Cheap Hosting to Learn Web Design
It’s no secret: the internet is the place to be. And there is no shortage of web hosting companies out there — cheap hosting or otherwise — all vying for the scads of business flocking to the internet to grab their share of the pie. You might say it’s a Buyer’s Market. eMerchants of all kinds know that consumers are all bargain hunters and as our appetites grow fatter and our palates grow wiser, we demand more and more from the companies that serve us at less and less of a cost to us. The result? These days, web hosting companies can’t afford not to be cheap hosting companies.
To compete, cheap hosting companies have to provide an assortment of tools and services to make them stand out above the rest, and the least of these is website design and building. If your cheap hosting company can’t help you design and build, publish, and edit and maintain your website, then it’s too cheap. This article will lay out some of the most common and useful features you could reasonably expect a good, cheap hosting company’s website builder/editor to have.
In brief, a website builder (whatever fancy name the individual cheap hosting company slaps on top of it) is essentially a point-and-click program for designing and building websites. These programs have evolved over the years to the point now where they are so simple that even a retired great-grandparent could do it. (You thought we were going to say “a child”, didn’t you? — and apologies to the tech-savvy great-grandfolks out there.)
The software exists, and has existed for a while now, to empower anyone at all to design, build, and publish not just a website, but a website that works. One that’s error-free, that’ll be search engine-approved, that’s attractive and easily navigable, that encourages traffic, and that doesn’t require you to know a whit of HTML code.
The foundation of any website builder/editor are these are predesigned webpages, designed around specific themes or categories — sales, membership organizations, service provider, in-house, family scrapbook, self-promotional, etc. — that you are free to use as your own. Simply fill-in-the blanks with your own information and customize the look and feel to suit your tastes.
You see, a template is just a springboard for your website. Sure, you can use it as is; that’s fine if it’s a personal website for you and your friends, but don’t expect an un-tweaked template to generate a lot of business. Templates are designed to be fully customizable, and that includes background colors, fonts, text sizes, graphics, backgrounds, borders, page layout, and more. You should exercise that facility to its fullest.
Cheap hosting companies’ website builders/editors should include not only a wide variety of templates in a wide variety of themes/categories, but a wide variety as well of color sets, fonts, graphics/clip art/photo databases, backgrounds/borders, etc.
Templates may also exists for many of the most common and popular website tools that people use, like photo albums, event calendars, feedback forms, and user forums.
The cheap hosting company of today needs not only to be able to convert your vision into sensible HTML code, but it needs also to empower you to code Javascript and Flash-based content. These might not seem like valuable features at first glance, but without them, you might find yourself restricted to building websites that visitors find flat, uninteresting, and non-interactive.
There should also be a suitable Preview feature included so that you can see the progress of your website at each step along the way. You should be able to see exactly what your visitors will see once your cheap hosting company puts your site live.
Finally, crucial to any website that’s not intended merely for personal use — which is most of the websites out there — is making a sale. And if there’s one thing a cheap hosting company’s website builder has got to have for you, it’s a shopping cart.
Take a look at the shopping cart the cheap hosting companies you’re considering offers. How customizable is it? Is it easy to use? Is it confusing? Does it support the major payment methods — from credit cards to PayPal — both online and off?
Armed with these tips, you’ll be in a better position to make the right decision when choosing your cheap web hosting company
5 Basic Rules of Web Design
5 Basic Rules of Web Design the most important rule in web design is that your web site should be easy to read. What does this mean? You should choose your text and background colours very carefully. You don’t want to use backgrounds that obscure your text or use colours that are hard to read. Dark-coloured text on a light-coloured background is easier to read than light-coloured text on a dark background.
You also don’t want to set your text size too small (hard to read) or too large (it will appear to shout at your visitors). All capitalised letters give the appearance of shouting at your visitors.
Keep the alignment of your main text to the left, not cantered. Centre-aligned text is best used in headlines. You want your visitors to be comfortable with what they are reading, and most text is left aligned.
Your web site should be easy to navigate
All of your hyperlinks should be clear to your visitors. Graphic images, such as buttons or tabs, should be clearly labelled and easy to read. Your web graphic designer should select the colours, backgrounds, textures, and special effects on your web graphics very carefully. It is more important that your navigational buttons and tabs be easy to read and understand than to have “flashy” effects. Link colours in your text should be familiar to your visitor (blue text usually indicates an unvisited link and purple or maroon text usually indicates a visited link), if possible. If you elect not to use the default colours, your text links should be emphasized in some other way (boldfaced, a larger font size, set between small vertical lines, or a combination of these). Text links should be unique – they should not look the same as any other text in your web pages. You do not want people clicking on your headings because they think the headings are links.
