Simplicity in good web design

Simplicity in web design should never be equated with minimalist design aesthetic. It also does not imply in any way mean the lowering of the quality but doing away with all the unnecessary components of a website that would otherwise clutter the site making it difficult for prospects to locate what they are looking for. Simple website designs have a myriad of advantages. This article denotes the benefits of having a simple website and methods which you can employ to create a simple website.

One of the major advantages that simplicity offers in a website design is the ease of navigation. Simple websites do not have irrelevant information and they aid navigation in that there are fewer pages and also the site is less cluttered so fining information or a link of interest is relatively easy. Simple designs also have reduced loading times making them popular with visitors. This is because the less clutter you have, the smaller your files and hence the faster your loading speed.

The content of a simple web design is also more scannable. A study indicated that about 79% of web users were in the habit of scanning the pages they visit online. When a site reduces the use of decorative elements in the website design it makes the page more scannable and hence the site is able to tap from this wide group of scanning visitors.

Simple web designs also offer the advantage of being quicker to build and design. When using a simple design for your website, it is likely that the codes are also simple. Of course it is much easier to design a simple layout site with a few pages and templates than many complex pages with many sections. You just need to make sure that your design is as simple as it looks. The simple codes used in simple designs have the advantage of being easier to debug. It is much easier to find bugs for a simplified code than for multiple pages of a site with many different style sheets.

Lastly, the small files on simple websites will take up less server space and bandwidth than the complex large files. This may not make a big difference in a site that does not have many visitors but for a site with many visitors, it can save a lot of money but catering for more traffic at a lower price.

There are several ways in which you can simplify your website design. The first thing you can do is get rid of all the unnecessary decorative elements. These are elements that are just taking up space on your site without being useful in any way. When designing the website, make sure everything you include in the design, content or code is absolutely necessary in order to minimize clutter. Also ensure that your backend is as simple as the front end. Use a simple markup and limit the use of styles and JavaScript to achieve a simple website. However, simple does not imply low quality so be sure to retain the important visual elements.

Simple Methods for Link Building

Online business and marketing have become very popular in present days. As every online marketer will tell you, no man is an island when it comes to online marketing. Your profit will always be dependent on the relationships that you build with other people whether they are you potential clients or fellow webmasters. Link building is a method of creating internal links in your website and also one of the ways in which you can benefit from online relationships to draw traffic to your site. There are several strategies you can utilize when building links in order to increase the traffic on your website.

One of the most common ways of link building is using reciprocal links. This is where two webmasters make an agreement to show each other’s link on their respective websites. Prior to signing such an agreement however, you should make sure that obligation to show the links are agreed upon by both webmasters. You can use PRWeb which helps businesses to create publicity and online visibility. It is acceptable to many corporations due to its reasonable price and it also assists in accessing web indexes for magazine and established journal editors. Reciprocal links are best done with websites that offer links related to your site. This way, you are sure of the internal links being more useful both ways.

Another way of building links would be to use well-known and already established directories. You can submit you site for listing in the directory to advertise your site. Links in the directory can be used by potential customers to trace your site. When submitting your site for listing in a directory, use the domain name. Avoid using domain names that have brand names. However, you can access a domain name once it becomes pending and is removed from Google’s list. Also, ensure that you make your submissions to the right category and that the links you have provided are not dead or broken. To do this, you can utilize dead link checker.

Creation of blogs is also an excellent way of building links. It has been adopted widely and is also one of the easiest ways of increasing traffic to your site. A blog is useful in that you can post articles of interest to your potential clientele and then link them to your site. When you have regular articles on a webpage or a blog, you can employ RSS feeds to group the articles and blog together with similar ones. This could greatly increase your website’s publicity as visitors are likely to find your articles when searching for a particular subject and then link back to your site.

Professionals have also come up with ways in which you can purchase links. If you find it too much of a hustle to utilize the many methods available to build links, you can make use of the numerous available websites dedicated to link building where a webmaster pays to place the link on relevant sites. This is a bit expensive but it does save you the time and the trouble. However, it is not accepted by Google and it could be a problem.

