Category: Web Design

WordPress is something that people are going mad about these days. The software which enables you to pour in your creativity and imaginations and help you design your dream website just the way you want it. WordPress is totally based on technicalities and so is a bit complex as the features can be customized and so it is very important to know first the basic steps to operate wordpress.

So, once the wordpress has been downloaded it is very much to know each and every main tab and the features attached with the wordpress. Begin with the option of administrative panel. This is at the top of the website. It is most important panel of the wordpress and all the customization of themes and the writing style of your website begins from this. The website can be designed and crafted from using all the tools present in this administrative panel. The view site option enables you to view the exact position of your site so that you can afterwards customize it.

To the beginners it is advisable to study first the basic theme of the wordpress before changing the layouts with the added features. The basic layout which represents the style and the look of your website is know is the theme of your wordpress. The basic starts with the header which is highlighted in the complete website designing where the title name of your website will be placed. Then there is a sidebar menu which is placed in the left hand side of the layout. This is the general layout, known as default and can be changed easily. Then the next section is the main part of the website where you can post and write descriptions of the blog such as the title and the brief information about the various posts related to the blogs. The information related to the blog like the person who wrote this, the time of posting and other various details are present in such post section. The last or the ending part is the footer of the blog or site to be designed. It is generally by default written that the blog is “powered by wordpress”. This helps in stopping the plagiarism and gives you copyright for your content.

The sidebar is used by people to search different blogs according to the names and the time period and various categories under which the blogs are written by the authors. This is the basic theme of wordpress and then it can be customized according to the needs and taste.

The details can be formatted to various colours fonts and designs in the title menu and other parts of the wordpress default theme. This feature is named hover and every time you change the position of your mouse to different colours it will adjust to the same and so you can the change the default theme and customize it by your own choice.

Thus, this is the basic theme which you need to learn about before working on wordpress and explore in future to play with the same.

WordPress is a medium where you can create your posts and get your dream blog website. This allows you to customize the content and place the things according to your desires and thoughts. WordPress has emerged as the great solution where in the bloggers can publish their content in the systemized manner and can share their thoughts easily with mass in the whole wide world without any constraints. The people looking for the perfect solution and a personalized website to promote their articles, writings and get their personalized content to share with public can use wordpress as a medium to spread their words.

The most important part of wordpress is the detailing work which is complex and need to be perfectly studies before making any changes in the basic format and layouts. The posts can be easily created with the post page after making the main page and getting it done in the categorization and archives section according to the dates of written articles or sorted through the names of the article or post writers. The when all the posts are cleared and the content is posted into their opted places, it is the time to control this content.

WordPress allows you to control this content by offering several features. WordPress offers the facility for the password system which can allow people to control the posts which people posts on the site. The password system allows you to either post a question or get a password in the e-mail id of the member to read the post and make it private. Through this the posts can be customized and privacy can be set. Only the people whom you want can see the posts and can be shared with fewer people of your choice.

The post which is created today can be presented in the blog next day or the day set previously at the future day. The post slug can be implemented with the advanced features of wordpress to control the posted content on your blog site. This option cleans the content on the site. The multi page option allows the people associated with the website and the members can get the convenience of visualizing whole post in one page instead of turning the pages here and there. The wordpress also allows you to categorize the content and the posts into the sub-categories and also helps you to generate various emoticons and the smileys which add a personalized touch to your articles.

This wordpress tool also helps you to upload the files in the form of images, videos and audio files to your post and enhance the posts in form of multimedia posts. The posts which are incomplete can also be saved in the form of drafts in wordpress. The posts can be formatted through the various features and template files. Moreover, the posts can be customized, edited and deleted through the various features enabled in the wordpress.

Definitely, wordpress is the solution to the blogging site and allows you to control the content posted on the site.

WordPress has gained popularity and is a tool which is now very important to form a perfect blogging site. This is your personalized site as the administrative panel is completely in your hands and you can play with this according to your imaginations and creativity. The wordpress allows you post various post or blogs in your site according to the categories and the sub-categories defined previously. The sidebar is something which is displayed on the right and left sides of your page contents.

