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May
28th

Why should you learn HTML? Here are some important Reasons

Author: Editor | Files under General Website Information
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In today’s modern world, all the works are governed by internet and each and everyone wants to build their own Website and one of the major questions that come in mind is how to build? At this time the research begins. During the research, most of the times you will be on the same media and at last you will end up with more number of questions than answers. So how will handle all the information that you gather? This might happen because you have to know the answers to the question such as “just use WYSIWYG Editor or else should i lean HTML code? What will be better for me?” Answers for these questions will depend upon all your expectations, intentions and needs as well. In order to clear all the things, you have to know the difference between WYSIWYG and HTML editors.

Time to learn

Learning WYSIWYG editors is the biggest advantage as using this it is easy to build any Website. For the people who write a letter in their text editor or draw the image in their picture will know what it is all about. On the other hand, writing in the HTML language tends to be complicated although it is an easy language. HTML is just a markup language and one of the reasons why it is easier then many other languages is because the resulting Webpage is interpreted by the codes. Learning HTML will give you long time advantages.

Time to build

While building a Website, time is one of the diffuse points. During the building of a website, the time will depend upon the expertise of the designer and most probably, the Website can be finished faster by using WYSIWYG editor.

Portability

HTML codes can be written in any of the text editor but you will not be able to build a website using WYSIWYG editor.

Code properness

when you’re using the WYSIWYG editor, the Webpage that is created should be in the visual way that is translated into the HTML code by the editor itself. When using the language of HTML, designer is the person who will be deciding on the codes which are to be used and which are not to be used.

Reach

The WYSIWYG editors that are available today brings you the advanced and easy solutions to all the designers incorporating the server side languages, markup languages, plug-ins, client side language and many more.

On the other side, HTML is just an HTML, but if you are a visionary then you will see that the HTML as the doorway for further learning.

Credibility

If you are trying to get a client or else you are working for a client already, it will not be the same to say that you know how to handle HTML and it will just say that you know to handle WYSIWYG editors only. By learning HTML, it gives additional point that is credibility.


May
25th

Valid HTML Code plays a vital Role for Search Engine Optimization

Most of the newcomers and webmasters to the Webpage design will overlook at the crucial feature of promoting the Website and for this one of the thing that you need to have is valid HTML code.

So what do you mean by valid HTML?
Most of the WebPages that are there are written in HTML. As most of the languages have their own grammar, syntax and vocabulary, even HTML has got its own grammar, syntax and vocabulary as well. Each and every document that is written in HTML should follow all the steps.

HTML keeps on changing constantly like any other language. As HTML has turned out to be one of the relatively complex languages and it is easy to make some mistakes while writing codes.

The HTML code that doesn’t follow the rules of HTML is called as invalid HTML code. You should know why is the HTML code that is valid is pretty important for Search Engine Optimization and also for your marketing attempt.

Search Engines that are available today have to pass all the HTML codes that are written in your websites in order to find the content that is relevant. If at all your HTML codes contain some errors, the Search Engines will not be able to find out the content on your pages and at that moment your SEO attempts and the quest for High Rankings on the Search Engines will end there.

HTML standards are obeyed by Search Engine Crawlers. Search Engines can index your Website when and only if the code is compliant to the HTML standards. If at all there is an error in the webpage, then the Search Engines will stop crawling your Website. If your page is missing a single bracket, then also your webpage would not be found on the search Engines. If at all your webpage is missing with few important tags, then the Search Engines may ignore the entire content of your WebPages.

So how will you check the validity of the HTML code? Fortunately, for everyone’s luck there is HTML validator that will validate your HTML code for validation.
The HTML validator that is released by the Search Engine Optimization community and it is called as “W3C HTML Validator”.
This is the service that is available that helps you to check out the HTML documents for the purpose of “conformance to W3C HTML”, “HTML Standards” and for “XHTML Recommendations”.

To make sure that the errors are corrected that are outlined by W3C validator, just enter the address of the Webpage that has error at “Netmechanic invalid HTML repair page”. Here you will have the options to fix the errors.

Though, not all the errors of HTML will cause problems for your webpage in the Search Engine Rankings. Some of the errors can keep the web spiders from indexing all of your WebPages and helps you to not to spoil your efforts of “Search Engine Optimization”. If your HTML code is valid, then it makes it easier for the Search Engines Spiders to index your Website and you have to ensure that there is no biggest mistake in your WebPages.


