Basic web site design guide lines

The information provided here will teach you the basics of designing a web site including what kind and type of scripts & software to use.

Design software for your web site:

A web site can be easy or difficult to build this greatly depends on the size and type of website you're planning to build and your overall skill level at using the computer and knowledge of web design.

To start building your web site the very first thing you will need to do is take a look at some of your top competitors web sites. Take notes on how there website is designed, how it is layed out, including colors used, number & type of images and font & text size. Also, check for any newsletters, sign up forms, contact form etc.

Once, you're done looking at your competitor's web sites you now have a good idea as what you need to do. Now you have to decide on what type of software to use for making your website here are a few suggestion...

If you're savvy at using software, then you can use professional software such as Macromedia 8 for high end web site design.

It is important, not to use cheap software advertised as WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) The problem with this type of software is that the underlying code created by them is a mess.
These cheap programs add hundreds of lines of unnecessary long code each time you drag and drop something on to your web page (Sure it's simple to use, but a big mistake for making friends with search engines). By the time you're done designing your home page you will have thousands of line of unrelated code and confuses search engines. Search engines have a hard time understanding WYSIWYG code, simply because foreign garbage code. A search bot can't figure out what your website is about and leaves your site, rarely to return.

If you are a novice and want to build your own web site you can use online web site building programs that will give you great results and is a good choice for the beginner.
A online website building programs such as 'Web site Tonight' is a very good alternative to using complex software such as Macromedia 8. Website tonight produces search engine friendly code and uses drag and drop features in layout mode. Another advantage to using online software for the beginner is that you can make your web site in a short period of time and uploads are done automatically for you when you use the go live feature.

You will also need software to alter your images, add effects and manage your web site image files and decompress photos to make them load quickly in a web browser.

Software we recommend for editing graphics: Macromedia Fireworks 8 professional or the MX version.
Note: Macromedia 8 Professional includes Fireworks 8 and Flash 8. If you can't afford Macromedia 8 MS front page will work.

Scripts for your web site:

Scripts are really good for automation of a web site and once setup they basically run them self's and are the true money makers for webmasters. Ebay is a good example of a website run by a script (CGI) and is the real reason they are so successful today. Back in 1995 the founders of Ebay were script savvy and there were no real search engines or any competition. A script made Ebay what it is today.

Scripts are great for any e-commerce site, any type of product site, video sharing and auction sites. Scripts were created to run larger sites and for there automation power, example would be Ebay, they run their web site using a cgi script (not html). Ebay, for the most part became successful because of script automation of their website. You can purchase scripts or get free open source scripts.

Scripts for the most part are self installing. the free scripts can be difficult and have no support so your on your own. If you buy a script the company providing the script usually provides a option for them to install the script for you for a small fee ($50). For high end complex scripts it is best to have the software company who built the script install it for you to assure a smooth working web site script.