To Make or Not to Make a Website

Have you ever thought of whether you want to or not want to make a website?

YOU WILL NEED:-Determination and patience.{if you have never made a website before, don't expect to be perfect. it takes a lot of time, trials and erros, as well as patience to make websites. If you don't have patience and determination, rethink about making sites because you will likely give up after a while.}

ONE TOPIC:- I stress that because if you have multiple topics, it is confusing for people. Eg, you make a site on Webdesign, then you put a little info on Traveling, and you think that Weather Patterns are fun so you implement that too. People are not going to find exactly what they're looking for if there are 3-5 topics scattered everywhere. When have you ever typed in google: Travelling, Webdesign, Weather? Probably never.

-Programs: Frontpage, Dreamweaver & Photoshop{The most important programs are Microsoft Frontpage or Macromedia Dreamweaver. As well as Adobe Photoshop. If you have no idea how that works, then maybe start with pagebuilders such as ones in geocities that helps you understand how a webpage works.}

CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING

bandwidth-You will need to know that any website takes bandwidth. if you are downloading something off the internet, you are taking bandwidth from the person who created the site. This is usually allocated monthly, and specific amounts of bandwidth is given depending on how much you pay for them. Usually if bandwidth runs out, a website will be down till the next month.

space-Any site needs an adequate amount of space to host your files. For example, if you have a website with many pictures and media, you will need a big amount of space. If your site is small, then you won't need as mnay.

domain-Do you want a proper domain like mysite.com? You usually have to pay annually for those. They include .org .net and .com domains. If you use free ones, they are likely to be something like http://freewebs.com/mysite/index.htm

hosting-Hosting is what keeps your website online, so that people can visit from all over the country. There are free hosting and paid hosting. There are different ranges of prices, as well as space and bandwidth. Good free hosting is VERY hard to find, and I mean extremely difficult. Most times they have annoying pop ups, banner ads, an uploading limit of 500kb (so you cannot upload files bigger than that, limited bandwidth and space, server may be down frequently and others. Paid hosting is the best option if you are serious about your site.

ftp uploading- This took me so long to learn. FTP is a program that connets directly to your computer, so when you upload your website, you won't need to spend time uploading each file individually. If you've uploaded files on photobucket, you'd know what i'm talking about. FTP is easy to learn, and once you connect, you just select a folder and upload.

HOW TO GET STARTED

So you know the basics, and now it's time to get down to the MAKING.

Firstly, do you know anything about html? This stuff is quite easy to learn, at least the basics are. Try looking on google for some tutorials. Or take a course if you're at school on web design. We learned a lot in computer studies on how to make websites, and they teach you step by step how programs like dreamweaver works.

If you want to make good layouts, the first thing is to get inspiration. Go on sites like Aethereality.net and see how they make it. See the different designs, go to your favourite site and see what's so great about their layouts.

Take that back and work on it with photoshop. There are a range of textures that help enhance graphics, and you can download them on many websites.

Make sure you have contents ready. Maybe you would like to make it as you go or have it all up beforehand. If you have the contents ready, such as what pictures you want, what text, then it will be easier once you start your website.

Save regularly. When you make websites, it's important that you perhaps make a few copies of the page before you want to test things out. Incase you absoutely stuff one up, which I've done countless times, and realise you don't have a backup, then all your previous work would be wasted. Sometimes when you're unsure what could go wrong, best to save a few copies of the same file, perhaps in different folders.

Think about your navigation, whether you want it on the layout on top, or the side. Maybe even have a rough sketch of how you want your site to look like.Test it on internet explorer or whatever browser you use, sometimes what displays on the webmaking program is very different from what it looks like on the browser.Save your files in one folder especially for that website. You could have subfolders for individual pages if you'd like, but save them all under a folder and give it the name of your website, or else it would be hard to find.

IMPORTANT POINTS TO CONSIDER

-Do not COPY AND PASTE Information from other sites! People spend a lot of time and effort on their webpage and it isn't fair if their contents were taken to another site without credit or a link back, or without the permission of the webmaster. If you really like information from a site, please either email them, or credit them. -Think of some original contents. Put something different on your site, if all the sites are exactly the same, then it would be pointless to visit them all. If there are different things, even your own writing or creation would attract more visitors.

-Keep your layout consistent. Don't change layouts for every page, if you do that, it is very confusing and people would probably think they're entering a new site. If you have a special section devoted for a specific category, then that is fine.

-Don't put background images everywhere, especially ones with pictures. If you see text over an image, is that easy to read? Probably not. When I come across sites like that, they seriously hurt my eyes literally, and I'd need to select the text to read it carefully, so please be aware!-Is your background colour matching your text? If your background is a bright green, and your text is a yellow, that's beyond impossible for anyone to read.

-Make sure your site doesn't have too many popups. If I enter a site and each page brings me 6 pop up ads, and it takes me longer to close them than to navigate, I'd probably give up because I wouldn't have the patience to close them all before more pops up.

-Try not to stretch the page out with a very large layout or big text. It may be frustrating trying to scroll all directions just to read a few words. Test it on a 800x600 screen resolution, if that doesn't stretch too much, then you'll be fine.

-Make sure you DO NOT direct link from other websites. You read about bandwidth and how people have to pay, is it really fair if you steal their bandwidth? No! So upload things onto your own server, instead of putting a link to your site of a video clip that is not on your server.