May
17th

Important List of Smart goals for Websites

Author: Editor | Files under General Website Information
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Even websites need goals
When you build a website, it will be very much tempting on how to design the site, to create the layout for the site, build the CSS and HTML and ignore it or else to let some others in order to manage the maintenance. If you go with the maintenance, you will be getting more power.

Smart goals for your website
Smart goals are the ones that are Time-bound, Realistic Specific, Achievable and Measurable.

Some of the specific goals are
Ask yourself:
Who? When? What? Where? Why? How?
A specific goal will definitely answer all of your questions

Goals that are measurable
If you are able to measure the results, you will be able to measure the goals.
Ask yourself:
How many? How much to be achieved? How will I know when will I achieved the goal?

Goals that are achievable
You have to create the goals that can be accomplished by you. A goal will be definitely achievable if you know something that you can do. Perhaps it will be done before or else if you have the right training to do it, you will do it.
You have to ask some questions to yourself, like
Is this the one that I have to commit to?
Can I believe that I can accomplish this?
How much time will this goal rewire to be achieved?

Goals that are realistic
Goals that are realistic need not be easy. One of the ways to make the goal realistic, you have to the time frame. Do not make you site’s goals to easier. If you cannot do the tasks according to your sub-conscience, you will not be able to achieve even a simple task. If you set up a hard goal, once you complete that goal, you will feel more accomplished.
Do ask yourself these questions:
Can this goal is achievable?
Is this time right to achieve this goal?
Is the goal that has to be achieved is easy or too hard?

Goals that are time bound
In order to work on a goal, you need to have time limits. If you do not have the time limit, then all the work will go on lately without much success. So if you have the time limit, you will have something to do. So do put up some deadlines so that you will always be one the competitive side and thus will enable you to accomplish any task given to you.
So do ask these questions yourself:
When and why this goal has to be completed?
Is there any other project that rely on this goal and when this has to be completed?
How much time has to be used to achieve this goal?

Do write your site’s goals
If you write down the goals, it helps you to patch up your mind and conscious. So if you have the goals written, it helps to achieve that particular goal. Do check out the goals periodically. Do check whether you need to revaluate them or not. So go on with your goals.


May
11th

Creating the Web Design Portfolio without Job Experience

Author: Editor | Files under General Website Information
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Nobody will get the job if it requires the experience in that field. This is called as catch-22 in most of the industries. Luckily, you need not have any job experience to create the web design portfolio and here you can create your own experience by doing the projects. If you use the projects that you have done, that can itself translate into the paying jobs so that it means into more of the portfolio jobs. So, if you are starting out as a freelancer, you need not say that you do not have any portfolio, instead making use of the suggestions mentioned below; you can create your own portfolio.

Your own Website
So if you have decided to get in to the profession of Web designing, then you need to have a website of your own. This is done because till didn’t have any job that were paying you, so by creating a website, you will not have the problems that are faced by the experienced web designers. When you are spending your time on creating and improving the website, here you are not only improving your business but also you are improving your portfolio as well.

Do remember that you website doesn’t have to be a portfolio piece. Just think of different things that you have built for your website and here make each design a portfolio piece. Do include the details like
Home page, the custom 404 pages, the Contact forms, any of the CMS templates you have built and even the entire portfolio page.

Personal Web Projects
Do build your personal websites. The sites should be very much attractive and this site may be the site for your pet or etc. by seeing the site, you may get the paying web design works where you can earn decent income for you.

Do take the online tutorial or a class
There is no conditions or riles against using your class work as the part of your portfolio. By taking the class, you will learn on how to do or create something new and will help you to improve your portfolio as you will be growing.

Create Pages on you website for some of the Imaginary Clients
Things such as a page to sell the products or the annual report page can be put up on your website. As long as you are able to tell your clients that these are all the samples and are not the live designs, there is nothing wrong in showcasing your skills and will thus improve your portfolio.

Modify Templates in your web design
There are several free web templates that are available that are useful for building the WebPages. Without modifying these templates would not be very good for your portfolio.