Simple and easy ways to advertise online

In online marketing, quality and presentation are key factors in determining the marketability of a product and the number of clients it is going to attract or the traffic it is going to draw to your blog. However, these factors are not everything. Before the product can reach the potential clients for them to be able to appreciate its quality, advertising takes a prime role. Advertising is indeed a key factor in introducing your product or service to the market. Regardless of the nature of what you want to market, you have to advertise in order to get traffic to your site.

Getting traffic to your site is however not everything. This is because not all traffic directed to your site is beneficial. You may have a site in which traffic does not add any value. A while ago, marketers would use paid to surf programs where a surfer would view web pages for a number of seconds for money. In such an approach, the surfer will not stay any longer than the timer on the page. This method has been advanced by using referrals who earn you extra bonus. However, the problem with this kind of approach is that it has been adopted widely and people are no longer surfing for money. However, there are ways in which you can draw traffic to your site without going through all that hustle.

The first thing you need to take care of is the content of your website. The content of a website can draw visitors effortlessly. Instead of filling your website with links, try adding content that would interest potential visitors. You can write articles about your experiences or reprint articles from various sources. The articles do not have to be complicated or formal but they can be a description of your work as it associates with the topic of your advertisement. You can talk about your escapades for example about the time you went flying your plane if it is your hobby. Accompanying photos of your escapades will also go a long way in attracting traffic.

To attract more traffic, you can venture in article writing. There are lots of websites and directories that you can write articles for and also very many places where you can share your articles. You can include your signature in the article to link people back to your website. Writing articles every few days can increase traffic significantly.  To advertise online, you can also start a blog. Blogs are popular with search engines because they keep getting updated. They are a good place to share your thoughts and what you are up to. You can also post links to your website on the blog.

Forums and bulletin boards can also be an excellent way to get traffic to your site. They provide an opportunity for visitors to interact with each other. You can utilize free services to host a blog or use available software to install one. You preferred search engine may also have several options on forums.

Server Stats – Analyzing Traffic to Your Site

Traffic is a very important factor for webmasters especially for search engine optimizers and marketing campaigners. They have to know traffic getting to their site and how they get to those sites.  Utilising your servers to analyse traffic to your site is an important factor that all webmasters should consider. It is surprising that some websites owners do not know how they can analyse traffic to your sites.

There are two server tools that are of great importance to all webmasters; server log and traffic analysis program. Server logs are used to analyse the activity of the site. This tool has several important benefits. I enables you to tracks the files made through the server, the number of times a particular file was requested, where the file was requested from and the exact words used to request the file. Although these are the basic functions, there are variations in the tool depending on the system being used.

The other tool important to webmasters is the traffic analysis program. Most companies use the tool to track traffic to their sites. This program allows companies to obtain data in an understandable way. For example, when interested parties hit on the website of a certain company, the raw data from their respective servers is converted into charts, graphs, diagrams and statistics. This allows the site owners to analyse data carefully and strategize on future plans. There are some factors that owners have to focus on to be able to do this effectively. These factors include what keywords visitors use to get to your site, search engines are sending you traffic, how often your site is indexed by major search engines and which sites are sending more traffic.

These factors are very crucial in strategizing on what to do next. When you find that some words do not give traffic, you may decide to make some changes. Many words may not fit Meta tags because searches are based on keyword combination as mixed and changed by search engines. Mix and match by search engines assists webmasters to know which key word combination phrases are visited more.  Basing on this information, you may consider changing your Meta tags in your web pages to fit the phrases shown in the data obtained. Such changes will ensure that your clients are not lost and they obtain whatever they are searching faster saving time.

Traffic analysis tool also allows webmasters to identify where traffic is coming from. This data is obtained by referrer heading and helps you to track marketing campaigns and advertising campaigns. You will be able to determine which areas traffic is low and strategize on what to do in order to get substantial traffic from such regions. It is also very important to analyse the robots visit information which may appear under robots or user agents. Robots are the programs used by search engines to index websites and helps you to know how often your website in indexed. You can also determine how your site is indexed by adding new content and check how many robots you have received. These strategies will surely assist you in analysing traffic.