Generally, people post everything and put so many plug-ins in the sidebar which makes it messy. The chaos is created when the unplanned things are all pushed up in the sidebar making it confusing and hectic for the members to use. They all-together put lots of advertisements, maps, various types of links, various chat options, etc. This leads to complete hodgepodge of the sidebar and people find it irritating to see so many things popping out altogether. The sidebar must be having only things which are related to your blog and it must be important to display those things in wordpress sidebar.

The widgets in form of archives must be absolutely displayed on the sidebar. It is a must. The archives in the wordpress allow you to categorize your blogs into the different archives according to the time. This helps easy navigation of the blogs that are uploaded on the site. Not only this, it is very much essential to customize the sidebar as in accordance with the main page of your site. This enables you to essentially provide a customized blog and sidebar. It must be coordinated in terms of the colour, font, size, layouts, etc.

The RSS feeds must be placed perfectly in the sidebar and it must also be clearly noticeable for the members, so as to fill that RSS and try to spread your post and blog to mass. This helps you to allow your blogs to be attractive and also the members you posts in your site can have the benefit of mass spread advertisement of their blogs by doing this. The rss feed must be placed carefully on the sidebar so as to make it noticeable and must also be visible easily.

The wordpress sidebars can also have the plug-ins related to the weather reports or the total number of the visitors which visited the blog or the site. This can give information related to the various blog visitors and the top rated blogger of the month. This can be a psychographic reward for the bloggers and hence attracts the traffic to your site. The designing and formatting of the font in the sidebar is very much important and it needs to be highlighted as much as possible. The advertisements must be only placed if sufficient and all relevant information related to the blogs have been posted on your wordpress sidebar, so as to avoid any misunderstandings. The text provided must have a hyperlink option so as to divert to the concerned page.

This all will help you to build a perfect sidebar for your wordpress site.

It is blogging which is spreading like bush fire trend in most parts of the world. People have got the platform as wordpress to spread their word to people around the globe. WordPress is something which has changed the way blogging actually used to work. It enables to enhance various designing formats and layouts in wordpress. This is actually allowing people to do real personal blogging.

The plug-ins must be installed after the creation of the basic homepage. This allows you to make your page more formal, fun and different at the same time. The choosing of plug-in depends on the nature of the blogs that you want to post in your website. This is really going to enhance your website. The codex plug-in needs to be installed first which will allow you to search for the wordpress codex.

Then real works starts by adding new categories to the blogs. The section wise categorization is possible by going into the manage option and then clicking on add categories option. This will enable you to form blogs under various categories. The main point is the main categories must be formed first and then the other categories need to be constructed. The categories are stored generally either in alphabetical sequence or according to the id assigned to that particular category. So, to avoid saving and displaying articles in form of the alphabetical sequence it is advisable to save it in id number sequence which is generated automatically in wordpress.

Then is the next step of putting the various blogs in the categories and sub-categories formed. The various posts can be easily uploaded to various assigned categories through the category panel option. In the manage tab, select category panel and from that choose the option of posts. When you do this, the option allows you to posts your blogs on the website under various categories. There is option where you can place your text in the categories. Not only this, you also see the option of the view where you can just place the post and see how it looks or the preview like button. The other option is of edit, where you can edit the posts in the blogs and can re-type or change styles and fonts and other editing options to enhance the looks and content of your post. The third option is of delete, which allows you to delete a particular post from your blog or from a certain category. These three options give you a route for completely managing your posts in the blog.

Under the text content, there is an option before header; to save. This option allows you to save the post in the blog under the defined category. These saved posts can be displayed and seen from the view option of the admin panel where complete preview of your main page is done and the titles of the posts are shown in the sidebar under category and the particular archives through wordpress.

This way the blog posts can be formed, enhanced and saved in wordpress.

As the demand for developing websites with multiple functionalities increases, choosing a web development language has become more critical. Different web development languages perform different functions and settling for the right language can sometimes become almost impossible. However, new developments have made it possible for a web developer to incorporate several scripting languages in to the web development process. This has definitely added dimension to this industry and made it possible to benefit from the distinct features of the various scripting languages available. When it comes to choosing a scripting language for web development, there are several languages that you can choose from. This article reviews some of the most common scripting languages for web development.

