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How to Make Good Website

2012-03-17T21:30:00.000-07:00

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Web design should involve achieving a design that is both usable and pleasing, delivers information and builds brand, is technically sound and visually coherent. Wondering how to create good website check below some useful tips for web design to find answer.

Know your competition:
Knowing your market can help you in building your website that serve your purpose.

Know your audience:
The target audience determines what content you present and how to create good website accordingly.

Plan a clear structure:
This step is vital. The site should be easy to navigate. Produce a sitemap of your proposed web content. Visitors should ideally find in formation in 2-3 clicks maximum.

Use of Text
Make sure-

Background does not interrupt the text
Text is big enough to read, but not too big
The hierarchy of information is perfectly clear
Columns of text are narrower than in a book to make reading easier on the screen

Also make correct choice of
Text Font
Font sizes
Spacing
Color
Paragraphing

Clarity
Keeping your design crisp and sharp is super important in Web design. And when it comes to clarity, it's all about the pixels.

Clarity
Keeping your design crisp and sharp is super important in Web design. And when it comes to clarity, it's all about the pixels.

In your CSS, everything will be pixel perfect so there's nothing to worry about, but in Photoshop it is not so. To achieve a sharp design you have to:
* Keep shape edges snapped to pixels. This might involve manually cleaning up shapes, lines, and boxes if you're creating them in Photoshop.
* Make sure any text is created using the appropriate anti-aliasing setting.
* Ensuring that contrast is high so that borders are clearly defined.

Use Quality Graphics and Brand Site Effectively
Ensure strong brand presence and quality graphics on your site to leave a lasting impression.

Limit the use of animation and graphic
Animated images can be quite effective when used in a subtle manner, however overuse is considered a web design no'no. Why? you may ask, well because animated images contain many different frames just like in a cartoon, these frames are effectively a separate image and therefore the more animations on your website the higher the load time will be. Multimedia can make your content more attractive, but don't overdo it. Use graphics only if they support your message - white space has proven to be important in communications. Too large images also slow page loading for people with poor connections.

Check web page Load time
The recommended size that a web page should be is between 40-60 K the reason for this is because we web surfers are an impatient lot and if a site takes more than a minute we loose interest and move on to the next website, some people will not even give you a minute - 20 seconds and they are off. To keep load times as low as possible try to use the least number of graphics as possible, only use graphics that enhance your site. Remember that Jpg's are generally large files so try and keep the size low without effecting to much quality. Also some people save normal images as jpg's, dont do this as mostly photographs need to be jpgs. Try to keep your site as quick to load as can be.

Think about your content
Remember “content is king”. Most of your visitors won't know the subject as well as you do, and have little time to spend reading! So keep it simple and short. Avoid jargon, be concise, focus on the successes and attract your audience by announcing exploitable developments or technologies and their potential benefits.

Navigation
One of the most frustrating experiences you can have on a Web site is being unable to figure out where to go or where you are. There are two aspects of navigation to keep in mind:

Navigation — Where can you go?
There are a few commonsense rules to remember here. Buttons to travel around a site should be easy to find - towards the top of the page and easy to identify. They should look like navigation buttons and be well described. The text of a button should be pretty clear as to where it's taking you. If you have a rollover sub-menu, ensuring a person can get to the sub-menu items without losing the rollover is important. Similarly changing the color or image on rollover is excellent feedback for a user.

Orientation — Where are you now?
There are lots of ways you can orient a user so there is no excuse not to. In small sites, it might be just a matter of a big heading or a 'down' version of the appropriate button in your menu. In a larger site, you might make use of bread crumb trails, sub-headings and a site map for the truly lost.

Offer easily searchable content
Have a 'search engine' box on the front page. A number of tools can be found on the web to help you do this, including Google.

Try not to use frames
Frames are considered to be an evil of the web, although unless it is absolutely necessary that your site needs to use frames, then dont! Frames can be very unpredictable, search engines, browsers and web surfers in general just dont like them. If your site uses frames the likely chance that you are loosing visitors will be high.

Ensure Ease of Access to your Contact Information
Make sure your contact details, phone, address, address map, email etc is well placed on the site for users to contact you conveniently.

Consistency
Consistency means making everything match. Heading sizes, font choices, coloring, button styles, spacing, design elements, illustration styles, photo choices, etc. Everything should be themed to make your design coherent between pages and on the same page. Keeping your design consistent is about being professional.

Make your website look professional
Customers, for the most part expect a company's web site to be as neat and professional looking as their printed sales literature and marketing materials. Anything less than a professional façade for your online shop, will make your business look small and unreliable.

Make it interactive
Allow visitors to interact. Host a discussion forum or start a blog – it may encourage visitors to drop inmore often.

