When I first decided to learn how to generate my very own website I had fashioned no clue on how to start it. After floundering around for many years I finally came up with these 8 steps that I take advantage of each and every time I design a website, whether for myself or a client. I found that only a plain piece of paper, a pen (or pencil if you like), and searching the Internet through places such as Google Hot Trends, StumbleUpon, or Digg is the ultimate way to gather ideas.
When I first tried this technique I used to be quite amazed at just how many ideas I developed after a fifty-percent hour of browsing. Now if you already know your website’s purpose, just move to the next thing then. Knowing your website’s purpose, the next step is to decide whether it’s purpose warrants pages or not. In case your website is going to be for your business then you’ll definitely need a certain amount of pages to begin with.
- 147 Sanders, p. 171
- Your niche market
- Don’t Pick Favorites:-
- Dress Code
- You don’t have to install anything if you don’t want to
- Can I have subpages
If your website is personal, you might like to consider setting up a weblog instead of a website. All websites should include a home page, an about page, and a sitemap. Weblogs will vary, as they’re more of a period line into your daily life and/or your thoughts. In the event that you go the path of the weblog you might only want to include an about page to tell people more about you. A design consists of how your articles of your website are going to be offered to your visitors.
A great spot to get ideas for designs (generally known as templates) is Open Source Design, or do a search in your preferred Google search for free web templates or open source templates. You will find latterly a large number of great websites that provide layouts that you should use. Just make sure to read the fine print before any template can be used by you, as some template makers will allow you to use their template if you keep their copyright information intact. Once you know which pages your website will include, the next thing is to write this content for those pages.
I find that doing one of two things works best for me; writing an overview and then writing this content, or writing this content as it moves through me just. Choose what is most effective for you. Always remember to proofread your articles, bad sentence structure and/or spelling can change some site visitors into “never to return visitors”. This isn’t so important whether it’s a personal website, though if it’s a small business website this is extremely important. I’d go as far as to say it’s obligatory to proofread your business website content.
Now that your website content is written it’s time to add it to your template. If you have created a website or edited source code before never, your best bet would be to open up the template you selected in Step three 3 within a WYSIWYG (what you observe is what you get) editor.