Website Design

There are many aspects involved in the process of website design when you want to create web pages that will be displayed on the Internet. In order for pages you create to be displayed on the Internet, they must be written in HTML code. You don’t have to worry that you don’t know how to write this code because there is software available that will do it for you. With your word processing program, when you finish a page and want to save it to a folder you have created for your website, you choose Save as Web Page from the drop down menu at the bottom.

When you open your software, such as Microsoft Front Page or Dreamweaver, just to mention two of the types available, you browse through your folders to find the page you want and paste it into the new screen you have open. The text is automatically written in HTML code for you, which you can check by looking at the HTML page.

One of the features you need to be aware of when designing a website is the people who will be visiting your site. The pages must be easily accessible when they click on the links. If a page takes too long to load, you will lose visitors because the average person allows only a few seconds to elapse before moving on to another site.

Designing a website is somewhat like creating a book where the pages follow each other in sequence. Each page of your website has information related to the topic of the site. The content can provide information users are looking for as well as relevant other sites where thy can make a purchase, if you are selling something from your website. Visitors to your site want it to be user-friendly, which means that it is easy to navigate through. Every site needs to have a menu, either at the top or along the side containing hyperlinks to other pages. By viewing this menu, visitors can see at a glance whether there is anything of interest to them on your website. There are several ways pages on your site can open as well from the simple change from one page to another or something more elaborate like a cascading webpage.

You also need to plan what your site will look like. Graphics add to the ambiance of a site and there are many places online where you can get free Graphics. The software program you use will also have a selection of graphics for you to use or you can upload your own pictures and display them on the site.

The first page of your website is called your Home Page. When you save this page after you create it, you should always do so as default.htm. Then when you want to make changes, you know exactly where to find the page in your folder. Each of the other pages you create must also be saved as .htm.

In order to upload your website to the Internet you need a web host to house the website.