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Helpful Hints For Web Page Building 1. Resist the temptation to use a dark background (such as black), and bright text (such as red). Although at first, it seems to look cool and different, long term exposure causes eye fatigue. After all, the whole idea is to keep the viewer on the site as long as possible. Stick to a light background with a contrasting dark font. Of course, there are exceptions, and this is one of the lessons that I had the hardest time with. 2. Stick to a font that is easy to read, such as "Arial" or "Verdana". Using fonts that are difficult to read may look cool at first, but the goal is to get your message across. 3. Be consistent in the overall theme of your site. This includes not only colors, but the layout. Most importantly would be the navigation. Make your links clear and accessible. 4. Do not load your pages up with needless graphics. This will only slow down the loading of the page. The rule of thumb is, you want the page to load in 10 seconds or less for a 56k dialup viewer (yes, they are still out there). By putting huge photo files, or too many animated (GIF) images, you may lose viewers before they even get to see your site. 5. DO NOT hotlink to graphics like photos, dividers, or GIF images that are on somebody else's site. This uses their bandwidth, and cuts into their quotas. When a lot of people do that, it can shut a site down. If you like an image, right click on it, and save it to your computer. The only exception is with a banner or button, where you are given permission to link to an image. 6. Avoid FFA (free for all) sites. These sites allow you to submit your site and supposedly obtain thousands of links with one submission. What you will get is spam! Some search engines even frown on FFA listing links. So overall I see no benefit to this. 7. Get a good virus protection program and keep it up to date. A lot of hard work can be lost by one innocent click. (or with no clicks, like the love-san virus, or the new jpeg virus!) This is mandatory! 8. This may seem like common sense, but if you don't already have one, get a surge protector. Power outages and lightning strikes can cause mayhem. Better yet, get a battery backup system. A sudden power outage and shutdown not only loses your work, but can damage your hard drive. 9. BACK UP YOUR WORK! If you are like me, you make changes on your site almost every day. Copy your site to some type of removable storage device. If you have to, at least view your website, then "Copy and Paste" the pages to Microsoft Word or Notepad. 10. Put "Meta Tags" on all the pages on your site. This will increase your chances of being found by search engines. Make your tags specific to the page they are on. Then you need to make sure you have a link back to your home page from any page your viewer may arrive at your site. Then submit your site to search engines.. CLICK HERE 11. Put a "counter" on your website (preferably on your index page). A Bravenet counter will tell you how your visitors were referred to your site. This will also tell you what your viewers entered in their search browser to find your site. This information can be used to monitor similar sites, and help you modify your "meta tags" and "keywords" and gain even more traffic. CLICK HERE to get a Bravenet counter. More do's and don'ts. CLICK HERE.
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