It's not that hard to create a web page image by learning HTML or the use of a web creation application. However, to create an effective site takes understanding the underpinnings. Here labeled "Tips & Tricks."

Domain Names

Choosing the right domain name is one of the most important things you will do when establishing a web presence. Most domains are in the TLD, Top Level Domain, COM. It's very hard to come up with a name that isn't in use or parked by some domain troll speculator. When you check the availability of a domain name on a registry site and don't register then you may find that some speculator magically parked that domain and will sell it to you at a higher price. Avoid this risk and use a "whois" tool. Whois is usually a sub-function of an application with a name like "Network Tools" where it can be found if you run Ubuntu Linux. Whois reads directly from the centralized data base of domains – no middle men or prying eyes this way.

Your domain is a symbol of your brand. The domain "silverhairedchickmagnet.com" might be cute and available. Even if you're an older "man of the evening" it's a very bad choice. Shorter is definitely better. Most descriptive words and common last names are already taken. The answer is to create a new word.

When I checked for "Fragos" as a domain it was parked. Parked means owned but not used. As a consultant my branding is very much me. I use a portrait as a logo and as an avatar on forums and blogs. My user name is always "fragos". Ultimately, I chose "FragosTech.com". I built an immigration activist site and it's name is "NotSilent.org". "NotSilent.com" was parked or I'd have registered it. You'll notice I've mixed capitols and lowercase for readability. Domain names aren't case sensitive. You may have noticed I've not included the "www." prefix. It's use has fallen out of favor. "FragosTech.com" and "www.FragosTech.com" are equivalent and both will bring you to the same site but when search engines count links they are considered as two different sites. Using both will hurt your position in search results.

You may have noticed links like http://fragos.blogspot.com. The domain is Google's "bogspot.com" and "fragos." is my sub-domain. A full link address starts with the protocol as in "http://" making "http://FragosTech.com" my home page. In the future there will many new TLD's beyond the common "COM" and "ORG". There are country extensions in use as well. A "COM" in the United Kingdom would be "CO.UK".

Visitors

Humans have patterns of visual behavior. Understanding those patterns we develop the most effective site. Visitors come for meaningful useful content. To keep visitors coming back we must continually add relative content. Ideally we engage the visitor in a way that makes them a member of your community. This applies to all sites whether their purpose is information, selling, support or even the personal user home page.

Crawlers

Sites are also viewed by search engine web crawlers or spiders. Viewing your site with a text based viewer will give you a better idea of what they see. You need to consider both of these visitors. Web crawlers don't see images or formatting. They are interested in text content relative to itself & keywords. They also favor adherence to coding rules, download speed & standards. Sites which don't change on a regular basis are crawled less frequently & rank lower in search lists. Hand coded sites do a better job of Search Engine Optimization. Choose a design & content for the benefit of the user. Code that design for SEO. Content 1st, SEO 2nd.

Visual Behavior

Navigation tools work best when placed at the top.
Text attracts attention before graphics. Designed so the most important text is most prominent.
Eye movement starts on upper left corner. Scanning down, left side is favored. Don't center headings.
Readers ignore banner ads. Text ads are viewed more intently. Ads unrelated to content get less attention.
Ads placed near best content are seen more often. They shouldn't detract from site content.
Fancy formatting & fonts are ignored — perceived as poor substitutes for real content. "If it don't go, chrome it."
Show numbers as "1".
Smaller fonts increase focused viewing, larger fonts encourage scanning.
Succinct headings are best. Don't include prepositions or text repeated in many headings. Use "&" for "&" & "2nd" for "second." Include keywords in headings.
People generally scan lower portions of pages unless they find content useful.
Shorter paragraphs perform better than long ones.
One-column formats perform better in eye-fixation than multi. Don’t overwhelm visitors with too much content.
Bigger images get more attention. People prefer an image where they can see details & information clearly. Images should be relate to your text. Keep image file sizes small.
Faces in images attract more eye fixation, particularly when they make eye contact with the camera — now viewer. Photos with “real” people, not models, perform better. Abstract & artsy photos don’t attract reader attention.
Headings draw the eye. Different & larger fonts with white space help them stand out. Visual open space gives the user a cue to rest their eyes before looking for the next important item. The use of a contrasting but compatible color helps but be consistent in that color use.
Users spend a lot of time looking at buttons & menus.
Lists hold reader attention longer than paragraphs.

Do have:

high quality relative content.
at least one static internal link to every page.
other sites to link to yours. Participate in forums & blogs, with your URL in your signature.

Don't use:

keywords not used in content, particularly headings.
SEO services that guarantee high search engine ratings. Affiliation with them can get you banned from indexes.
images to display important names, content or links.
fonts the visitor isn't likely to have. In CSS call out font choices to accommodate the best visual result in different OS platforms. Note: Vista has changed & renamed fonts.
multiple copies of a page with different URLs. For print ready versions block those duplicates from web crawlers with "robots.txt".
dynamic pages unless necessary — they can't be crawled.

Free Tools on the Web

These links are some of the basic tools I use to analyze sites for SEO. They aren't for the faint of heart but can give you a picture of the quality of your site. I've chosen them because of their objectivity. Many such tools on the web are intended to sell you the creator's services. Being able to view a site isn't an indication of high ranking in search engines.

Reference HTML & CSS
Markup Validation HTML & CSS
SEO Analyzer SEOworkers
Keyword Tool
Web Image Sizer Optimize images for web viewing
Favicon Creator Small icons in address bar and tabs
Sitemap Generator Creates sitemap.xml
Add site to the Google Index
Google Webmaster Tools Site operation tools
Google Free Statistics Hits, sources, duration, viewed pages, OS's, browsers & more

Further complicating matters, browsers don't all render markup the same way. Unpleasant visual surprises for some of your site visitors are the result. To insure good rendering you have no choice but to debug your site on multiple browsers and adjust the markup until all browsers yield comparable results. At a minimum I test with Firefox, Epiphany, Opera, Safari, eLinks and Internet Explorer. Microsoft, Apple and Linux computing platforms will be verified.

The most troublesome browsers are the various versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer. They don't follow the same industry standards as other browsers and are in fact also inconsistent between IE versions. Microsoft web site development tools like FrontPage create sites that may not be viewable on other browsers or computing platforms. This is totally unacceptable if you want a successful web site.

Microsoft has been under great customer and industry pressure to adhere to industry standards. As a result, Microsoft has committed support, by default, of industry standards in IE8. IE8 will still have Microsoft proprietary extensions but professional developers like Google won't use them. Sites that you build with easy build tools from the likes of Comcast and GoDaddy will work on most browsers and computing platforms but the functionality and design options are too limited. This may be acceptable for adolescent users of Facebook and MySpace. For the enterprise there is no substitute for knowledgeable hand coding and SEO.

Free Fonts

There's no end of sources for free fonts that you can find with a Google search. Which to choose? Many are defunct. Some are come-ons to sell fonts. You are welcome to search for yourself but here's my favorite dafont.com.

Now a note of caution. For the most part you can't use these fonts on your web site because they won't be available on site visitor's PCs. They are however useful for designing text based logos and for use in images displayed on your site. I did a movie site for a film that took place in China and wanted Chinese styled headings. I found a font I liked, "wonton.ttf" and created my headers as images. I got my look but there were no HTML header markups that search engines like. I solved that problem in CSS by specifying font-size: 0; for H1 and H2. Where I'd used an image for a header I also included these now invisible to people seen by web crawler markups.

Domains Visiters Visual Behavior Do & Don't Tools Fonts