Usability
Web design ain't just about pretty pictures. With so much information and interaction to be effected on a Web site, it's important that you, the designer, provide for it all. That means make Website design usable.

In short, make sure your website is consistent in look, feel, and design. Nothing is more disturbing to a website's visitors than feeling as if they have just clicked away to another website. Keep the navigation, colors, and themes consistent throughout the entire website.

How to Register a Domain Name

2012-03-17T08:46:00.002-07:00

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How to Register a Domain Name

After choosing some domain name(www.name.com), you will like to register it. This post is related to How to Register Domain Names, and guide to know how to register a domain name. Also read about guide on choosing the right domain name.
Before learning on how to register a domain lets us understand about domain name.

What is a Domain Name?
The unique name that identifies an Internet site. A domain name is an identification label that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are also hostnames that identify Internet Protocol (IP) resources such as web sites. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System (DNS).

How to Register a Domain Name?
Setting up a Web site with your own domain name is a simple process, though finding a name you like may be difficult.

Where Can I Register a Domain?
There are various sites with accept domain registration example, register.com etc, just search in Google, Yahoo or Bing with keywords “domain name registration” you will find many sites offering domain booking.

Step by Step Guide on How to Register Domain:
Nearly all sites allowing domain name registration will have same following process:

Registering a domain name is no different to any other online purchase
Go to an official Internet registrar online. Example Godaddy.com
Enter the name or phrase of the domain name you would like to register. Follow the rules regarding name length and format.
Search for the name.
You will be provided information, if the name is already taken. If the domain is not available, try again using an alternative name. If you tried .com as a suffix, try .org or .net instead.
Follow the instruction, when you see message domain name is available.
Register the domain name.

Once you register your own domain name, nobody else can get it - it's yours for as long as you want it to be.

Note:
You must supply up to date contact details. Domain name registrars will not let you register a domain name without providing these details. This is a requirement by ICANN see info here(external link to ICANN site)

Worldwide Authority for Domain Names
ICANN -The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is the organization responsible for top-level domains. Top level domains include .com, .org, and much more.

Although ICANN is responsible for top-level domains, you cannot directly make registration of domain name there. You have to go through an accredited domain name registrar.

About Domain Name Registrars:
A domain name registrar is an organization or commercial entity, accredited by a generic top-level domain registry (gTLD) and/or by a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registry, to manage the reservation of Internet domain names in accordance with the guidelines of the designated domain name registries and offer such services to the public.

How to Add Tag Cloud to Blogger

2012-03-17T08:40:00.000-07:00

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Add Tag Cloud to Blogger

This post is related to adding tag cloud to blogger using lebels.

Below is the step by step guide to cloud tag blogger using lebels
1. Login into your Blogger.com account.
2. Click Layout option
3. Now Under “Page Elements” look for “Add a Gadget” link.
4. Click “Add a Gadget” link
5. Look for "Labels" option
6. Click “labels”

7. Now, Click to select “Cloud” option

8. Click Save button to see lebels as your cloud tag in blogger blog (This option will show all lebels as blogger cloud)

If you wish to show selected lebels in cloud in your Blogsopt/blogger blog, then

Go to Step 7
Once you have completed Step 7
Then Look for “Selected Labels” which isunder “show” section
Click “Selected Labels” then you will find “Edit” Option, click "Edit"
Here you can choose lebels which you want to show in cloud

Everybody Hates the New Facebook News Feed and Live Ticker

2012-01-21T14:23:00.000-08:00

People are annoyed with Facebook, and are trying to run away from social networking. All thanks to the Facebook’s news feed revamp, which has left users not just annoyed, but also confused and clueless. When I logged in to Facebook today, I saw a boatload of friends posting and commenting, Hate the new design”, “dislike news feed”, “complicated”, “Facebook gets shitter” and more such messages.

Facebook rolled out some major changes to the news feed, which breaks it down into two columns – top stories and recent posts, and also included a new ticker-like column with live updates from friends on the right-had side of the page. These changes come only one week after Facebook announced improved friend list capabilities.

Certainly these changes could have served as improvementsto the social network only if Facebook had made it simple and easy to understand. The changes have drawn a lot of complaints as users on Facebook are creating pages and communities to express their annoyance, with most of the complaints pertaining to “confusion” and messy.

Facebook has implemented the new Ticker, which basically emulates Twitter’s real-time messages and updates. Earlier in August, Facebook was testing this feature, and rolled it out to an increasing number of users. However, the feedback that Facebook got was negative, but looks like it hasn’t taken it seriously, and has gone ahead to make it available to all users. Nevertheless, you can hide the ticker or the sidebar by simply clicking the arrow button on the bottom-right corner of the page.

