Online Web Tutorials

If you have a your own domain, whether it be a ,blog, company site etc., then you better go to the Google Webmaster Tool site and be informed on how it will improve your site. Why is it important? It makes your site more search-engine friendly (actually more Google-friendly).

Get Google’s view of your site and diagnose problems See how Google crawls and indexes your site and learn about specific problems we’re having accessing it.

Discover your link and query traffic View, classify, and download comprehensive data about internal and external links to your site with new link reporting tools. Find out which Google search queries drive traffic to your site, and see exactly how users arrive there.

Share information about your site Tell us about your pages with Sitemaps: which ones are the most important to you and how often they change. You can also let us know how you would like the URLs we index to appear.

If you haven’t been using this free feature, it’s time to head on over there.

Misconception #4: Images are great in illustrating points you want to deliver. It also adds appeal to your website. But do not image-overload your site because it takes some time to load them. Also, save your images using the correct format. Images that have more colors are saved as .jpg images, otherwise you have to save it as .gif format.

Misconception #5: Your website is viewed equally at all times

This mistake is very common among webmasters. You can never assume that your site looks the same in all browsers because browsers render HTML differently. Remember to view your site in all possible browsers, especially the leading ones like Firefox and IE.

Misconception #2: Flash Enhances your Website

Additional features like Flash elements sure adds appeal to your website. But be cautious in using these features because not all Internet user have a broadband connection, some of them may still be crawling dial up connections at 56K. If this is the case, it will take some annoying time to load a page.

Misconception #3: Colors Enhances your Website

Of course you wanted your site to be readable. Do not make your site out of rainbows; you cannot put all the colors in the color wheel into your website. That is totally a no-no because it will create chaos. Also, consider dark colored text and light colored background combination. It won’t hurt your reader’s eyes.

The following are web design misconceptions. Read and make sure you do not fall for them. Hope this helps.

Misconception #1: Web Designing is ONLY for Tech Savvies

Of course not! Software like CoffeeCup can help you design your own website even without technical knowledge about the subject. Even web hosting solutions provide such help in web design. There are preset templates you could choose from. You just need to insert your own content and publish right away. Everything you ever have to need in building and managing a website will come with your web hosting package.

*to be continued on next post*

So you are a non-technical website owner who wants to install a search functionality to your website? Then this list of third party resources should more or less help you not to write even a single line of code.

FreeFind. This search service is free but have a commercial version for more functionalities.

SiteLevel. If the pages on your website exceeds 1000 pages, then you have to pay this service. Otherwise, it’s free.

Master.com. Services that are offered in this site are mostly plugins, as well as the site search.

Pico Search. Setup for this service does not require any software installation but only online configuration. This one is entirely free.

Fusion Bot. This service does not only offer site search but also reporting solutions and site map for your website.

As the pages on your website grow to a considerably high number, so is the time that is required to locate a page. Visitors do not have the patience to browse all the pages just to find what they are looking for. Therefore, it is quite obvious why any website with reasonable page volume should have a search functionality of its own.

I know most of you do not want to hassle themselves dipping fingers in actual coding of the functionality. You do not actually need to do that because there are always third parties: what they will do is to provide you the code and you will just have to install the code to your website. Easy, eh?

*continued from previous post*

5. Other Web Features. This includes a chat room, or a forum or maybe a guestbook for your online viewers. These things are easier to set up, considering that there are a lot of code available on the Internet for free use. It is called user interactivity. This requires a script (which is just lines of codes) that you install. Web host usually support certain kind of scripting language, so before you choose your web host make sure you check on this.

6. Outsourcing. If you can get by with the script coding by yourself, you can pay other people to code for you. There are a lot of them you can find on the Internet.

*continued from previous post*

3. Web Building Application Software. This item is optional but of great help if you can find one. Although web hosts – not all but most of them – provide this tool, there are other efficient software that you can use in replacement. Some of prominent web building tools are Dreamweaver, CoffeeCup and HomeSite. If you do not want to use any editing tools, you have to learn HTML coding from scratch.

4. Selling Products. If you are selling things on your website, it is recommended that you sign up for an account with PayPal. It is convenient, can be set up easily and reliable. PayPal will handle all money transfer transactions that you and your website need.

*continued on next post*

Of course, you should have an idea first of what your website would contain before bothering yourself with questions like ‘How should I go building my website?’.

Below is a checklist of the things you need to consider if you want to set up your own website.

1. Domain name. This is the address of your website. When someone inquires about your site, give the address and they’ll know where to find it. Domain names are paid in a yearly basis. Though there are many free domain sites existing, it is still better to get one for yourself.

2. Web host. No existing website can survive with out a web host. This is where you put all the files you needed for your website. This is your space in the web, where you create, save and publish pages of your website. This usually pain on a monthly basis, but some web hosts are paid annually.

*continued on next post*