Roz designz: E-tip #29|A Virtual Home - Website building made easy

IMAGES: If you have a logo, that image will need to be an integral part of the website and putting it on every page reassures your visitors that they are still navigating on your site. The placement of photos and images throughout the website puts a visual to the text. Too much text on a page without a break can cause visitors to click off your site quickly. Careful planning of what images to use can make your website totally unique and eye appealing.

Keep in mind that there are copy-right laws. Microsoft has excellent images that anyone can use and no worries about copy-righted images. There are also several websites offering royalty-free images such as Clipart.com and Dreamstime. When purchasing royalty-free images you pay for the image once and it’s yours to use as much as you like. There are lots of freebies. Free graphic websites often ask for a link back or require you to place their logo on your home page. (Question to ask; Do you want to promote their website on your home page?)

IDEA: Do you have a digital camera? Digital photos taken at high resolution will set up on a website well, copy-right would never be an issue from your end.

Here’s a handy little freebie program that resizes images perfectly with no snow or fuzziness. Easy Thumbnails

CONTENT: Get creative! Most visitors will appreciate your creativity, passion and originality in content along with image placement. All the flash, bells & whistles are wonderful but, people want information along with someone they can trust. Updating content on a constant basis must be part of the overall plan. Visitors will keep coming back for more if they know you will keep your end of the relationship and add new content.

Find someone who can proof read your copy before adding it to the web. Spell check is also a godsend and helps to keep the content error free but not fool proof.

BUILDING: There are many great website builders for the beginner which do not require any HTML knowledge to use them. They are called WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). WYSIWYG programs basically are whatever you see on the screen during the creation process is how the page will look to viewers.

To sign up for a free account, choose one of the following;
Webs.com
Google.com (Blog)

Here are a couple of programs that might work best for your overall website plan.
- Microsoft Word 2000 - if you are familiar with MSWord you can create a website using it and then convert it to HTML for upload.
- Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 - using this program can be costly but has everything possible that you would need to create a website and then upload to a server.
Using one of these two programs would require that you open an account with a web-hosting company. My recommendation is http://1and1.com. The majority of my clients have their web-hosting service with 1and1.com, they offer a website builder that uses a large selection of templates and also free images.

If you are new at the whole website building process try one of the free accounts and begin there. You can always move on to bigger and better once you get the basics down.