PHP has evolved to become one of the most popular open source programming languages in web development. This can be attributed to its simplicity and flexibility in addition to being absolutely free. Initially developed by a large community of members, it is the most updated language making it one of the most favored languages in the web development industry. However, the language has some shortcomings such as lack of sensitivity and event based errors. These errors can however be overlooked given the numerous benefits.

Java Server Pages (JSP) is another open source programming language that can be used even by people who are not conversant with JavaScript. It makes use of tag extensions which are very simple and clean. It stands out in that it allows Java tag library developers to incorporate simple tag handlers. However, it is not XML compliant and as such has to be used with HTML or XML. Perl on the other hand is a scripting language that is both powerful and mature. It offers the average web developer almost any tool they need and it is frequently updated to make it more efficient. It is however not ideal for people who do not like using different varieties of syntaxes.

ASP.NET is indisputably the most versatile open source programming language that can also be used with other compatible languages such as C, COBOL, Jscript, and Python among others. It is also compatible with Visual Studio, Webmatrix, C+ and C++ Builder. The language is quite sophisticated and requires background knowledge in order to exploit its features fully. It however has the disadvantage of being a bit slow in executing some operations.

The C language is a programming language initially designed for UNIX operating system but it has since been used on other operating systems. It is efficient and popular for writing applications as well as writing system software. C++ was developed as “C with Classes” with the goal of adding data abstraction and object oriented features to C.

Cold Fusion is a scripting language based on HTML that is mainly used to write dynamic pages. It allows you to query data from a database, create object oriented enterprise level applications as well as use hundreds of inbuilt functions and tags. The tags are mainly HTML, integrated with Cold Fusion Markup Language Tags. It has the advantage of being easily compatible with many Adobe Technologies.

One would think that web development being the dynamic industry it is with many sophisticated tools and technologies is perfect and error free. From the look of things, web development is not a career for quacks and with this in mind; a user would expect well developed websites. This is however not the case and many websites on the internet are ridden with mistakes. Mistakes are not out of the domain of the average human being and experienced wed developers are those who have learned from mistakes: the things that, attending a class does not teach you. However, some mistakes made on a site can cost you dearly and while a good developer learns from their mistakes, a better developer learns from other people’s mistakes. These are some of the mistakes you should avoid on the site you are developing.

One of the mistakes made by web developers is high initial programming costs. Sometimes, a developer spends too much on building and launching the site with no guarantee that the site will draw traffic. This can lead to frustration when the budget gets exhausted and no returns are discovered. A better approach would be to go slow on the programming expenditure until you are sure that the site can give returns and then upgrade.

Another common mistake made by developers is forgetting to take care of the basics. As the site that had been developed gains more and more traffic, the website may require upgrading. It is therefore important to make sure that everything on the website including the files can be adjusted to accommodate increasing traffic. Graphic files should allow for compression so that the loading time is not compromised upon adding new content. This mistake also goes hand in hand with impenetrable information. Developers sometimes fail to develop a navigation system that can cater for a large site. As the site expands and gains many pages, the navigation system fails to cater for the client needs making it difficult for visitors to find information.

Incompatibility is the other mistake witnessed in websites that can cost the webmaster valuable traffic. It can be in the form of browser, resolution or even devices. With the advent of mobile devices as a way of accessing the internet as well as many new browsers and visitors using screens of different resolutions, incompatibility becomes a problem. A good way of avoiding this is to ensure that you test your site thoroughly for compatibility with different browsers, screen resolutions and mobile devices as well as different internet speeds to ensure you are not locking out any traffic based on these factors.

Security lapses have also made a share of the mistakes made by web developers. As a website grows to contain more information and have more visitors, security threats become a reality. Failing to take care of security when developing the website, can cost you dearly. There is need to ensure secure coding and maintenance of operating systems to prevent hacking of customer databases and confidential information.