Portable web development tool kit

Web developers are busy people working for many people who are in the process of setting up websites. These experts are sometimes forced to travel long distances especially if they produce good and desirable results. It is not a wonder to get a web developer who has transverse the whole country to take of development projects in other parts of the country. They are not always required to travel but there are some clients who insist on it. In such a case the web developer will have no choice. A web developer cannot go to a place without his essential tools for web development. Until recently, web developers had to carry for instance their laptops and other equipments having their essential tools.
John T. Haller, the Apache Friends, evolt.org, winPenPack.com and others came up with revolutionary ways of easing the work of web developers especially when they are needed to travel. These companies created portable programs that can be carried by the developed in a memory stick. A small memory stick of 512 megabytes can carry most of these portable applications without a problem. XAMPP: All-in-one server created by Apache fiends is a good example. This application can is surprisingly small; it has a total size of 128 megabytes and can run on most windows applications including Windows 98, NT, 2000, 2003, XP and windows Vista. Amazingly, this application has most of the web developer tools for example Apache server, Ming, PHP (4 and 5), Perl, MySQL and SQLite, Webalizer, Mercury Mail Transport System, OpenSSL, FileZilla FTP Server php MyAdmin, WEB-DAV and many other programs. This means that the web developer can be able to perform almost any function he needs to when developing the website.
There are many other programs that can be included in the portable web development kit. Editors are very important to web developers. Sometimes they find that they need to change something for the website they are developing to look better. They therefore need a variety of editors for different purposes. Nvu Portable which branded “What You See Is What You Get” is one of the most widely used editors. The portable version has a size of 10 megabytes and is used for editing HTML. It runs on all major windows including Linux. Another important tool is the notepad. There are many version of notepad but some do not have the portable version. Notepad++ is an all program editor with functions like code collapsing, auto completion, macros; syntax highlighting is portable and is widely used by web developers. The portable version is only 3 megabytes in size and can be used on many other web applications.
Web developers cannot finalize their work if they are not certain that the website developed can work on the four main browsers; Mozilla Firefox, Opera, IE6 and IE7. They therefore need the portable Firefox Portable and Opera@USB for Cross platform testing. This application is 25 megabytes in size and can be used on most windows applications. This tool kit has allowed web developers to overcome many challenges as they can work from anywhere anytime.

SEO tips for Web Design

Online marketing is no doubt one of the most promising and fastest growing sectors of the world economy. It is no wonder that this sector is attracting millions of interested investors keen on earning extra income or achieving financial freedom. If done the right way, it could be the gold mine you always dreamt of and this has been a reality for some people. Currently, an online business has unlimited potential to have millions of online visitors. However, there is a lot of technicality associated with it before you can sit back, relax and start enjoying the big monies. This is where the concept of SEO web design comes in. Before your site can start enjoying the benefits of search engine rankings, you will need to understand what this concept is and how it works.

SEO is the acronym for search engine optimization which refers to use of keywords in articles to improve the ranking of your site on major search engines. SEO depends to a greater extent on the content of your page and it is very important for you to be able to synthesize the right content for search engine optimization.

SEO is not a quick fix to a site’s lack of traffic. On the contrary, it is a long term project that could take even one and a half years before the results become apparent. Should you decide to go the SEO way in the primary marketing of your site, you will need to exercise a lot of patience. This also goes to say that it is not exactly a piece of cake. It is the most technical aspect of online marketing and it has proven to be more complicated than launching the site, creating a social networking page or even carrying out a Google Adword campaign.

If you are in doubt concerning your SEO web design abilities, you are better placed utilizing an SEO web design company. Actually, most webmasters prefer to go this way rather than crack their heads endlessly finding a way of accomplishing the task. The concept is better off left to experts of SEO web design as it requires, at the basic level, knowledge of HTML language. It is not about spreading your keywords evenly in the article and avoiding keyword stuffing as most people would think. Even though keywords are relevant, there is much more involved than just keywords to build an effective SEO marketing site.

If you are considering getting and SEO web design expert, the best place to search would have to be online. A search on Google or any other search engine can give you a long list of firms that specialize in SEO web design. Try to compare many of them in order to get the best deal at the lowest price. If you prefer to work with someone physically, you can search for a company in your area, otherwise, a virtual company will do just fine. Make sure you know how much you are willing to pay before you commence any business discussions with a company. With the right company, it should not be long before you start seeing the results of the optimization.

