Archive for April, 2009
Good Web Design Layout
by Bob Stone on Apr.30, 2009, under Web Design
Good web design is about striking a balance between utility and aesthetics. A site that is pretty and easy to navigate but has useless content is just as bad a site full of useful information that people have trouble getting to. There’s no exact science to designing a strong layout, but there are some basic guidelines that you can use.
Your home page is generally the most important one, so be sure to focus your efforts here. Imagine if you walked into a store and the front entrance was covered in grime and litter. Even if the inside of the store were pristine, few people would want to go inside. The same logic applies to web design India.
Splitting up information is important. If you just bombard people with giant walls of text or pages that consist of dozens of images but no meaningful text, visitors will get overwhelmed and convinced. Aim to give the user enough information that they can make a decision on where to go next within you site, but not too much that it frustrates them.
You should also take the time to think about certain thematic choices, such as color and fonts. If you radically alter your color palette from page to page, then it makes for a jarring experience. Fonts are the same way, if you have a straightforward font on one page and an outlandish looking one on the next; the site lacks unity and distracts your visitors. The best bet is to pick a theme and stick with it!
Basics of Web Hosting
by Bob Stone on Apr.22, 2009, under General Webmaster
Designing a web page is only half the battle. You also have to find a place to host your website for all the world to see. Unfortunately, it’s not always feasible to host a large-scale website from a home computer. If any significant number of people were visiting your site, it would require more bandwidth than most home connections provide. That’s why you need to find a good web host for you site.
It is possible to host a website from your home, but it requires expensive equipment. It also requires that your service provider allows you the bandwidth to host high volumes of traffic. On top of all that, you’d have to learn how to set up the web server yourself, as well as set up firewalls and other protections to keep your server safe. Also, if you want to ensure your site is up all day everyday, then you have to watch it yourself.
For all those reasons, the vast majority of Webmasters find a web hosting service that meets their needs. When you contract a web hosting service, you are paying them to use their network server infrastructure, and also to provide support for your site. That means that the only time you need to worry about your site is when you’re updating it.
Before choosing a web hosting service, it’s important to know what you need. Some services have bandwidth caps, and depending on the type of site you run, this can be an issue. You also want to make sure that the host you choose can offer useful bonuses such as tracking statistics. You also need to know whether your need dedicated hosting or shared hosting. With dedicated hosting the entire server is yours to use, but with shared hosting you will share the server resources with possibly hundreds of other users. Finally, if your site uses certain technologies, such as PHP, you’ll want to confirm that the host’s server is compatible with them.