Site Planning Check Points

No one sets out to win Worst-of-the-Web type honors. Hopefully, this short primer will keep you from just such a dubious honor. There are three basic reasons a web site is either memorable or forgettable. They are: appearance, navigation, and last but most important, content.

While site design is subjective as far as appearance in concerned, careful use of color, images, layout, and navigation can result in a site that's pleasing to you and your visitors. And with a web site...

...all the world is your stage!

That's no metaphor either. This site has been visited by at least one person from over 180 different countries. That's most everywhere in the world. But I dye grass ...no wait, that was a past life as the Easter Bunny. I meant to say, I digress, so back on topic it is...

You've probably been to sites that use loud backgrounds that interfere with the readability of the text. Some backgrounds are designed for use with text, while others are meant to showcase graphics like your family photo page. Even on backgrounds that are less than ideal, just tinkering with font size and color can make all the difference.

For pages of mostly text it's best to stick with a single background color, a simple texture background image without a lot of contrasts, or a left border image. Too complicated or detailed of a background image means that at some point the image design usually begins to interfere with the message.

If you use loud, clashing colors that hurt your eyes to look at, or if people have to strain to read your text, they just aren't going to hang around long no matter how appealing your content may be.

Rules-of-thumb:

1. Use text colors that complement your background color or image, yet provide enough contrast to make reading easy on the eyes. Red text on a green background, for example, is a no-no, even if you're dear old Santa Claus.

2. Avoid loud backgrounds. If you have one you really love and have to use, use a table with a complementary table background color for the text area. You'll find table tutorials and free software for generating table code at my members site. Learn more about the members site.

3. Don't make your pages more than four full screens long. If someone has to scroll farther than that, it's probably too long. Too long of a page makes it load slower, may prevent it from being fully indexed by search engines, and may well look like too much work for many of your visitors to bother with.

4. Don't use too many graphics or too much animation on any one page. Visual clutter detracts from your message and can be confusing and disagreeable to your guest, which will make many of them leave as fast as they came.

5. Avoid using Java applets on your index page and warn people if a link takes them to a page with Java on it. Java runs off of the users computer memory resources, and if they have low memory or too many programs open using system resources, you can easily crash their browser. They won't come back if you do that.

6. If you use music on your page, there are a few courtesies to observe:

   • Many folks surf listening to Internet radio, over the air radio, a stereo, or even while watching television. Your music can easily be too much of an annoyance if you don't provide a way to turn it off. Additionally, many people surf from work and won't appreciate your web site giving them away! Ideally, don't autostart your sound file, give your guests the option of playing it.

   • Don't loop music forever. It gets old fast, especially if it's not your style.

   • Don't put the music reference in the code at the top of your page, especially if it's a large file. Nothing will be happening while your music file downloads and people get tired of waiting all too easily.

7. Every page on the Internet is considered a published intellectual work and afforded copyright protection unless it's declared as public domain. Before using graphics, textual content, or anything else from another web site be sure you have permission to use it. It's a lot easier to be caught than you may think, and fines and penalties can be substantial, over six-figures!

8. Never link directly to images or other files on another site unless you have permission. That means on your web page or in your email. This is called bandwidth theft and it's illegal. The fines for copyright and bandwidth theft are steep, and it's very easy to be caught. Each server (where web pages live) keeps a log of all file accesses. If you link directly to an image on someone else's server, that server records each time the image is called to your page. It's the only evidence needed in a court of law.

   This doesn't mean you can't provide links to another site as a means of giving someone access to the site. Most everyone appreciates having their site linked to from elsewhere. You can link to this site, and I do recommend it. If it's helping you, it will help others, and helping others is a good thing.   :)

If you're just starting out or building a web site just for fun then using images from graphic archives like those found on my BoogieJack.com or i-Backgrounds.com sites are perfect for you. The only thing usually required is a link back to the artist's site. Most of the quality free image archives are well known, however, so when you're ready to move into creating a more unique and individualized site or a business site, you may want to consider alternatives. Alternatives include hiring custom graphics made for you or making your own custom graphics with my Background Magic software. Background Magic is much easier to use than a full-blown graphics program, and one heckuva lot cheaper.

You could also buy a full-featured graphics program and learn to make your own graphics. I use Corel Photopaint to create graphics from scratch. It's powerful and full of great tools. For many, it's too expensive (several hundred dollars) and very difficult to learn though.