always their instant gratification that guides them. They demand you to give them the information as fast and clearly as possible. Failure to meet their expectation to your website, there is always the back button they can hit and you would likely lose your visitors because of poor implementation of your website.

Know the HTML. If you aspire to be a better web designer in this field, master your HTML. HTML is the right tool to have an effective web design. This will help you execute properly your ideas that will make your website worthwhile and interactive to visitors.

If you don't know a single thing about HTML, there is always the Google search engine that can help you have some basic knowledge about HTML. You can search for online tutorial (like w3school tutorial for HTML) and start studying HTML with your own risk.

Use basic fonts. In web design there are fonts that are considered to be web safe. These web safe fonts like "Helvetica", "Arial", and "Time New Roman" are widely used and installed for every computer. When you use a font that your visitors do not have installed in the computer, the web browser will choose default fallback fonts. These fallback fonts will likely destroy your website's layout and make the content difficult to read.

Stick with standard layout. A flash-basedweb sitecreates an impression of creativity. However,most Internet users nowadays expect a conventional layout. Understand that your visitors hate to wait and flash-based layout takes time to upload. With conventional layout, you can be certain that it does not slow down the browsing process and helps maintain a good user interface.

Keep your images small. Try to design your website with graphics small in file size. The lower the file size of images, the faster the loading process of your web site. Save the images with graphic formats such as jpeg, GIF, or PNG extension.

Keep your code clean. Learn the proper technique of coding HTML. Keeping your HTML's code clean helps your site to load faster and conserve bandwidth.

Avoid distracting elements on your page. Design your web page with balance between those animated gifs and flashy advertisement. Place them in a proper table in a way that it is not distracting and annoying to visitors.



For more information on web design visit here.

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