In today's high-speed world, everyone is on the fast track to learn more on how to build a website, information on home business opportunities and work-at-home jobs. The number of entrepreneurs has risen impressively over the last five years. Many working mothers have ditched the cubical for the comfort of their home with their children. Website design is an integral part of that transition for many mom entrepreneurs.
Web design isn't rocket science. It is a step-by-step process that many business owners simply do not have time to do. This gives home businesses and work-at-home employees the opportunity to earn a respectable income from home. Outsourcing website design projects to home-based workers is also a less expensive route for business owners. Website design languages like HTML may look like foreign languages to someone who doesn't understand them. In reality, both languages are quite easy to master, given time.
Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML, is the most widely used and most widely acceptable website design language. HTML uses tags, less-than and greater-than signs, to tell the web browser how to lay out the content of the page. For example, to create distinct paragraphs on a webpage, the designer would type the less-than sign, the letter p and the greater-than sign. This may look odd to someone who doesn't understand the idea behind it, but it's fully understandable to web browsers.
Tags, tables and graphics are very important additions to any website. Keep in mind that the average person stays at a website for no more than 45 seconds at a time. Make your website attractive enough and informative enough to keep them interested. Several studies also report that people don't stay on websites with too many flashy banners that distract them from the ultimate goal. Remember, sometimes less is more.
Successful website design doesn't start with code. Like any business venture, it starts with an idea. Anyone can learn to put code together and create a decent looking website. It takes someone with drive and determination to create a successful website. Before you type the first tag or the first line of code, take a look at the bigger picture. The first step shouldn't be writing code.
The first step should be defining your niche. Discover what your website should be about and refine that idea. Once you've decided what type of content should be on your website, you're free to consider the layout. Decide whether your website will consist of text only or a combination of photos and text. You also need to define other aspects of the layout, such as the menu. Will the menu be on the left, right, top or bottom of the website? Everything is up to you.
Once you have a plan in place, decide what programming languages are required to achieve your goals. If you don't currently have the programming knowledge to build your website from scratch, try a website builder or host. Some hosts offer very well-built templates that fit a wide variety of needs.
Build your website using the most efficient template, not necessarily the most popular. Sometimes the most popular template is over-used and viewers tend to think the site is too generic. Generic sites do not receive the attention a specifically written site receives. Sites that look different and present new content are always looked upon more favorably.
Another feature some hosting sites offer is search engine submission. Not only can you build your website using pre-formed templates, you don't even have to worry about submission to search engines. This is a very attractive alternative for entrepreneurs who know what they want but are unfamiliar with website design languages.
Hosting sites that offer templates will often offer hints and tips along the way. Their tips and templates will help streamline your website in effort to attract targeted traffic to your website.
When you have decided that you need a website you find yourself at the next logical step. How do I build a website? From the perspective of someone who has not build a website before this must seem like a daunting task. However, it's not that hard and there are many options for someone who wants to learn how to build a website.
Since you probably want someone to host your website anyway you might as well try to find out if they have site builder software. Almost since the beginning of the internet there have been web hosts with build in site building software. Usually this kind of software will let you choose from a number of different templates. When you've picked your template it's just a matter of adding content to your website. However, you should be aware that this will probably not give you a website that looks terribly unique.
Another option is to use a html editor with a build in wysiwig editor. Wysiwig is geek talk for, what you see is what you get. Dreamweaver is a really good example of this type of software. It allows you to drag and drop elements into your website. In many ways it works just like a word processing tool like Microsoft office. The main difference is that you have a far greater number of options. In the beginning this is a good way to build your website. However, in my opinion if you want to learn how to build a website you might as well do it from scratch.
That means learning HTML. Html is short for HyperText Markup Language. Every single website you look at on the internet is written in html. Sure there are often other scripting and programming languages involved, but at heart it's all html. One way to do it would be to create your website with a wysiwig editor as mentioned above and then look at the code it generates. I recommend having a good html reference handy when you do that.
If you want to do simple tasks there are plenty of good html books on the market. I personally got started in the business because I picked up "HTML For Dummies" for a school project. A book like that with small step-by-step examples and maybe a few tasks for the reader are a great way to get started if you ask me.
The main problem with "plain" HTML files are managing them. By managing them I mean updating the content on your website. That's where content management systems come in handy. A content management system is basically a website that can be maintained by a webmaster without the technical knowledge that is otherwise required. In other words, with a content management system you don't need to learn how to build a website.
However if you wish to be able to customize the look and feel of your website I still highly recommend taking up html. In the end you will only benefit from it.
There is also plenty of site building software on the market today. A lot of it is highly customized for specific purposes. Currently a special kind of scraping software know as "scraping software" is very popular. The idea behind this kind of software is that it will not only help you build your website, it will also find content for you based on specific keywords decided by you. They do this by "scraping" article directories for content matching the keywords you entered. It's an easy way to build a website and most of this software will also let you enter your own content in some way. Again, however, it's not always easy to customize the look and feel of these sites.
The initial question, how to build a website, can be answered in numerous ways. It depends very much on what you want to do with your website. Do you want to get as many websites running as fast as possible? Do you want to be able to maintain a high quality website easily? Or is it just as much a matter of running a small family website? What you should do really depends on how you answer that question.
If you just want to build a simple website using a wysiwig editor or an editor provided by your web host is a perfectly viable option. If you need to have full control over the look and feel of your website I recommend that you learn some html.
Both Joseph Nyamache & Mike Nielsen are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.