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| Do's and Don'ts while designing
a website... |
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| Top 10 Do's |
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| Do
know your audience
It's important to know
your audience.
If you write for a site that sells toys you'll
use other words, colors, images etc. compared
to a site for online banking. Write and design
with your visitors in mind. Don't get tempted
to write for yourself.
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Do
use a consistent look and feel
Your site should stand
out as a whole. Use the same look and feel
for all the pages at your site. This way your
visitors have a sense of recognition when
they visit various pages. Using stylesheets
makes it much easier to maintain the look
and feel of numerous pages. |
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Do
write about the subject
Write about the subject.
This page is about Web site talks about the
page. Instead, start right away with the subject.
Hyderabadwebdesign is a popular tutorial.... |
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Do
always supply textual links
Supply textual links. Using only clickable
images or image maps makes your site unusable
for anybody that disables images or the search
engine robots that crawl your site.. |
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Do
use correct spelling
OK, this one will turn against me....
Use correct English or whatever language your
site is written in. As a standard routine
use a spelling checker but don't rely completely
on it. Human proof reading is necessary. This
can be difficult - especially if you're not
native speaking English. |
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Do
use the first screen
Be sure to put important text on the first part
of your page, the part that will show up first
on a screen. |
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Do
present the issues right away
Your visitor wants to know immediately what
she/he can find on your site. Keep that in mind
when designing your site. Present the important
issue(s) of your site on the first page. |
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Do
use a descriptive title
The text for the tag "TITLE" should
be descriptive.
The title shows up in the results of search
engines. A descriptive title makes clear what
people can expect on your site. The title is
also shown in the history list of browsers. |
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Do
supply alt tags for your images
Quite a few people disable the automatic load
of pictures in their browser.
Don't blame them, some images take a lifetime
to load.
By defining an alternative text with the attribute
alt in the tag <IMG> you can take care
of imageless browsers. |
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Do
use implicit text for your links
Phrases like Click here or Check this link distract
from the content and are to be avoided. |
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| Top 10 Don'ts |
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Don't
push your table out of the screen
Tables are very flexible. They're able to
get almost anything more or less visible on
a screen. But by putting large elements in
a table cell you might force the cells to
become too large. Thus making horizontal scrolling
necessary. |
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Don't
cram your pages
A page with text pushed aside against the
border of a table or an image, looks awful.
Don't cram your pages, use colspan and colspace
for tables and images |
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Don't
split topics
Try to write one topic at one page.
If your page gets too large, try to rewrite
the text in two minor topics. Avoid using
pages that force people to read sequential.
In that situation the links only interrupt
the process of reading. |
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Don't
use dark backgrounds
Dark backgrounds tend to make text less readable.
So avoid dark colors or dark backgroundimages.
If you do need them, use a nonserif font for
the text (like Arial, Universe, Helvetica)
and be sure not to use a small fontsize. |
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Don't
use too much graphic
Too many images slows down your site. Don't
chase your visitors away; limit the number of
images. |
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Don't
be selective with browsers
You believe I'd change my browser just to
visit your site? Wake up!
Saying Best viewed with my favorite browser
only has the effect that you drive off people
with other browsers. Test your site with the
favorites. It should be readable with all
the important browsers. |
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Don't
rely on plugins
You can create astonishing effects with plugins
like Flash and Shockwave.
But don't rely on them. Many websurfers don't
bother to install plugins. They won't be able
to see the great effects you implemented.
So offer an alternative or even better: check
for plugins. |
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Don't
use too many colors
You have access to 16 million colors. Be selective
- don't try to use them all. Too many colors
distract form what you're trying to say. |
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Don't
try to mislead search engines
Trying to mislead search engines by repeating
keywords will turn against you. Search engines
recognize many of these attempts and will react
on it by giving your site a lower ranking. Or
by not placing it at all. |
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Don't
try to misleadingly attract visitors
By adding keywords that are specific to adult
sites (like 'XXX') you might get some traffic.
But those visitors will leave quickly - unless
you do have an adult site, ofcourse. |
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Don't
link images from other sites
If you use images from another site (i.e. an
image archive ) do copy them to your own site.
Looking up other servers to get the images would
introduce overhead and an extended load-time.
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