Site To Do’s, and Don’ts
Description: Your guide to the essentials of site making. Always remember these and you're set to go!
I know, everyone, on every site has probably written an article on the to do's and don'ts for a website. So really, I can't exactly guarantee something unique or special. But maybe, just maybe, you'll pick up some more hints, because you can never stop learning. (Cheesy yes, but quite true)
A site is like a child, there are things that you can do to make it better, and things that you can do to make it worse. What is the definition of better? In site designing, it basically means user friendly, accessible, and eye friendly.
So how would you go about doing fulfilling these categories? Below, are some lists of things you can do. Check them over and if your site has them, then good! If not, maybe you should think about adding them 
Is your site Search Engine friendly?
- Does your site show up when you type the keywords in on Google?
- Do you have Meta Tags?
- Is your site title different for every page?
- Is your site title something like "welcome, or yoursitename"?
- Are your important titles encased in <h1> </h1> tags?
- Do you have keywords in your text that relates to what your site is about?
If any of the above questions are yes, then you should read the list below and make some changes because search engines (google, yahoo, msn) are big factors in your traffic (about 30% comes from searches).
Here are some things you should do.
Meta Tags: Place your Meta Tag between the <head> and </head> and include keywords, titles, and a small description. While we are now in the modern age and search engines are no longer AS concerned about Meta Tags, they still play a large in how a search engine will rank your site.
Here is my meta tag. Copy it and just change the information.
<meta name="description" content="Paper-rain is a free site that offers graphics and tutorials on photoshop, coding, and much more"/>
<meta name="keywords" content="photoshop tutorial, photoshop, tutorial, graphic design, graphic, premade layouts, html, website design, free website, how to make a website, photoshop cs"/>
<meta name="copyright" content="Copyright Kay Mao - 2008"/>
<meta name="author" content="Kay Mao"/>
<meta name="email" content="kay_silentskies@hotmail.com"/>
<meta name="Rating" content="General"/>
<meta name="Robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW"/>
<meta name="Revisit-after" content="7 Days"/>
Keywords: Keywords also play a big part in how a search engine ranks your site. For example, if you're keywords were: tutorials, photoshop, and computers; then you should have those words in your page and your links. Don't randomly stick them in either, the search engines are not stupid, they'll know you're doing it purposely and will most likely block you from their list.
Site Titles: Site titles are extremely important in the case of ranking, google puts a lot of weight on the title of the page because they know that if the title of the page is something, it's bound to be important.
How do you get this amazing title? You can either install a plugin for wordpress Click or you can stick this in your wordpress theme (header.php, between the <title> and </title> tags)
<?php bloginfo('name'); ?> <?php if ( is_single() ) { ?> » <?php } ?> <?php wp_title(); ?>
This will make your title like mine (if you haven't noticed, my title is Site To Do's, and Don'ts; that's because of this dandy code) It will display your site name, and the title of your post/page.
IF you don't use wordpress, the only option is for you to manually change the title of EVERY single page. What a pain in the ass.
<h1> Tags: What does H1 stand for? Basically, first Heading. Since you already know that search engines put a lot of weight in things that are emphasized like titles and keywords, words surrounded by H1 tags are also pretty weighty. Make sure you stick things that you want to stand out in <h1> tags, it'll help you later on.
Is your site user friendly?
- Does your site validate in CSS and HTML/XHTML?
- Do you have broken links?
- Can people access your site from different browsers?
Validating: Validating your site is an important part of attracting and keeping visitors. People won't visit your site again if it doesn't work right or looks funny on their computer. Make sure that you validate your code when you're debugging your layouts so that when you actually upload your layout, it's mistake free. Now I think that the CSS the most important part of this and that as long as you have that validated, you should be okay (My html isn't completely validated -_-")
Broken Links: Broken links are a big turn off for a lot of people, me included. I hate being all excited over a link and then clicking it only to find the ugly 404 error page showing up. Turns me off big time. Make sure that you don't have any broken links on your site. You can do this by signing up with google and using their web tools to check, download the plugin for wordpress Broken Link Checker, use this site dead-links, or you can do it the hard way and just click every link on your site.
Different Browsers: One of the biggest problems faced by web-designers/coders is the amazing variety of different web browsers out there. From Internet Explorer (eww) to Firefox, Netscape, and many more. And the only thing the same about all these browsers are that they interperate coding. Oh yes, if you put 5px left in Firefox, it might only turn out to be 3 px in IE. Convenient? Not. You don't have to download all the different browsers to test out your layout though. Upload your layout and then go to this hand dandy site: Browsershots
Is your site eye friendly?
- Is the content easy to read?
- Do your eyes hurt after looking at your site for 10 seconds?
- Is there some sort of organization to your layout? (Header, sidebar, footer)
- Is there some sort of creative image going on?
Content: This is the main reason that someone would want to visit your site for, the content. The filling in the turkey; regardless of how beautiful the outside of the turkey, it's the inside that keeps visitors coming back for more. You can't live on appearances, hun Can you actually read your content? Because let me tell you, white text on black background may be striking, but it is NOT easy to read. If I was shown content like that, regardless of how good your content is, I would have exited your site before you can say 'content'. The best kind of color scheme for text is a light background with a darker text of the same color. For example:
If you had picked the white text on black background, you would start seeing spots after staring at it for a bit. If you had written a really long article and the visitor wanted to read it, they would not want spotty eyes after finishing your article.
Organization: Organization is the heart of a site, if visitors can't find the information they're looking for easily, then they'll give up. We visitors usually have a very short patience spans. When you have a site, I should easily be able to determine what the header, footer, and sidebar are/is. You should also think about getting a sitemap, just for those who are getting lost. Here are some good layout placement ideas.
Graphics: Because I deal in graphic art and graphic sites, your graphics should compliment your layout and your CSS and coloring should compliment your graphics. Everything should fit together and look like it was made for each other. Make sure that you have visually interesting graphics; it doesn't have to be extremely elaborate, simple will work too, as long as everything matches.
I hope you've learned something about the essentials of a site
Tags: don't, guide, layouts, site, to do
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This entry was posted on Friday, December 19th, 2008 at 11:06 pm and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 18th, 2009 at 5:26 am
Thanks for the tips and links to tools! I'm gonna try some of them