20 website tips
Note: these tips are listed in no particular order.1) Make sure that all your visitors can see your site correctly. "Best viewed on Internet Explorer, 1024 x 768", for example, is a no-no. Who will switch browser to go on your site? Nobody. Visitors will just click the red X. Check out this site: http://www.browsershots.org to see if your site works well on Firefox, Explorer, Safari, etc.
2) Use all the resources available. No money to buy Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, FTP software, HTML editor, etc.? Tired of 30 days trials? It's not a big deal! The free alternatives below should satisfy you.
| The expensive way | The cheap way |
| Photoshop | The GIMP |
| PaintShop Pro | Photofiltre |
| Microsoft Frontpage | Coffee Cup |
| Smart FTP | WS_FTP LE |
3) Blog regularly. There's nothing more boring than a dead site, even if you have great content. You don't have to blog everyday, once a week is fine.
4) Experiment and learn. You can always learn something new! Read some tutorials, even professionals do so, because there is always place for amelioration. Don't be afraid to experiment new techniques. Imagination and experimentation are the key to originality. Dare to try something new!
5) When you comment on a site, take time to read the blog properly. Give your opinion on the main subjects or things that made you react. It's generally very appreciated and you'll get a nicer comment in return. You'll develop better relations with other web-designers.
6) Avoid advertising or make sure that it doesn't disturb the visitor. A small banner on your sidebar is ok, but pop-ups are very annoying, especially when there is one every time the visitor clicks on a page. Also, be careful about your advertising, you don't want to link the visitor to a red site…
7) Use proper grammar. A couple of mistakes here and there is acceptable, but make sure that it doesn't bother the reader. Avoid slang, full sentences in capitals, MSN language and swearing. Don't use too many exclamation or interrogation marks to express something, one is fine. You could also use smileys instead. Try to use adequately punctuation marks.
8) Make your blogs interesting. Visitors don't really care about what you ate for breakfast or about all your updates… Try to find a style that suits your personality: sarcastic, realistic, a bit dramatic, funny, etc. What makes a blog unique is the person beyond it, so don't try to copy other writing styles. Also, quality is better than quantity.
9) Be mature and respectful. Don't leave rude and anonymous messages on other sites, leave constructive comments with your site instead. That way, the other web-designers will probably take your advice in consideration and thank you, instead of banning your IP and deleting your comment. Also, don't put a wall of shame on your site. Try to email the stealer privately and ask him to remove the stolen material. Note down his site somewhere and check back to see that he did remove it. That way, you'll contribute to putting him back on the right track instead of giving him hits.
10) Always give credits. Giving credits is a must, otherwise you could be labeled "stealer"! For a layout, tell where you took the pictures, the brushes, the textures, the fonts or anything else you used, like a tutorial. Don't claim anything as your own, you could get in big trouble.
11) Avoid using celebrity pictures. Using celebrity pictures is a big copyright infringement. The photographer should get money and he doesn't, if you take the picture from fan sites, Sweet & Talented, magazines, etc. I hear you thinking: "Yes, but everyone uses them and nobody ever get caught!" Well, how is it original to use them, then? If you really want to use them legally, you can use the pictures of www.gettyimages.com. For non-commercial use, it's not expensive.
12) Don't close your site for revamp. If you want to do a revamp, leave your site accessible or you'll lose visitors. A first-time visitor won't come back two days after to check if your site is open and if you have a new layout. Instead, create a test page to try your layout and modify it. Then, just copy/paste the new code into your header or index file.
13) Don't follow the internet trends. Where is the originality if you do so? Celebrity layouts, bubble layouts and scribble layouts are examples of what everybody is/was using. To make your site stand out, try to find a unique idea. If nobody has it on his site, it's not "uncool", it's original! Visitors prefer to use a unique resource on their material rather than something that was seen again and again.
14) Make your site readable. Prefer simple and professional fonts that make the distinction between uppercase and lowercase. Here are some of the best fonts: Arial, Gill Sans MT, MS Reference Sans Serif, Tahoma, Verdana. Use font-family instead of font, to make sure that your visitor won't see a default font if he doesn't have the main font you chose. Also, make sure that the police is big enough: 11 or 12 is perfect. Check if the color of the text is not too light or difficult to read on the background.
15) Don't use depressive or hyper layouts. Avoid very dark layout and pictures, it will just depress or scare the visitor. Come on, you have an infinite choice of colors! A colorful picture on a dark background is great, though. There is another side too… Don't use flashy colors, it will hurt the visitor's eyes!
16) Organize your site correctly. Make the navigation easy to find and the other pages too. Prefer a nice and clean sidebar next to your blog or a navigation at the top of the page. Also, don't have too many subpages, it will annoy the visitor.
17) Prefer PHP to Iframes. If you have a Freewebs, you don't have the choice, but if you have a subdomain or a domain, you should really consider switching. The main advantage of PHP is that the visitor can go directly to a page and still sees the layout. With Iframes, the visitor will be left on a page with no layout and no way to go back to the homepage. Switching is easy and there are a lot of tutorials!
18) Use nice color schemes. Don't use too many contrasting colors, it will hurt your visitor's eyes. A great way to make a color scheme is to use this tool: http://www.gpeters.com/color/color-schemes.php. You type a keyword (mist, blue, tree, orange…) and it will get the prominent colors from five images from Yahoo related to your keyword.
19) Don't leave fake comments on other websites to get more hits. An example is "I love your site!" Take the time to look on the person's site and find real reasons why you love her site. The owner will be most likely to comment back if it's not a copied/pasted message that he saw on ten other sites...
20) Choose your site name carefully. Remember that you'll have it for a while! Don't use a site namer, please, it's absolutely not original. Choose a short and sweet name or a name that means something to you. Explain in your site section where does your site name comes from, if it's a combination of words or if it's something personal.