Process of Web Design

To make a site, one must follow some type of steps. There is no right or wrong "way" to do this. I will just list the basic steps to create a website. I hope it helps someone someday. The Web Design Process: 1) Research and Brainstorm - Every site begins with an idea. Start brainstorming your ideas. Ask yourself some questions like : Why are you creating this web site? What do you hope to accomplish? What kind of site is it? What features will it has? Who are your competitors? Who is your primary audience? What are your budgets dedicate for this site? Who and how will the content of this site be submitted? 2) Content Creation and Organization - Now it is time to create the content of your site. Once you create your content then try to organize it. You can create a site map. All you need to do is just use pencil and paper to draw a diagram of how your web pages are going to be organize. Then create a simple site map page. 3) Develop a Visual Appearance (Art direction) - First sketch how you envision how your site looks on paper. Most monitor are usually 800 x 500 px. You can just use photoshop to create a basic looks. 4) Create Graphics and HTML pages 5) Create your Prototype - Put everything together; the front end and back end, you did or your group did. 6) Quality Assurance (Testing Phase) Test it in different computers and browsers. Test it in Internet Explorer, FireFox, Netscape, or Safari. Try to see if it works correctly on Windows, Linux, Mac, etc... Try changing the resolution of your monitor. Test it in slow internet connection. Test it with ordinary people. 7) Site Maintenance This is an ongoing process. Who is going to maintain the site; to make updates and keep it current?

SEO - Search Engine Optimization

What is SEO anyway? SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. According to an article in wikipedia.org , "SEO is a subset of search engine marketing, and deals with improving the number and/or quality of visitors to a web site from "natural" listing." When you go to Google or Yahoo to search for a keyword, the search engine will compile the results in the order it "thinks" best through a process called an algorithm based on your query. So what you need to do is find a way to influence that result. So how do you do that? There are two techniques called on page optimization and off page optimization. On page optimization is changing/modifying the site code to make search engine bot easier to crawl in your site. Off page optimization is backlinking. On page optimization should be done when you first start designing your web pages. Here are a couple of things you should do: - Choose your keywords carefully (Don't use words not related to your site. It can hurt more than it helps.) - Make sure your keywords appear significantly in your page content. Put one or two in bold or italics. - Make sure you use headings tag h1... in your page and it is helpful if it contains your keywords - When writing your content, try to include your keywords as much as possible without messing with the flow of your text. Remember to think about your visitors point of view and not the search engines when creating your content. - Search engine do NOT read links created by Flash or Javascript, so keep that in mind. Pages can only be found when linked with visible hyperlinks. - When you used graphics, make sure to add alt attributes in your image tag. Words on the image CANNOT be read by search engine. Plus people who use text display browser only cannot see the image. Having an alt tag can let them know what they didn't see. - Search engines don't use meta tags for site ranking or indexing anymore, so don't rely on that Off page optimization: Linking strategies Having a lot of websites linking to your web can increase your web traffic and even your rankings in search engine. Some ways to do this are: - Put your website's URL in articles, press releases, blogs, forums, and directories - Use myspace or other networking site to get more people to your site - Emailing others to tell them about your site