HTML - Help With A Website And Design.

Hey Chaps, Being a professional web designer, I used to read articles in this discipline and recently got a superb one and thought of sharing it with you..

Here are 15 important website design tips that you might not be aware of or have overlooked. Consider taking advantage of them if you haven't already done so...

1. Custom 404 Pages
Create a custom 404 web page, so that any time your website visitor mistypes or misspells a URL on your site, they will still be provided with navigation options for your site (instead of getting nothing but a "Page Not Found" error message, which is neither friendly or helpful).

2. Redirect Non-www. To www.
Website visitors will often leave out the "www." portion when they type a URL or link to your website. Set the website up so that it automatically redirects any non-www version of your domain URLs (http://domain. com) to the www version (http://www.domain. com) of your website.

3. Properly Sized Graphics
Size and define all graphics and images on your web pages properly and correctly. Web pages will load quicker if the graphics contained on each page are properly defined so they don't require the web browser to re-size them. Properly sized and defined images can reduce the web browser workload and speed up the page loading time.

4. Favicon
Add a Favicon (favorite icon) to your website, so that your company or product logo appears in the URL box. This icon will also show up in a bookmark list, and gives the web site an added level of professionalism.

5. Include RSS Auto-Discovery
If you offer an RSS feed for any content on your website, be sure to include auto-discovery code in the header of your website. This will allow many browsers and RSS readers to automatically detect the presence of an RSS feed and alert the visitor that it is available.

6. Alternate Domains
Domain names are relatively inexpensive, so you should register multiple domain versions and extensions in order to protect your brand. The varied domains can be parked on the main website, simply to prevent others from obtaining them. Registering alternate domain versions will help protect your brand.

7. Consistent Navigation
Navigation should remain consistent on a website. As a website visitor moves through the website, the navigation bar should remain in the same place on each page. This will make it easier for visitors to navigate your website, and become more comfortable as they move through your site.

8. Home Goes Home
The main graphic, company logo, or "header" at the top of the site should be included on every page in the site, and should always return the visitor to the home page of the website. This has become a web standard, and most visitors now expect to return to the main page of the site simply by clicking on the main top graphic from any page within the site.

9. Copyright Notice
Include a copyright notice on the bottom of each page contained on the website, and keep it current! It may seem trivial, but an out-of-date copyright notice can send a message to your visitors that the website and its content may be out-of-date as well.

10. Meaningful File Names
Use meaningful file names for any files, graphics, or web pages. Many search engines look at file names as part of their search algorithm, and using keywords in file names may help to improve search engine rankings.

11. Hyphens vs Underscores
When naming files and webpages, use hyphens (i.e. web-page.html) rather than underscores (i.e. web_page.html) for the file names. It is much easier for search engines to separate and index the keywords when hyphens are used.

12. Alt Tags
Use ALT tags to describe what images represent on web pages. ALT tags not only assist visually-impaired visitors in knowing what the images are, but they also help with search engine ranking.

13. Spell Check
Use a spell-check feature on the text of all web pages in a website. A website that contains mistyped or misspelled words just shouts "unprofessional". Take the extra few minutes necessary to check the spelling of text on each page of your website.

14. Test
After making changes to a website, test it! Many times, a webmaster will upload changes, confident in their abilities, only to later discover that in their attempt to fix one thing, they have "broken" something somewhere else. Make testing a habit after making even the most minor changes!

15. Keep It Simple
Simple is good. Remove unnecessary clutter and distractions from a website and navigation menu.

...
Good luck mate..

TIA for your response.

Hi everyone!

I've been away for quite a while and I'm very happy to see things are still up and running around here

It's been a fairly long time since I've focused on website development. However I find myself back in the saddle and ready to shine away my rustyness


Over the past several months I have noticed many sites around the world changing their website designs to a more image oriented design and with eye-pleasing results to many of their visitors.

Does anybody know if there is some sort of "website design standards" that came out detailing these new kinds of websites?

@Scoutt: I bet you know right off the top of your head



--
Thanks in Advance everyone!
ucm

Ok I need to take things like this forum:

http://lmiinc.com/forum/

http://lmiinc.com/forum/calendar.php

And make it active on the new site I'm building for LMI.

So what files exactly do I need to copy to the new directory & then reference as a link in my navigation bar in all of my .html files?

Hi there

Sorry, i don't know if this is the correct section of the forum to put this in.

What I really want to know is, how do you get webpages to look like this:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/lov...ign-mpt=uo%3D2

Can this be done using HTML and CSS alone?

I'm only referring to the design part of it, not what the page is able to do. Like play songs for example.

Thanks
Jackie xxx

I know HTML pretty good and I can get by w/ CSS - but what else should I know for web design?

Hey guys, This is my problem...--->

http://triplestarnews.com/needhelp.jpg

the original code is found on this page http://triplestarnews.com/main

any ideas??

thanks!

Eric

Hi!

