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General discussion

new to web design

Jul 27, 2007 9:30AM PDT

I'm just getting into web design and I just wanted to know a few things.

First off is there anything that I should definitely avoid putting into my site. Secondly what really are the determining factors between whether a site is considered non-professional or professional?

Discussion is locked

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Alright
Jul 27, 2007 12:16PM PDT
First off is there anything that I should definitely avoid putting into my site.

Well, it honestly really depends on what the website is for (advertising) and who your audience is.... if you were a music artist, you'd put a music player or background music... etc

On another note, I'd avoid using frames.

Secondly what really are the determining factors between whether a site is considered non-professional or professional?

You can easily see that yourself if you go to a myspace page (loaded with "junk" that doesn't necessarily add any information about the person whose myspace it is) and then compare it with like microsoft.com ... basically speaking, if you have content on your website that doesn't necessarily add to the purpose of the message that you are trying to convey, I'd consider that unprofessional (except for maybe paid advertising... that's a discussion for another day). Professional has hardly anything to do with how simple or complex your website is... if it is easy on the eye (not all bright red or green), a little graphically beautiful (maybe a header, menu, border graphics, etc), and has content that is relevant, you can get a decent website.

All in all, it's not so much about what not to do, but what your website should do/be ...

You want your web site to be easy to read, navigate, and find. It should also be consistent in layout and style, and should definitely load rather quickly even on a modem connection (alhtough, a lot of people have DSL nowadays).
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I would avoid
Jul 28, 2007 2:17PM PDT

putting email address on my website. I would use a special email account for contact purposes.

Use basic html. If you code your website correctly, with the meta tags, the search engines will find your simple html coding.


Rick

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Good one PudgyOne
Jul 29, 2007 1:07AM PDT

Especially because of spam... once you put your email address on to your website in the form of name@provider.com, you can be sure someone will get it to send you advertisements/spam. Another reason is when you put your email address on there, and people click it, it will try to send an email with a client like Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc, some people don't use clients but rather web-based email such as yahoo.com or gmail.com ... so posting it and perhaps making it a link is completely useless most of the time (*). It would be much easier for the user if you had setup a contact form where user fills in their name, subject, message, and then simply submits it. It also prevents people from sending you images or attachments.

(*) I say most of the time because there are certain "plugins" for your PC... I think gmail has it, where you can click a link and it will automatically open a web-based gmail composition window, but I honestly don't know how many people actually use it.

~Sovereign

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not quite on topic...
Aug 20, 2007 1:38AM PDT

This isnt quite on topic, but if you want a simple guide to learn how to code your website well, I highly recommend the free tutorials at http://htmldog.com/

I found them very useful.

a few more tips: 1. Keep you site simple. Don't over design by adding flash animation or elaborate styling images. Most of time users just want to get to the site content quickly and easily.

2. Don't pick too many bright/contrasting colours because it will drive me insane!

3. Have a look at other sites, see what colours and layout they use. Don't just copy the code though!

4. You can use a free CSS template to help you quickly build a site layout. http://www.csstinderbox.com and many others are great.