Like most of the other aspects of the internet, web development is a dynamic industry that is frequently being updated to match the ever increasing demand for sophistication. Designers and developers will tell you that the only way you can make it in the web development industry is by being up to date with the current technology and the technology being developed for the future. It therefore goes without saying that to improve your job prospects in the web development industry; you need to up your skills. Below are some of the skills that are imperative in enhancing your marketability as a developer.

C# or VB.Net are general purpose programming languages developed by Microsoft in their .Net initiative. They are used in projects with a lot of coding that cannot be handled by other simpler languages. In terms of usage, C# resembles Java and VB.Net Visual Basic. Conversancy in these languages will open for you doors to heavy back-end development and web developing software houses.

Java is another programming language used for client and server side scripting. It is very versatile and can be used in many development contexts for example; creating server side applications and producing dynamic server side content just like PHP and ASP. Learning Java does not tie you down to a single programming career and you can easily change in future.

There are other programming languages that are very vital in the marketability of a developer for example JavaScript together with Ajax, Perl, Python, SQL, PHP and Ruby on Rails. JavaScript is popular for client side scripting while AJAX combines Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. JavaScript is vital due to its popularity, wide browser support and compatibility with methodologies like DHTML and AJAX. Perl is a versatile scripting language with multiple functions but mostly used for server side scripting. PHP is the most popular and most frequently updated language hence its knowledge is imperative for any designer with their eyes on success. Python and Ruby on Rails are ideal for rapid web development, whereas SQL is vital for websites that use databases.

There are other skills that are necessary for the modern day designer whose target is success. Flash and ActionScript fall in this category and they allow you to create dynamic visual presentations and interactivity for a website. When combined with other design skills, these skills can upgrade your marketability a great deal. Agile web development technique is also an important skill for any developer who wishes to remain relevant and marketable in the current web development industry. This technique has taken the web development industry by storm and its focus on customer satisfaction makes it one of the most sought after development technique.

The other important skill that the modern day developer needs is knowledge of mobile development. Access to the internet has become more diversified with many people now using mobile phones to access the web. This means that the developed website needs to be compatible with mobile devices in order to benefit from the increasing number of people accessing the web through mobile devices.

Website development cannot be complete without having a web hosting company. The hosting company is responsible to availing your site to potential clients and users. These companies provide different features at varying prices. You should definitely look for a host that provides good features at affordable prices. Several host companies like Hostagator charge little fee for hosting your site. A lot of good features and programs are also availed by this host making it one of the most popular.

A good host company should be reliable and be able to meet your requirements. Most people like their projects to be quality and be done within a stipulated period of time. It is important to ensure that the host company is able to meet these requirements before you contract them. The best way to find out whether a host is reliable or not is through customer reviews, feedbacks and comments. Most clients will always comment on how their projects were done and whether their objectives and goals were met according to their expectations. If you find that the host has many positive reviews, you can go ahead and contract them to host the site for you. If you do not find any reviews and comments about a host, do not contract them because you do not know anything about them. In fact, the best way to get a good host should be through recommendation. You can get good recommendations and information about different hosts on forums and discussion sites.

A good host should be able to provide support services 24 hour a day, seven day a week. This is because issues come up at times that require the help of the host company. You need to be careful when looking for a host with this feature. Most host companies provide support services only five days a week. They do not provide the services during weekends and during public holidays. This could be a challenge to you if you site needs support during the weekend. The host company should have contacts that they can be reached on at any time for example round the clock phone number, email address, Skype and any other efficient contacts. You can try out the contact information provided by the host company before you contract them. It is also important to ensure the contacts provided are valid. If you try reaching the host on contact but do not get through, do not contract that host because you cannot reach them at your convenience.

The host should provide enough security, updates and backup of your site at all times. The virtual world is uncertain with a lot of threats that could bring your site down. This can be avoided through sufficient security by the host and regular updates. However, some threats are very powerful and could easily get your site down. In such a case, the host should have the site back up within no time. It is also important for your host to provide backup for your site. Threats can come your way at any time and the importance of the backup cannot be emphasized at such a time.

