A Few Tips To Help Design A Professional Website

One of the easiest ways to generate additional income is by discovering how to design effective web sites. Web designers create websites for themselves and for others. You can even work on these sites in your free time,just for some extra cash on the side.

Keep the size of your web pages small. A lot of modern web pages are full of unnecessary elements, including huge images, Flash advertising, and lots of AJAX. Many people, especially those in rural areas and other countries with less-developed internet infrastructure, dont have high-speed Internet and will have to wait forever for a large page to load.

Avoid using so-called "mystery meat navigation". This involves using unlabeled images or other elements for the sites navigation. In many cases, the visitor has to mouse over the buttons to even see what they do. Navigation is best kept simple. Use text links across the top or along the left side of the page.

Dont force users to install strange BHOs. Many tech-savvy users wont do it. Common offenders include unusual video players, image viewers, and platforms for interactive games. For most standard use cases, there is a trusted plugin, such as Windows Media Player or even Flash) that will do what you want without driving away users.

When designing your site, try to come up with three or four keywords that you expect users to input into search engines as they try to find your page. These keywords should then be repeated frequently throughout the title, page body and description meta tag. This will make it easier for users to locate your site on the web.

Do not use images for your background. When you think about some of the biggest websites on the Internet, they do not have images as backgrounds. When you use image backgrounds, you represent yourself as someone who is not well-versed in web designing. Images as backgrounds also cause your site to load slower, which can lead to user frustration.

To help you create good web pages and fix mistakes on your own, learn computer languages. Educating yourself on how a website actually works will help you quickly fix any mistakes. Knowing how to deal with problems on your site will save you time and money, as you will not have to rely on outside help to remedy the situation.

Avoid frames at all costs. Just dont use them. While they can make it simple for your menu or header to appear all throughout your site, the address bar wont change on each page. This can make it impossible for your visitors to link to any specific page on your site.

Try to make sure that any music or pictures that youre linking to is hosted on your own web server. Do not hotlink to any other website images. This can be construed as bandwidth theft and it could put you in violation of a copyright too. Its not worth the risk.

A lot of times when you load up a page to your file server, you cannot find it when you type in the address via your browser. You always need to double-check and ensure that you named the file correctly. Some people literally waste days trying to pinpoint the problem they believe is major, when in reality its only a simple typo.

Look into Adobe Dreamweaver. Even amateurs can quickly get the hang of using this program. It has lots of features, templates, and layouts to choose from. You can also test how the site will look before it goes live.

With everything you learned here, you have a good idea about how web design works. Just be sure to make the most of what you have learned, and you will be a pro in no time.