SEO tips for WordPress

It is no doubt that wordpress is one of the blogging scripts that is being used widely by online marketers to heighten their ranks in the search engines. Any online marketer would not need overemphasis on the use of the right means in order for their blog articles to achieve the desired ranks in search engines and especially Google. If you are familiar with all the features that wordpress has to offer, then search engine optimization does not have to be a dream. Due to its versatility, you can customize a single wordpress blog to your satisfaction and let it do the marketing for you. It is only a matter of time before all traffic directs to your blog to see what you have to offer. Here are a few tips that will hopefully help your blog achieve the desired ranks.

The first tip is keyword rich titles. A title is the most important part of a blog article for numerous reasons. It is the title that makes readers make a judgment as to whether or not your blog is worth reading. Try to make your title captivating and rich in keywords without overdoing it. When coming up with a title, think of key things, that potential readers would search for using the various search engines. Do not use clichés in the title and also avoid using cryptic titles. Titles that bear information on the article are more appropriate.

In addition to creating the right title, create the right content. Your blog article should be as reflected in the title. It should provide accurate and well researched information with keywords used enough times and spread evenly throughout the article. The keywords should also not be overly used in the article as this will lead to keyword stuffing. You can also link your readers to other websites with more information as this creates the impression that you are confident in your niche and are willing to share the resources you have. To make the content more appealing, use images and then optimize them.

Optimizing your URL structure or pretty permalinks will also draw traffic to your blog. You need to customize your website’s URL so that when it is displayed, it does not look like text but it is a link that can be clicked on to direct someone to your website. The customization feature is available on wordpress. You can also optimize your page title to make the keyword more descriptive.

Another tip that would be useful is providing a Google sitemap. The sitemap provides the Google search engine with an easily readable overview of all the content on your website. WordPress has made this easy for you by providing a plugin called Google XML Sitemaps. The pluging installs this feature and updates it every time you add new content to your website.

To further increase traffic, you can interlink keywords key words between the articles in your blog. This is a great way of increasing traffic in your blog as it gives your readers access to more of your work.

Rules of good web design

Many theories are usually put across regarding good web designing and every online marketer has their idea about what good web designing is. The web is also full of tips on how a website should be designed and how a good website should look like. For some people, complexity says it all yet for others an expensive website is just about it. Still many more go for cute or cryptic websites in a bid to cut their niche in the world of web designing, yet the basics of a good website are just that: basic. Good web designing is not about complexity but about simple rules that seek to bring quality.

The first major rule is to avoid welcome pages. These are bright pages with big photos that open first when you are trying to access a website. Sometimes they will have welcome words in large prints offering you an opportunity to visit the website. Not only are these pages annoying but they also portray lack of confidence on the webmaster’s side. The pages also block many potential clients from visiting your site as no one wants to be kept guessing while they have options. Your website should portray what you are offering at a glance. You should also keep away from big and annoying ads such as banners. Instead, specialize on posting quality content in which you can incorporate some ads. Visitors are more likely to ignore the big banners but they will view other ads as they scan through the quality information.

For quality websites, make the navigation process easy for the visitor. A visitor should be able to tell what page they are viewing in the website and how they can get to another page. Make sure the navigation menus are familiar and understandable for any visitor to get acquainted to the website. Avoid using flashy and dropdown menus and instead stick to simple and clear menus. These should help your visitors to access information quickly and with minimal difficulties. Difficulties in navigation are likely to drive visitors away from your site in search of a friendlier one.

Search engine optimization is an important aspect of any website that aspires to get traffic. Use of java scripts and CSS can assist you in this aspect. CSS and java scripts arrange information in such a way that the search engine accesses the important information such as headings and keywords first giving your website a good ranking in the search engine index.

Ensuring your website is updated also goes a long way in web design. Your website should be compatible with most browsers and meet web standards. It would be vain to have a website that looks great in one browser yet does not open in another. Make your text legible and try to organize your content in paragraphs or short blocks. Also, avoid sound effects as these can be annoying. If you decide to include them, make sure there is a provision for the customer to turn them off if they like. When designing a website, settle for quality and not complexity.