Your visitors should be able to find what they are looking for in your site within three clicks. If not, they are very likely to click off your site as quickly as they clicked on.
Your web site should be easy to find that is have a good SERP
How are your visitors finding you online? The myth, “If I build a web site, they will come,” is still a commonly held belief among companies and organisations new to the Internet. People will not come to your web site unless you promote your site both online and offline.
Web sites are promoted online via search engines, directories, award sites, banner advertising, electronic magazines (e-zines) and links from other web sites. If you are not familiar with any of these online terms, then it is best that you have your site promoted by an online marketing professional.
Web sites are promoted offline via the conventional advertising methods: print ads, radio, television, brochures, word-of-mouth, etc. Once you have created a web site, all of your company’s printed materials including business cards, letterhead, envelopes, invoices, etc. should have your URL printed on them.
Not only should your web site be easy to find, but your contact information should be easy to find. People like to know that there is a person at the other end of a web site who can help them in the event that:
1. They need answers to questions which are not readily available on your web site;
2. Some element on your site is not working and end users need to be able to tell you about it, and
3. Directory editors need you to modify parts of your site to be sure that your site is placed in the most relevant category.
By giving all relevant contact information (physical address, telephone numbers, fax numbers, and email address), you are also creating a sense of security for your end users. They can contact you in the way that makes them feel the most comfortable.
Your web page layout and design should be consistent throughout the site
Just as in any document formatted on a word processor or as in any brochure, newsletter, or newspaper formatted in a desktop publishing program, all graphic images and elements, typefaces, headings, and footers should remain consistent throughout your web site. Consistency and coherence in any document, whether it is a report or a set of web pages, project a professional image.
For example, if you use a drop shadow as a special effect in your bullet points, you should use drop shadows in all of your bullets. Link-colours should be consistent throughout your web pages. Typefaces and background colours, too, should remain the same throughout your site.
Colour-coded web pages, in particular, need this consistency. Typefaces, alignment in the main text and the headings, background effects, and the special effects on graphics should remain the same. Only the colours should change.
Your web site should be quick to download
Studies have indicated that visitors will quickly lose interest in your web site if the majority of a page does not download within 15 seconds. (Artists’ pages should have a warning at the top of their pages.) Even web sites that are marketed to high-end users need to consider download times. Sometimes, getting to web sites such as Microsoft or Sun Microsystems is so difficult and time consuming that visitors will often try to access the sites during non-working hours from their homes. If your business does not have good brand name recognition, it is best to keep your download time as short as possible.
A good application of this rule is adding animation to your site. Sure, animation looks “cool” and does initially catch your eye, but animation graphics tend to be large files. Test the download time of your pages first. If the download time of your page is relatively short and the addition of animation does not unreasonably increase the download time of your page, then and ONLY then should animation be a consideration.
Finally, before you consider the personal preferences of your web page design, you should consider all of the above rules FIRST and adapt your personal preferences accordingly. The attitude “I don’t like how it looks” should always be secondary to your web site’s function. Which is more important: creative expression/corporate image or running a successful business?
Web design and template reviews for wordpress
Hello,
The purpose of this website is to provide you with the best and most detailed Web design and template reviews for wordpress, blogger and all sorts of portals CMS and website platforms.
Usability is for us one of the main features that a website has to have, where the user has to have the easiest of the browsing experiences so he would likely become a permanent visitor.
A permanent visitor becomes with the time a good blog commenter, sometimes a good friend and sometimes a good business partner too. For sure you need to outsource some or most of the word that a website need’s to get done, specially things regarding social media and online marketing . It is worthless to have a beautiful website if it has a few or none visitors whatsoever.
This means that the website template has to be adapted specifically for the main segmented market that is targeted.
The way that you will decide which will be your income source with the website , this is how to make money online with it , will definitely tell you of what kind of website template you are looking for. We will be continuosly updating on new designs, and we will have also some technical stuff that would probably be usefull if you are a starting webmaster that needs to learn a few technical things like Html, Css and more.
Welcome to the all new Design and Style