I had my test webpage where i test my designs, scripts etc. working well but then my little brother change some stuff in both the html file and css file, I already fixed a lot but I don't know what's wrong now.

HTML Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>ComBBAT  - FRC Team 21</title>
<link href="http://demo.combbat21.com/css/general.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen, all"/>
<link href="http://demo.combbat21.com/css/img.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen"/>
<link href="http://demo.combbat21.com/css/print.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print"/>
<meta name="description" content="ComBBAT, Team 21 is a FIRST Robotics Competition team consisting of both Titusville and Astronaut Highschools in Titusville, Florida." />
<meta name="keywords" content="USFirst, robotics, titusville, brevard, florida, FRC, ASRC, boeing, FIRST, ComBBAT, team 21, govconnection, team, competition, FIRST, first," />
<meta name="author" content="Daniel Cuesta" />
<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="http://files.combbat21.com/website/images/favicon.ico" />
<!--[if IE]>
<style type="text/css"> 
</style>
<![endif]-->
<!--JAVASCRIPTS-->
<script type=text/javascript"" src="http://demo.combbat21.com/js/addfav.js"></script>
<script language="JavaScript1.1" src="http://demo.combbat21.com/js/slidehome.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://demo.combbat21.com/js/report.js"></script>
</head>
<!--|| -->
<body>
  <div id="container">
   <div class="br10"></div>
    <div id="top">
     <ul>
<li><a href="http://m.combbat21.com">mobile</a></li>
<li><a href="javascript: function('addfav')" >Bookmark us</a></li>
<li><a href="http://members.combbat21.com">login</a></li>
</ul>
             </div>
      <div id="header">
       <a href="../../../" id="logo" title="Home"></a>
        <a href="../../../" id="name" title="Home"></a>
         <a href="http://usfirst.org" id="first" title="FIRST" target="_blank"></a>
                                  </div>
              <div id="navbar">
 <ul>
  <li><a href="http://combbat21.com" id="n1" class="active">Home</a></li>
  <li><a href="first/">FIRST</a></li>  
  <li><a href="about/">About us</a></li>
  <li><a href="multimedia/">Multimedia</a></li>
  <li><a href="resources/">Resources</a></li>
  <li><a href="contact/">Contact us</a></li>
 </ul>
    </div>
    <div id="breaker"><!--
<span class="pathway">You are he </span><a href="../../../../">Combbat21.com</a>
<div id="search">
<form name="cse" id="searchbox_demo" action="http://www.google.com/cse">
  <input tabindex="3" class="txt" name="q" value="" title="Search" /><input type="image" id="searchB" name="submit" src="http://files.combbat21.com/website/images/search-button.gif"/></form>
-->
</div>
</div>
    <div id="rightcol">
          <ul>
            <li><a href="about/">about combbat</a></li>
             <li><a href="first/">about first</a></li>
            <li><a href="news/">news</a></li>
            <li><a href="blog/">blog</a></li>
            <li><a href="calendar/">calendar</a></li>
            <li><a href="donate/">donate</a></li>
            <li><a href="sitemap/">sitemap</a></li>
          </ul>
       </div>
       <div id="leftcol">
<a href="javascript:gotoshow()"><img src=".jpg" name="slide" border=0 width=100% height=100%></a>
<script> 
<!--
slideshowimages("http://files.combbat21.com/website/images/slideshow/1.jpg","http://files.combbat21.com/website/images/slideshow/2.jpg","http://files.combbat21.com/website/images/slideshow/3.jpg","food4.jpg","food5.jpg")
slideshowlinks("http://food.epicurious.com/run/recipe/view?id=13285","http://food.epicurious.com/run/recipe/view?id=10092","http://food.epicurious.com/run/recipe/view?id=100975","http://food.epicurious.com/run/recipe/view?id=2876","http://food.epicurious.com/run/recipe/view?id=20010")
 
var slideshowspeed=2000
 
var whichlink=0
var whichimage=0
function slideit(){
if (!document.images)
return
document.images.slide.src=slideimages[whichimage].src
whichlink=whichimage
if (whichimage<slideimages.length-1)
whichimage++
else
whichimage=0
setTimeout("slideit()",slideshowspeed)
}
slideit()
 
//-->
</script>
<noscript>In order to see the slideshow you must enable javascripts</noscript>
 