 

PHP web development

Perl Hypertext Pre-processor (PHP) is a general scripting language that was developed with the main objective of developing dynamic web pages in web development. PHP is codes are implanted in to the HTML source document after which it is interpreted by a web server containing PHP processor module responsible for generating the web document. This application is available to most modern servers as a processor and to most operating systems as a standalone interpreter. This makes it important for web development services and has several tools that are utilized to accomplish web development.

Yii framework is a PHP application that is used for the development of large scale web applications. This application can allow web development maximum usability extensively accelerating the web development process. It is easy, extendable and efficient compared to other applications. In fact, the word yii stands for these three words. If you need a PHP framework with very small footprint, you may consider using PHP codeigniter. This program allows that can be used for web developers looking for simple and stylish full featured web applications. This application is idea for webmasters with shared hosting accounts and dealing with clients with deadlines.

Cake PHP application is used in PHP for extensive architecture for the purpose of developing programs as well as maintaining and deploying them. The most common design styles used in this application include MVC and ORM. The major advantage of this application is that it requires less coding reducing development costs significantly especially when MVC ad ORM design patterns are used. PHP devshell application allows flexibility in development of general web applications. While using this application, you can start with development tools that matter most and finalize with those that least matter in the development procedure. The application provides many uses including user registration, control panels, management, access rights, security, menu management, group management, system settings, templates and many more.

Websites deal with requests and responses to the requests searched from different places. Programs like PHP Akelos provides a platform that allow you to control requests and responses easily. This application also allows you to distinguish your clients depending on their locations. It makes it easy to manage internationalized applications, communication models as well as using database. You can also write views using Ajax. Depending on what your target group is and what your content is, you may find that you need complex applications fast enough to serve your clients better. At such a point, you can consider symfony application which is also written in PHP and provides architecture, component and tools necessary for achieving this target on time. This application permits early release of your web applications and scale them without a problem.

While using newer PHP applications like PHP 5, you can use application like pradosoft which is very important for component based and event driven programming framework. The application allows separation of HTML from server processes. Depending on what you intend to put on your website; you can use different PHP applications to accomplish what you are looking for. There are many other applications for art oriented content and many more.

Open source web design

With advancement in technology, websites have become very important in availing information to interested parties. As a webmaster, you may consider availing information to only a few people or to the general public. Very few websites are restricted to the public unless they are for instance banks, government or other special organization website. Websites that are available to the public are called open source.

Open source web designing is the most popular type of design that is used by most webmasters. This kind of design allow people to share and exchange information. Clients have access to all the information they need at all times and from anywhere. Unlike other websites that restrict information to some people, open source web design allows people to access information they need at all times. Interested parties can copy information they need from a website made through open source design. This design will always ensure flow of traffic to your site especially if you have daily content that can be downloaded or copied by the clients.

Open source designed websites do not only ensure flow of traffic to your site but they are also very cheap to setup and maintain. Webmasters interested in using great but cheap design have access to a wide range of tools that can assist them greatly in achieving this for example: Kompozer which is a program which has a featured authorization and integrated FTP client supported by all the major operating systems. Bluefish editor is a light program that can be used by webmasters to design an open source design for a website. This program has immense management operations as well as HTML document wizards. Another important open source tool is the Quanta plus. This is a robust web development tool which has the ability to run and custom scripts.

If you would like to include graphics in your open source website, you can always use the GIMP tool. This is tool that has great manipulation techniques. You can be able to add, edit and remove graphics on your site the way you like using this amazing tool. However, other graphic and tabular data may require use of other programs. Dia is a graphical program that can be used for tabular and chart information to be included in your website.   For creative webmasters who like creative graphics, krita graphics application is used to input creative images. Other graphics and images can also be added to the website.

Open source designed websites require applications that allow clients to copy, share or download information. Therefore, having an open source website cannot be complete with such applications. Applications that will allow your clients to download and get information from your site should be used. Customers can access information they need with ease. Editing programs should always be included. These programs assist in ensuring smooth running of the open source designed website. An example is the firebug application used in Mozilla Firefox to edit, debug and monitor CSS, JavaScript and HTML files. Such applications for other browsers have to be out in place; after all, different people use various websites.