The portfolio that you choose should be the best of all
Remember that, you’re creating the portfolio is to showcase your best output. So do not add something that you have created in order to increase the size of your portfolio. So do choose the best portfolio as much as you can.


Apr
29th

Detailed Guide to Building an External Style Sheet

Advantages and disadvantages of using the external style sheets
The finest things that cane be done using this Cascading Style Sheets is that it would help you to keep your site in consistent. The simplest way to keep the site in consistent is to import an External Style Sheet or link the site. If the same external style sheet is used for each and every page of the site, it is sure that all the fonts of the site will be same.

Advantages of using the External Style Sheets
At once you can control the feel and also the look of many documents.
If you work with a team of people to create a Website, especially the External sheets is very much useful. Several style rules is pretty difficult to bear in mind and if you might taken a printed style guide and it is tedious and inefficient to be continuously go on flipping through out in order to determine if at all a example text has to be written in 14 point courier and 10 point Arial font.
You can even create classes of more styles that can be used on with various HTML elements as well.
If you want your fonts to be more efficient, you can easily group it.
All of the grouping methods that are used in CSS also can be used in this External Style Sheets as well and also this even provides you more flexibility with on your pages.

Disadvantages of using External Style Sheets:
If these External style sheets are very large, the download time will be increased.
They can increase the proximity of the site if there are small numbers of font styles.
These External style sheets get larger pretty quickly as it’s very hard to tell whether and when a style is no longer in use as it is deleted when the page s shut down or closed.

Creating an External Style Sheet
These External style sheets are produced or generated with a related syntax to the document level style sheets. Though all of the things that you need to include are the declaration and selector the syntax for the rule is and it is just like the document
Selector (property: value ;}
This rue has to be saved into a text file along with the extension of .css. Actually this is not required, but having this habit is good. By using this, you will be able to immediately recognize your style sheets.
You can link the style sheet documents in 2 different ways.

Linking
to link a style sheet document, use the HTML tag

Importing
Within the document level of style sheet, you can import the style sheet and with this you can import any URL and continue the style attributes of the External Style Sheet even without losing any document.


Apr
17th

Position and Placement: The Basics of Web Design

Author: Editor | Files under General Website Information
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When you are starting new designs, it is of no matter which design methodology you use but you have to start with a blank page. Initially your WebPages will be having nothing, so you have to put something into that.

If you want to make your WebPages have good designs, you shouldn’t allow the placements and positions to occur randomly and to have to think of things like

What is an element?
How these elements are related to page goals?
Where do the elements fit with other elements in your page?

What is the element that you are going to place?
In a Webpage, there are several common elements such as navigation, headlines, textual content, images and administration. You should know what type of element that you are going to place because it is important to place it at the correct position.

How do these elements relate to your page goals?
If you know your goals and your page’s goals, these goals will be the key for placements. If your goal is to make people click and want to take notice of them, you have to place your elements at the place where people often look at.

Where should be the other elements be placed?
It is the most important part of your design. If you have your logo on the upper side of your page and if you don’t have content, it will not have any meaning. So, you should also think of placing your content at the right positions.

The place where you place your elements will make you feel the difference
As the people in real estate say that location, location is the important factor. Instead of keeping the paintings of Michelangelo in museum, if it is put in your garage does it have any value? So you have to place your elements in an effective place and if you place your element in an effective place it provides structure and visual hierarchy to your Webpage. Your work will be half done if you have engaged your customer via compelling and interesting design.

Place your elements in the center of your Webpage
One of the simple design techniques is to place their elements at the center of the Webpage. This technique is used by new designers as their goal. Placing in the center appeals to most of the people because it is very simple.
Centering might appear boring and on the screen it might look flat but it is rarely done. Centering is done because it catches the people’s eye immediately.

In your Webpage find the point of interest.
The focal point of design is the place of interest and this is the place where you eyes are drawn. If you change the spacing styles in those places, you will come to know how the items are viewed in your page.
If you make certain small changes to the positions where your elements are going to be placed like putting up of margins around your images, then your resulting image layout will be more visually appealing.


Apr
14th

The Pros and Cons of Freelance Web Design

Author: Editor | Files under General Website Information
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It’s great to be a freelancer as there are lots of things in this to learn and experience. Before getting into the freelancer job, you have to know the facts that are associated with this job. Just like a corporate web designer, even in freelance there a certain pros and cons associated. Before you jump in to this job, ensure the advantages outweigh the disadvantages in this job.

