Create A Website But Don't Skimp On The Quality
Unless you are a loner who prefers to live in the dark ages, it is most likely that you have some form of online existence. It may be a personal website, a business website, a social networking profile, a chat user homepage, or an online journal of your daily activities. Although modern Internet technologies utilized by popular portals make it easier for non-technical users to create and maintain their cyber existence, it is always an advantage if you happen to know how to create a website.
Knowing how to create a website is no longer the province of the technical or "geeky". You don't need to know a lot of design theory, high end computer knowledge or lots of website design theory. But you do need to be able to stick with reading a couple of books, willing to work hard and able to learn new tricks to web design.
Conduct a preliminary analysis of your website's requirements and specialties. It is good to involve your friends in such analysis to get multiple opinions. They might be able to foresee a design or a technological challenge, which might go unnoticed otherwise. In addition, their involvement would speed things up for you. This will ensure that you created maximum value in minimum time.
Get a "how to" book on web design and read through it carefully. Start out practicing your newfound skills in an open source web design software package. It won't cost you anything extra. After you've become confident in your web design abilities, you might want to purchase some server space and build your own webpage. This is taking the first baby step into building your own software.
Don't underestimate the value of mentorship. If you know someone who has worked on portals in the past, they can give you pointers on how to create a website. This way, you can build off of their knowledge and avoid any difficulties that they might have had to put up with when they built their sites.
Just like in life, the devil is in the details for a good website design. A great way to make sure there are no technical glitches hiding in webpages is to create templates that need small changes to fit the content or theme of specific areas of your website. Most errors come when collating webpages of different sections of your website into one.
You do not need to be a computer engineer to create a website. Neither do you need to have a strong understanding of design theories and taxonomy. However, you will need to be intelligent, self-motivated, and patient to learn the tricks involved in designing a website. Be sure to catalog the needs of your website. Buy a primer on web design and read it thoroughly. Pay attention to detail when you design a website. Many innovations in online living make it easier and faster for those who are less technically inclined to do this, especially by internet portals, but knowing how to do it all yourself is always better.
Published August 4th, 2008
Filed in Business, Internet, Web Design, Web Hosting