Opinion About Building a Website

First of all you need to chose what content your website will have. Basically it should be something you’re good at. For instance, if you’re passionate about graphic design, you can add tutorials for the programs you use (Adobe Photoshop, Corel Draw, etc); if you’re passionate about history, you can build a website with important events from history, profiles of different important figures from history, etc; and so on… you get the idea.

Design vs Content Easy win… only a n00b can really think deep about that. Content always comes first. This don’t mean your website should be slack with no graphic/visual elements at all. Just keep it clean, don’t add graphic unless it’s needed, don’t add flash or java scripts in excess. Make it load fast, easy to browse, readable. As much as possible make sure the scroll bar don’t show… a lot of surfers don’t bother scrolling down. You may wanna learn about SEO (Search Engine Optimization)… do some research on this matter. I don’t get in the details of building the actual website, there’s lots of programs to help you do this… Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive, etc. Chose whatever you’re comfortable with and do it.

Now… you already have a website up and running, the content is added… what next? Traffic! Biggest problem of all… driving quality traffic to your website. Now it’s the time to search the web looking for possible sources of visitors. And also now it’s the time when you will get drowned in spam emails. Advice: don’t ever pay for directory listing. It’s useless, all you will get is bot traffic. Instead list your website in search engines… Google, Yahoo, MSN and the more obscure ones you can find. Of course, if you can afford, go for payed listing… in Yahoo you can buy links from 30 USD/month and in Google for 50 USD/month. If you go for payed listing, be careful about the keywords you chose… if you have a website filled with Photoshop tutorials, you don’t wanna pay for visitors looking for Corel Draw tutorials. Page rank should be your main concern… I will cover that later.

Another free way to drive traffic to your website is to promote your articles/tutorials in bookmark services such as Digg, Shoutwire, Technorati, etc. Do whatever it takes to have your articles promoted to the first page on this services. Cheat, use proxies, call your friends to create accounts and digg/shout your articles… it don’t matter as long as you don’t get caught.

Link exchange is something you should keep in mind, but not too much… get link exchange with websites related to yours. I’d recommend to study a little bit first that website. It’s no use if your link will be on some page no one ever open and that won’t help you get higher rank in search engines.

Let’s talk a little about this rank… when you search for something in Google for instance, you get a list of web pages containing your keywords. The page rank determines the order those pages show up in your results. The higher the rank, the higher the position in results. Of course you will want to have a place on the first page, but who doesn’t? How you get there… that’s a whole different story. For a long time search engines don’t even look in meta tags for keywords… strange, that’s something not everybody knows yet. For this reason, there’s no need to fill your meta with hundreds of keywords cause no search engine will look there. Instead they look for keywords in page content, so if you want your page to show higher in search results, make sure to repeat keywords as much as possible in page content. Second… a dynamic page will always get higher rank than a static page. If your page content is not changed for a long period of time, don’t expect a high rank. To counter this, use dynamic content somewhere in the page. Third and last thing I wil talk about is links to your page. The more links the search engine finds on another websites, the higher the rank of your page. Importantly , quality websites with the link submitted within content is essential. That’s the reason a link exchange won’t get you higher ranking. The search engine won’t count a static link, but it will count a link inside an article/tutorial like dotfree.eu/ this one

That’s about it… my opinion on building a website and drive traffic to it. I will cover the money making process on another article, cause that’s a long story to tell.

Source: dotfree.eu dotfree.eu

How To Set Up A Professional Website On Your Own Using Web Templates

To create professional websites is not an easy task by any means. There are many things that you got to take into consideration like easy navigation, strategic links, clean coding, professional layout, easy downloading, scanability, usability and so on. These are the elements that differentiate a professional website from a mediocre one. So in a way it’s not designing the website that counts but how the website is designed.

The only option that most of us have in order to design a good website is to hire a web- designer. Web-designers can help you come up with a great website that looks professional and is coded to perfection, but what about the time factor, leave alone the costs. Here’s where web templates come to the rescue.

What are web templates?

Wondering what web templates are? Well, to put it in simple terms, web templates are semi-finished, pre designed web pages that can be used to create and host websites in less time. They are coded and have everything from graphics to logos and can be customized if required to add new pictures, content etc.

Why are web templates considered semi finished WebPages?

Web templates are semi finished in the sense that they are not ready to upload as they are. You need to add certain elements to make them look complete. Some of the main elements that you need to add include

Links
Page content
Page titles/header/footer and tags
Company Logo, images etc

After adding these details the web template becomes ready to be uploaded using a web host for the world to see.

What is the price range of web templates?