The other feature that came along was the Lists, inspired from Google+ Circles, which lets you organize your friends into groups like Family, Colleagues, Close Friends, and so on. It is also planning to roll out the Subscribebutton, similar to Twitter, which will allow you to -

*-Choose what you see from people in News Feed

*-Hear from people, even if you’re not friends

*-Let people hear from you, even if you’re not friends

From the above new features, it looks like Facebook is trying to integrate features from other networking sites. This however isn’t really a good step taken by Facebook, but rather an unwantedone. Users are already annoyed with the new features, and finding ways to disable it or get back to old Facebook news feed.

A trick that allowed users to get back the old news feed was by changing the preferred language to English (UK). However, a fix is being rolled out by Facebook and this trick is not working anymore. Although Facebook users are annoyed about the new features, it still continues to grow, with over 750 million users and counting. Recently, Facebook crossed the 1 trillion page views mark, making it the first ever website to cross the milestone.

Facebook Timeline: A Walkthrough Of Your Entire Life On Facebook

2012-01-21T14:17:00.000-08:00

Facebook just dropped their last bomb at the Facebook in the form of Facebook Timeline. Facebook wants you to tell your story to the world from your personal timeline page, you can use timeline as your profile at facebook.com/about/timeline.

Facebook timeline is nothing but a visual

representation of your life and the events surrounding it. It’s more of a controlled and customized page where you can organize the important stuff and create an online storybook, ready to be used as a reference in case a complete stranger stumbles on your Facebook profile. On your timeline page, you can share and highlight most memorable posts, photos, videos and events that are close to your heart. This is the landing page where people would discover the real person and his journey, described in his own words.

Here is how Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook

timeline looks like:

It is a fact that users daily update a lot on their Facebook profile. From their breakfast

menu to a rainy day, everything is posted on Facebook. Not

all of these updates are important and not all of these things deserve to be

archived. Most of the updates are real time in nature but there are a few

shares which should be archived and bookmarked for quick reference in the

future.

Facebook timelines attempts to

fill this gap by allowing you to customize your timeline page with events,

posts, photos, videos, dates and status updates, which are kind of milestones

rather than “just an update”. When you passed out of college, when you got

engaged, when you received your first salary these are the things you would

like to put on your Facebook timeline page rather than your random rants.

Timeline will help you summarize your stories on a single page said Zuckerberg. Rather than search your entire profile for a really old post, Timeline is the go to place for finding out important stories about a person. It’s the heart of your Facebook experience, completely rethought from the ground up,Zuckerberg adds.

Interestingly, Facebook did launched a story telling feature one year back which fell flat on its face. Back then, nobody used it because people don’t have the time to type their entire anniversary party and wait for friends to engage with it. However, this timeline feature looks really cool, all you have to do is organize your previous updates into a single page and control who can see your facebook timeline.

Here is an introductory video which walks you through Facebook timelines in brief detail:

In my opinion, this timeline feature is geared towards

strangers who would want to be friends with you and want to know more about you as quickly as possible. People don’t have the time to visit your profile, scroll through all the updates and hit the Older postsbutton over and over again. Instead, they want a concise digest which tells who you are and what you have doing from the day you were born to this date.

Finding Ways to Disable the Timeline? Unfortunately Facebook Doesn’t Let You Do That..

2012-01-21T11:27:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, Facebook rolled out its new Timeline feature to all 800 million users on its network. Although the new profile layout offers new and interesting features, some users on Facebook are finding it too complicated and cluttered with the advertisements and news ticker on the right hand side. Annoyed users are dreadfully finding ways to disable and get rid of the Timeline feature.

Facebook released a Developer application through which you could enable the Timeline and test it. Users also had an option to downgrade to the old profile by simply deleting the app from the Developer settings page.

Now that the Timeline has been released for all users, Facebook stated that it will go live automatically after seven days, no matter if you like it or not. Timeline is here to stay, at least for the next few months. Unfortunately, there is no way you can disable it.

A spokesperson for Facebook explain:

Once you click Get Timeline,you will have seven days to review everything that appears on your timeline before anyone else can see it.

If you choose, you can publish your timeline right away. If you decide to wait, your timeline will go live automatically after seven days. Your timeline will replace your profile.

Eventually everyone on Facebook will be rolled over to timeline.

You have no choice, but are forced to get used to the new profile layout. When Facebook released its new Facebook News Feed and Live Ticker, everyone hated it. Users had no choice, but to accept it. Few users also announced that they would delete their Facebook account and switch over to Google Plus. However, that never happened. I see the same set of users now likingthe Timeline. Such straightforward statements don’t bother Facebook, since they know that people will eventually get used to it.

If you’re finding the new layout too cluttered, then you can try disabling the ticker and chat. We had posted an article earlier on how you can disable the news ticker on the right.

We have posted an in-depth guide about Timeline. I recommended you to go through it and know all of its features. Who knows, you may start loving it.