Basic Website Build

You do have to know a little about basic computer terminology

It can be hard at first to “get” all the computer jargon out there. Every term on this page is used by beginner computer users everyday, so if you’re finding anything confusing, please research at least a little computer terminology, so when we say “send us your file as an attachment” you don’t send us a CD glued to a piece of cardboard. You wouldn’t operate a piece of machinery or drive a car without getting some instruction, but many people use a computer with no guidance whatsoever. Be ready to own and run a website- it’s not MySpace.

These are the steps to building a great looking site, starting with your logo

A good starting point for any website in determining a great overall look is to use your existing logo design. If you don’t have a logo, or are unhappy with your current logo, please stop and go to our logo design page and get your business or company an eye-catching logo designed first. In any case, you’ll need a decent logo unless you plan to use text as a logo (not recommended), so if you don’t use us, hire a local professional. We have turned down work in the past because we could not even begin with the logo we were expected to use.

Page graphics based on your logo’s attributes: Colors, shading, fonts

Once you’ve sent us your logo in EPS or Illustrator *format, we can begin to build some first draft page layouts for you to review. We have hundreds of basic website layouts, like this one here, that can be customized to suit your needs. We highly recommend that you let us choose a layout for you, at least initially. Once you’ve approved a look for your site, it’s time to decide on the number of pages, and what they’re going to contain. There’s too much to explain right here, but to sum up, you’ll supply us with text, images and other content like video files to fill out your pages’ content zones.

Content Zones

This a term we’ll be using to describe the different areas on your pages that will contain text, images, or other content, such as videos. The text you are reading right now for example is contained in the “body” content zone, the main area of your page. To the right is a sidebar content zone, and at the bottom of the page are three areas of “footer” content zones. Often these areas are “static”, but contain auto-updating info like your page archives or links, for example. Content zones are often prebuilt into many layouts. If you already have decided on a Content Management System (CMS) for yourself like Joomla™ or WordPress™, you could even go online and review the hundreds of free themes on their sites and choose one that suits your page style and function needs. Then we’ll customize to fit your graphics scheme. But really, you should let us show you a layout idea first!

Get yourself started on your website content

Before you even begin to write the content that your users will see, these are the main elements your page(s) will need to be found online. For the best keyword usage, try to make each field unique/relevant to the page it appears on. “Characters” are all the letters AND spaces combined.

Keywords (no character limit, but fewer relevant keywords are better than a lot of remotely related terms):

These are words, or “index terms” can consist of a word, phrase, or alphanumerical term that will be used to target your site to your audience. Every case is different, and we recommend doing a little research online about effective keywording. We’ll help where we can, but really only you know the real needs of your business. In a nutshell, these are the words your customers/audience will be typing in a search engine in order to find you, so put yourself in their shoes, and start searching so you can identify your competition. Each keyword should be separated by a comma, and without any punctuation or formatting.

Browser Page Title (up to 60 characters):

What you see in the top of your browser window, in the case of this page you’ll see: “Rich Cleveland Digital Media, LLC – Basic Website Build”. This text should have at least a few words that are relevant to the content on the page, in this case, we chose the words “Basic Website Build”

Browser Page Description (up to 160 characters):

This text you don’t actually see, but it comes up on search engine pages when your site appears in a search. It should give a descriptive summary of the content on the page where it is set to appear. However, it shouldn’t exactly match any description you might already have on the page, although it is tempting to do so. Include as many keywords as possible.

Your website’s pages and navigation

When creating pages, don’t bother to create more pages than you need to get your information across. Concentrate on making interesting pages that get the point across; the average user only spends a minute per page viewing on sites on the web. More pages add cost; we can help you refine your information and design a site that fits you and your users perfectly. Keep your button names short & sweet for the main pages, and remember to keep in mind that not all of your pages may need to show up in the actual menu. For example, you might want to include pages that simply expand on the information already contained in a “parent” page (a page that appears as a button in your navigation area). You can also have many “subpages” like this one, which is a subpage of the parent page/button entitled “Site Design”; hover over the button above to see a subpage in navigation.

Uploading your website’s text, image and other files to us by e-mail or the client uploader on this site

About sending text:

When sending text, please create a separate basic text document (.txt or similar) for each of your pages. Use Notepad on a PC, or TextEdit (set to plain text) on a Mac. You can send Rich Text Format (RTF) files as long as you do not add formatting other than line breaks; more on this below.

DO NOT FORMAT YOUR TEXT! This is very important. Please do not add any paragraphs, fonts, bold or italic settings, etc, and do not hit “enter” after a line in a paragraph. DO hit enter/return to show the line breaks between paragraphs and titles. Let the text wrap if in doubt.

BE SURE TO SEND YOUR FINAL, EDITED TEXT. We have to copy and paste so much text that if we have to remove formatting or fix glaring spelling/grammar errors there will always be an extra charge. You can send us your text files as separate attachments in an e-mail. Once you are a client, you’ll have access to an uploader that doesn’t require you to enter a security code every time you want to send us a file. That said, you can still use the uploader you see on our contact page to send us files right now. Just past your text and send one page’s worth at a time. You can attach images at the same time, but first read on.

About sending images:

Images that will be used on your website must be “web-ready”, that is, optimized for use on the internet in an image editor so that your website loads fast. This is something you can easily learn to do yourself, and there are great free programs out there like IrfanView, so you don’t have to buy an expensive program like Adobe Photoshop (although PS is worth it). Requirements will vary a bit depending on your website content (a photography site might want larger images) but generally the requirements are as follows:

-File name must not have any spaces or punctuation except for dashes (-) and underscores (_) and should be relevant (not “image1″ etc)

-No wider than 600-800 pixels; 72 to 96 dpi; an image title must be included (used for alt-text like mouseovers but also seen by search engines) and optionally a caption title as well (a must if you want captions under your images as well as mouse-over text)

-Format should be JPG (aka JPEG) for images, and either GIF or PNG for graphics/logos/image text. We used PNG files for the icons you see on this page, which is the best choice if you want your images to have transparent backgrounds. Use the setting “PNG-24″ when possible.

About sending other file types:

Other type of files can be used on your website, such as PDF documents, videos, or MP3 players to name a few. We can only accept files up to 20MB in size by e-mail or via our uploader, so for larger files you’ll need to learn how to use an FTP program (File Transfer Protocol) to upload any size file you want. There are many free FTP programs that work great, such as CoreFTP.

Once you’ve got all the basics above sorted,

it’s time to move to the next step and add some optional features to your website. Basic sites start at $750-$1500 depending on the job. This gets you your basic website built with pages and navigation. Domain name and hosting not included; learn more here.

NEXT: MAKING YOUR WEBSITE WORK FOR YOU WITH ADD-ON FEATURES >

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