• Determine Purpose of Your Website
  
  1. First of all, determine the purpose and the theme for your page. What are you trying to say by your page? Is the goal to entertain, to provide information or graphics, or to provide some unique service such as an index or database? Perhaps, you want to share information about yourself, or to inform Internet users about an issue which you are passionate about, i.e. fan site for your favorite singer, informational site about cancer awareness, etc. The purpose of your webpage should determine the layout and content of your webpage.

2. After you figure out the purpose of your website, you should get out a piece of paper and draw out a structure of your website, like a site map. How does the design and implementation of your website support your goals? You start with the first page of your website - your homepage- and think what other pages you want to create and how they will link between each other and the homepage.

• Give a lot of thought to the roadmap of your site and how its different elements are linked. How is this navigational information conveyed to the user?
• Could someone, after visiting your site, draw a simple diagram showing how the different elements are connected and how you get from one place to another?
• If someone comes to your site looking for a specific piece of information, how easy is it to locate it?
• How does a visitor figure out all of the things they can see or do at your site?
• How does a visitor figure out how to navigate your particular site?
• How can the visitor tell if they have seen everything?
• How can a visitor tell what they have and have not seen?
• Make it easy for a visitor to determine what is new and when things were changed.
• A site that is difficult to navigate will also be difficult to maintain.
• Complexity will limit the size of your site.
• Complexity will make it difficult to test your site.
  

The connection between pages should be clear and logical. For example, it is logical to have a link from your About Me page to your Pictures page. Also, make sure that all pages are accessible within one or two clicks. How many clicks will it take for a person to get to your pictures or your resume? You want to make sure that if someone wants to only read your resume, they can do so in one or two clicks.

• Don't Run Text the Full Width of the Screen

This creates long lines of text that are difficult to read. Text also needs air around it, to breathe. That's why most printed documents have margins.

You can easily solve these problems by using the "Blockquote'' tag, which gives a margin on both sides of the page. You can nest Blockquotes to vary the width as necessary.

You can use tables to create more complex text layouts such as columns.

You can use dictionary lists ('DL') as a simple way of formatting text that requires indentation.

Don't use long paragraphs of text. It's hard to read these in printed form and, for some reason, even harder on to read on a computer screen. Try to keep paragraphs to four sentences or less.

If you specify a text font other than the default, make sure that the font (or its equivalent) is one that is standard on your visitors' computers. Standard fonts include Times New Roman, Roman, Helvetica, Verdana, Arial, Courier, Courier New, etc.

And try not to put links in your text, especially in the middle of a sentence or paragraph. If you have links that relate to your text, put them at the end, like footnotes. Give your visitors a chance to read your text before sending them somewhere else.

• Treat Your Homepage as Your Good Thesis Statement
  

Your teachers always tell you that a good thesis statement outlines exactly what is going to be in the following paragraphs. When someone comes across your homepage (the first page of your website) they should be able to see right away what your website is about. Your homepage will determine whether someone will proceed to look through your website; your homepage, justl like your thesis, is the attention-getter.

For example, on your personal homepage you may want to include a menu of categories like About Me, Friends, Family, My Favorite Links, Resume.

• Think About the Theme of your Website

The theme of your webpage should directly relate with the setup/layout of each page of your website. For example, if your webpage is about star gazing, a creative idea would be to have each page's frame to have star background. If your site is about a serious issues, you do not want to put pink elephants with polka dot dresses flying around in the background. See more examples at Killer Sites.

 

• Don't Forget to Put a Title on Your Page

The title is important. If someone bookmarks your page, the title is what shows up in their list of bookmarks. Or, if someone puts a link to your site on their page, they'll probably use your page title as the link text. Or, if the page is indexed by a search engine, the title is what shows up in the search results. You get the picture.

Even if you do have titles on your pages you still might want to reevaluate the actual wording. Make sure that the title actually says something. Instead of "My Web Page," how about "Suzie Quincy-- My Web page?" Imagine viewing the two of them in a bookmark list.

• Avoid Long Text

Do not put all the text on one page and make it too long to read. **** This site is not an example of what we mean**** Let's say you have information about cancer awareness from another website, you can simply summarize that information on your site and suggest the link to the actual website for the complete explanation.

• Keep your information up to date

Remember that you may want to keep your page current which means that you will need to update it often. For example, if you are listing dates of certain events that you want people to go to, make sure that times and places of events are up to date. On your personal website, if you choose to say "Hi! My name is Suzie Quincy and I am currently a first-year student at SMC.", you may want to update this when you become a sophomore.

• Use Webpage Counters to Get Information About Your Website Visitors

A good webcounter to use is www.darkcounter.com The counter can give you information on who visits your website and even where they might be from. Another good webcounter is www.thecounter.com Be warned, however, that webcounters do take up space and may slow down your page when it downloads. A lesson: don't put too much on your homepage if you are going to use a webcounter.