With the current trend of internet marketing and selling and buying goods online, every person, business and company is looking forward to have their own websites. The first thing most people would like to know is how much the development process will cost them. If you are looking forward to owning a website, you do not have to worry because costs of owning one have reduced drastically. From 1995 to 1997, the cost of web development for a single site was between 7500 and 12000 dollars. The cost came down to between 6000 and 10000 dollars. In the following four years, the cost dropped to between 2500 and 4500 dollars while towards 2010, the costs dropped to between 1000 and 5000 dollars.

Web development has many processes and elements which vary in cost. Domain name costs vary depending on the providers. Most web host companies charge about nine dollars for a year; other hosts may charge higher or lower costs. The cost of web hosting varies depending on the features of the website and the number of updates you require. Some websites are very demanding as they require regular updates. It is not a wonder to find a website that requires to be updated every day or every few days. Such a site will cost much more compared to a site that does not require regular updates. Cost of maintenance depending on the updates ranges between five hundred and one thousand five hundred dollars.

Websites are different depending on the amount of graphics, images and media they have. Websites with a lot of graphics consume a lot of bandwidth compared to websites that do not have any graphics. Such sites will be charged higher by the web hosting company. The number of pages and amount of traffic to the site also determines the cost of development. Sites with many web pages and high traffic are also charged higher.

Another source of variation in the cost of web development is the purpose of the website. If you have a personal website that you use for forums, reviews and discussions, the cost should be much lower. Such sites are very simple with one or a few pages without graphics. The only thing that may inflate the cost of such a site is traffic because such sites usually have a lot of traffic.  Project of creating a personal site with basic features only should take between one and two months and the cost should not be more than six thousand dollars.

The cost of corporate and ecommerce websites is much higher compared to the personal sites. Corporate sites usually have between 25 and 75 pages, use heavy flash and require extra content like calendar, intranet and search options. Such a site would take almost three months to develop and would therefore costs between 10,000 and 25,000 dollars. On the other hand, ecommerce website depends on the number of products outlined in the website. A typical ecommerce website has between 100 and 1000 products listed with their descriptions. The site also has checkout and payment gateway integration as well as client’s control panel and shipping information. Such a site would take up to four months to develop and would therefore cost between 5,000 and 15,000 dollars.

To guarantee good traffic and profits from your site, it is imperative that you follow the guidelines provided by experienced webmasters. The guidelines are in relation to the copyright laws, design, text, graphics, media and the maintenance of the site.

One of the most important guidelines is the law. Most people create websites and trademark or copyright them. Copying any content from such sites can get on the wrong side of the law. Be creative and craft original content on your own, do not use another developer’s elements unless you have permission from them. Governments also issue regulations and laws that have to be followed in relation to web development. Ensure that you access these laws and follow them accordingly.

Web development design must have a good layout that users can navigate through without any problems. The background of the site should be simple and if possible, a plain background should be used. Background dictates the color to be used on the text and the images another graphics used in the site. Whenever the background is dark, the color of the text should be bright. Colors used in the site should not be more than two. Use of many colors is said to be annoying to the eyes because the users are not able to view the contents of the site well.

The text on the content part should have standard font; one that is easily readable. Fonts that cannot be read comfortably for example calligraphic fonts should not be used. These fonts are used when targeting specific target audience for instance the youth. The number of hyperlinks within the text should be minimized as they may present challenges in readability. Some people use sitemap images which are not friendly to use. Instead, text versions of sitemap should be used. Whenever tables are used, mark-up should be used to associate the cells and the header cells together.

When creating websites, the main objective is the ability of the users to access the site without a problem. The loading speeds of the sites should be fast enough to allow users to access important content on time. To ensure this, you should minimize the number of images, tables and graphics used. These elements consume a lot of bandwidth and they can adversely affect the loading speeds of the site. If it is very necessary to use these elements, consider using revolutionary techniques like CSS which lowers the bandwidth significantly improving the loading speeds of the site. CSS can also be used to position some elements like images, headers and content box in the right positions.

Another factor that is related to accessibility is ability of the users to locate your site fast through the search engines. This is done by Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and HTML sitemap. Keywords are put throughout the text so that when users search a word available on your site, the site is listed in the search engine. SEO locates keywords available on the home page only while sitemap locates keywords in the entire site. When the two are used together, site optimization by the search engine is much faster.