Web templates range in price depending on the type of templates, terms of usage, package deals, membership deals, files provided etc. Typically a professional template with non-exclusive rights could cost you anything between $20 to $100. This is way lower as compared to what a web designer would ask you for designing your website, not to mention the time factor. Copyrighted templates with exclusive rights could cost you anywhere between $350 to $1800 per template. Some template providers like buytemplates.net/ buytemplates.net can offer you buytemplates.net high quality templates for much lower costs.

What are the files I should get with the purchase of a template?

The files that you get on the purchase of a template differ from vendor to vendor depending on the type/feature of the template. Regardless of the type of template some files that should accompany your purchase are as follows,

Index.html file
Jpeg/gif image files, font files
External CSS Style sheets
PSD files

In addition to these some other files such as .js file (for templates that use JavaScript) and readme.txt files can also be provided. Generally these files are provided in a .zip format and you may need to unzip them for usage. You can make use of unzipping software like WinZip to unzip the files. This software can be downloaded from winzip.com.

What kind of rights do I get over the web templates?

Basically there are two types of templates; exclusive (copyrighted) templates and non- exclusive (non-copyrighted) templates. An exclusive template gives you ownership rights over the template whereas a non exclusive template does not give you ownership rights but only usage rights. Exclusive web templates are a bit costly and will ensure that the template is not resold to any other customer. You may use the template as your like and even resell it to other customers. A non-exclusive template on the other hand is cheaper and gives you only usage rights over the template. This means you can modify the template as per your needs but cannot resell them to a third party. Non-exclusive templates also mean that the same template can be resold by the template provider to more than one customer.

How do I edit the web templates?

Basically editing involves inserting the content, changing the style and adding/changing graphics. This can be done using the psd, index.html and other files that the web-template provider gives you on purchase of specific templates.

Editing images and graphics

You would require PSD files in order to edit images and graphics like change image color; add/remove image layers etc. PSD files are those created using Photoshop and can be edited using Photoshop, ImageReady, imac or other image editing software programs. You can also change images to your liking. The best place to look for quality images for your templates is ‘gettyimages.com’.

Editing content

If you only need to change/insert content of the template, you can go for editing the index.html file. The index.html file is provided by all template providers and can be edited using Html editors like FrontPage, Dreamweaver, Golive etc. You can also edit content using text editors. Index.html can also be used for removing/replacing images, changing links, adding meta-tags, adding alt texts, adding title and changing image sources.

Editing layouts and styles

For editing layouts and styles you would require a CSS style sheet. A CSS style sheet is a document that lets you make changes like text color, text/paragraph spacing, headings, links etc to multiple pages. Always ask your template provider to give external CSS style sheets as they are easy to edit. CSS can be edited using any HTML or text based editors.

In case you find the editing part difficult you can make use of web template customization services that are provided by most template providers.

Domain registration and hosting

Domain registration and web hosting are crucial for your website to appear online. There are many template providers who offer allied services like domain registration and hosting. Some even provide services like content development and search engine optimization. So be sure to buy templates from template vendors who offer these additional services. Some template providers like ‘buytemplates.net’ offer template related services irrespective of where you actually purchased the template from.

Where can I find quality web templates?

The internet is filled with websites that offer web templates. All that you need to do is insert a keyword like ‘corporate web templates’ in google or yahoo! to get a SERP crammed with web template providers. But finding quality templates from this crap is a bit difficult. A template many look glossy on your screen but may contain bad coding and low grade graphics. Some may be cheap but will have bad or no service associated. So how to find the best web templates in this heap load? The best way is to ask your-self these seven questions before making a buying decision.

Questions to ask before buying web templates

Are the templates conversant with my company objectives and goals?
Will they appeal to my end users?
What kind of support does the web template provider offer?
Does the web template provider offer complimentary services like hosting, customization, SEO etc?
Is the template compatible with all editing software programs?
What kind of files does the template vendor offer me?
What are the membership options available?

Best web template providers online

Some of the best web template providers online who offer high quality web templates at affordable costs are buytemplates.net/ www.buytemplates.net (Buytemplates.net offers quality templates at affordable rates. They also provides allied services like template customization, content insertion Search engine optimization and web hosting), templatemagic.net templatemagic.net (offers quality affordable templates), designgalaxy.net/ designgalaxy.net (this site also offers logo designs, flash intros, Photoshop designs and PowerPoint templates along with web templates.) and interspire.com/ interspire.com (This site is a must visit for anyone looking for free website templates. Their free templates are of good quality and are updated regularly. You can also get hold of free newsletter templates and logo designs here)

About the Author

icongalore.com/ icongalore.com is a quality web portal that offers high quality professional XP icons. Their icongalore.com XP application icons come at extremely affordable prices and can be used for web designing, software applications and print media.