</div>
        <div id="content">
<a href="" onClick="window.print(); return false">
 <img src="http://files.combbat21.com/website/images/print.png" title="Print" alt="print button" class="tb"></a> 
         <h2>Welcome to combbat21.com</h2> 
<p>FIRST Robotics Competition Team 21 was started in 1996 to share and expand FIRST's vision with students of Astronaut and Titusville High Schools in Titusville, Fl. Our mentors, Scott Strickland from Boeing, James Rallo from Upper Mohawk Inc, Stephen Stout from ASRC Aerospace, Kevin Cunningham from USA, and Jeff White, assist the ever-expanding team of high school students design, construct, and program a fully functional ~120 lb robot and facilitate the development of important life skills such as teamwork, communication, and leadership. </p>
    </div> 
   <div id="sponsors">
    <p>The FIRST Robotics Team 21 gracefully thanks its sponsors:</p>
     <a href="" target="_blank" id="boeing"></a> 
      <a href="" target="_blank" id="govc"></a>
       <a href="" target="_blank" id="asrc"></a>
    </div>
    <div id="footer">
 <ul>
   <li><a href="/chforum">chief delphi forum</a></li>
   <li><a href="/mobile">mobile</a></li>
   <li><a href="link/">link to us</a></li>
   <li><a href="sitemap/">sitemap</a></li>
   <li><a href="sponsorus/">sponsor us</a></li>
   <li><a href="contact/">contact us</a></li>
  </ul> 
   </div>
    <div id="end">
<a href="javascript:popUp('http://www.demo.combbat21.com/report')">Report</a>
</div>
     <div align="center"><!--needed for ff-->
      <div id="bottom">
       <p>FRC Team ComBBAT 21. Copyright &copy; 2010. All rights reserved.</p>
    </div>
</div>
  </div>
</body>
</html> 

css:www.demo.combbat21.com/css/general.css
Thanks a lot to anyone that replies.

Bottom image pulls up nicely on FF and Safari. However there is a thin line that breaks the 2 background images.

Try on IE9

http://www.seahosting.net

Please help

What's the best book to learn web design please? I was leaning towards the Head First Web Design book but don't like most of the reviews on it even though I love the other Head First books, is this the best book on web design or is there any other[s] that's better?

Hi i'm designing a static sub menu and thought it would be cool to get suggestions on what approaches you guys would take. The reason i'm asking is because i'd like to see if my approach exhibits efficient coding.

This is an image mockup of what i'm trying to achieve.



And this is what i'm thinking of doing.




Thanks in advance guys.

I got into this about 5/6 years ago when I had to design a basic site for school so taught myself some CSS, we were using dreamweaver.

I've been wanting to get back into it recently and was just wondering best way to do this? I was thinking about experimenting with maybe wordpress or another CMS.

I'd like to get back into a bit of photoshop or fireworks as well not sure where I'll find the time but eventually maybe.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Im not so good with HTML or CSS. Can someone please help me make this layout? I will put in the contents myself I just need some div type layout. Can anyone please help me? =( . I just need the HTML file and CSS and I will use it as a template for my other pages. Thank you

Hey all..

I'm having a difficult time trying to figure out what to do with my header area:

http://showball.com

Any suggestions? If certainly needs something more then there is now, there's to much empty space. Any thoughts would be certainly welcome. I seem to be a little stymied with this one..

Thanks
David

Its Look:
Your site looks fresh and modern, while maintaining the same brand image you're offline. Choose the same colors for your website if you use in other marketing materials, and the same logo. The site must be visually appealing, with many interesting features, but not too finicky or distracting. The layout should be easy to understand, let visitors to the site easy to navigate to the pages they want.
Put Your Customers First
Thinking about search engines and how your page rank in Google is great, but there is no point if your visitors will simply click away from your site within a few seconds of landing. Your goal is to convert visitors into customers, so make sure your site is customer friendly. Keep popular items and contact information easy to find and keep multiple menus where visitors click a few links to find the information they need to bury your site structure.
Do not Be spammy
This follows from the above point, that your site must be designed primarily for visitors with SEO as a secondary consideration. Not stuff your pages full of keywords so that the content does not make sense. You also need to clearly send the wrong tactics such as adding a list of keywords to the bottom of your pages, and cluttering the site with too much advertising.
Make it quick
Online visitors want information fast, and they have no patience to wait while a large image or fancy graphics load. Make sure your pages load quickly, with key information charging first. If you have large files or videos, put them in a position where the reader can still browse the rest of the page, while the larger elements to load. If you have a Flash site to think about offering an alternative simple html link for visitors with slow Internet connection.
Do your homework
Think long and hard about your audience before you search
Use Neat and Easy Navigation
You make sure your site is browser compatible
Minimize the use of images
Use of white space
Check for broken links
Design for all Screen Resolution
Typography
Colors use good
Layout make perfect
Fast Loading web site designs.
Clear Navigation.
Browser Compatibility.

Hi:

Currently, I'm making my web pages 'by hand'. That is, I use an editor, and laboriously crank out and test my pages on IE, safari, FireFox and Opera.

But this is agonizingly slowwwwww !

What tools do *professional* webbers use to build sites ??

What would you folks here suggest as a useful tool for web-building that would speed up my building, but result in clean editable pages ?

(btw, I'm an expert database man, but quit a neophyte in web design.)

My 'forte' is building Windows business applications (Inventory, Accounting, etc, etc) using xBase database software (i.e., the xHarbour language).

I can hardly wait until I can get 'behind-the-scenes' and do database work to back up my (pathetic) designs.

Thanks for any hints.

-Mel Smith
Mesa, Arizona