Advantages of being a freelance Web designer

Work whenever you want to do:
This is one of the popular reasons why people become a freelancer. If you’re a person who will be up all night, a 9 to 5 job is very much challenging. But you as a freelancer can work whenever you feel like to work. This job is a perfect one for house wives and for daddies who need time to arrange their work along with their babies. This job also means that, you can for any people in different time zone and can also work after you return from the job as well.

Work from wherever you wish to do
Most of the freelancers work at the comfort of their houses. It is also possible to work from your nearest libraries or even from your local coffee shops as well.

You can be your own boss.
As a freelance worker you will not be working under any company or any person, instead you are the boss for yourself. So as a freelancer, you need not worry about micromanagers or from any unreasonable expectations from your company or your boss. In any ways the clients who give you the work is your boss. The clients can be demanding and unreasonable but that may leads to your next advantage.

You can be your own boss.
As a freelance worker you will not be working under any company or any person, instead you are the boss for yourself. So as a freelancer, you need not worry about micromanagers or from any unreasonable expectations from your company or your boss. In any ways the clients who give you the work is your boss. The clients can be demanding and unreasonable but that may leads to your next advantage.

Choose the projects that you will be able to do
As a freelancer you will not be choosing the projects but also the clients as well. If at all you feel that the job has trouble and working with company may ask you to do some work and if you feel it is unethical you can quit that work and if you feel that the job is boring, then also you can reject the work.

As you go learn whatever you want to do
You can learn many new things as a freelancer suppose if you decide on get fluency in PHP, you needn’t take permission from your boss in order to put PHP scripts on take a class or server. You can just do it. The fact is that a good freelancer will be learning all the time.

No fear of dress code.
As freelancer you will be in your own world and nobody will question about your dress sense. But you need to have some business outfits for client meetings, presentations and but you won’t need nearly as many as you would if you worked in an office.

You will not be working on only one project and only one site and you can incorporate your hobbies into your work
As a freelancer you can choose wide variety of projects and can work on different sites as well. While doing the work you can even incorporate you hobbies as well.


Apr
11th

Tips on creating a Site Plan

Author: Editor | Files under General Website Information
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A site plan is nothing but it helps you to create your own business website so that it meets your business and customer needs. At the beginning of creating a site if you take more time, you can avoid all the kinds of pitfalls and can ensure that you have all the contents required to get your site off to a good start.

When you’re building site, your plan should include

The purpose of your site:

What is the main point for which you’re creating your site? How is your site going to fulfil the main purpose better than many other sites that are available in the Web?

The site goals

If you do have some smart goals, these goals can help much better to take a mediocre site and you can make it great. If you the goals for your site, you can go and play around.

Your customers

For whom you’re creating the website? Try to be precise as possible as you can regarding to your targeted customers. Include the details like hobbies, age, job (titles) etc. you might envision that different people will be visiting different parts of your website and it will not be a problem at all. It’s important to know what kind of audiences you’re targeting at. Already if your website is active or live, you should include some more data to the targeted audiences that you currently maintain.

The content

It’s important to know what content you have on the site, will the content that you have will change regularly, are going to sell your products without any product page or will just focus on providing the product details through some articles. You have to decide whether your site is going to have only text, multimedia or images, do you have already created content or you have to get the content newly.

The design of your website

When planning the site, you have to think what colour will match your site. Keep in mind that design aesthetic will vary across different demographics. So if you planning your site for cutting edge designers, it definitely have entirely diverse look than the one that is designed for stay some designers who are called as home dads (this except for the designers who stay at home). The website’s designs include things such as graphic element, fonts, colours and typography. If you have more plans in your head before you create the site, then it will be easier at the phase of design.

The timeline

If you have all the plans altogether at once, you have to take decision on a particular design. While fixing the schedule, do not forget to include time for revision, feedback and testing.

Altogether write down your plan

If you have several plans altogether, you can plan in lots of ways and capture many ideas so that you will be in a better shape. Sessions of planning will quickly become a brainstorming session. Fortunately this is good, but don’t let that to make you down.