Ever wonder why DNS systems came into existence? Efficiency. Every computer has a distinct IP address, and the Internet needed an elite method for obtaining these addresses and for managing the system as a whole. Enter ICANN.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number manages the DNS root of the Internet domain namespace. ICANN’s role is to manage the assignment of identifiers, ensuring that all users have unique names.

The DNS system is run by a series of servers called DNS servers. ICANN manages the root DNS domains, under which are the top-level domains. It also manages:

Organizational domains
Geographical domains
Reverse domains

Beneath the top-level domains are other naming authorities such as Nominet, the UK’s naming authority.

How does a DNS Query work?

The process occurs in two parts. Firstly, a name query begins at a client computer and is passed to DNS client service for resolution. When the query cannot be resolved locally, DNS servers are queried.

For example, when a web browser calls the fully qualified domain name www.discountdomainsuk.com, the request is passed on to the DNS client service to resolve the name by using locally cached information. If the query is held in the cache, then the process is complete.

If, however, the query cannot be answered locally, the DNS client service uses a server list (ordered in sequence) to query external DNS servers. When a DNS server receives a query, it first checks to see if it is authoritive for that domain name. If it is authoritive, it resolves the name, and the process is complete.

If the DNS server is unable to resolve the query, it in turns queries other DNS servers, using a process known as recursion. DNS servers make use of root hints to assist in locating DNS servers, which are able to provide the required result. In this way, DNS queries are minimised and the Internet is able to operate quickly and effectively.

A typical query may run as follows:

Client contacts Nameserver A looking for www.discountdomainsuk.com.

Nameserver A checks its cache, but can’t answer, so it queries a server authoritive for the Internet root.

The root server responds with a referral to a server authoritive for the .com domains. NameserverA queries the the .com server and gets referred to the server authoritive for www.discountdomainsuk.com.

Nameserver A queries this server and gets the IP address for www.discountdomainsuk.com.

Nameserver A replies to the client with the IP address.

Queries can return answers that are authoritive, positive, negative or referral in nature. In the event of a negative answer, another DNS server is queried.

Imagine you're the owner of a successful Web site, but when you logon one day all you get is an error message. Or worse yet, the domain name now points to a site full of advertisements. That's right. You're out of business.

This happens every day because of a perfectly legitimate process known as "drop catching," where people quickly snag the domain names owners have let expire and try to resell them or use the links associated with the names, which could be extensive, to create Web sites loaded with advertisements. You can easily avoid becoming a victim of a drop catcher by better understanding how the domain registration system works to protect your domain name.

Your Web site, with all the content you have so painstakingly added, sits on a computer with a unique address called an IP address, which is simply a series of numbers. A domain name is an address forwarding service that directs visitors to the site using this IP address. Domain names are used instead of numbers because most people find it easier to remember a name rather than a bunch of numbers. It's as if you could dial your friend's name into the telephone instead of his phone number.

You can purchase a domain name by registering it with a provider of domain services such as GoDaddy.com , the largest on the Web, or any number of other registrars. The name can be registered for just one year, for about $10, or for as long as ten years, for around $80. Many register for only one year because it's cheaper, or they only want the site for a limited time.

At the end of the year, the registrar usually sends an email renewal notice to the owner. If the owner doesn't respond to the renewal notice, the domain name will eventually be made available for purchase by someone else. Roughly 20,000 domain names become available every day because the owners allowed them to expire, or the owners didn't realize that their domain name was up for renewal

According to the rules established by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers(ICANN), domain registrars have 45 days after the expiration date to notify the owner that their domain name is going to be dropped from the registry. If the name is dropped, the guidelines then call for a 30-day grace period during which the owner can still claim the name. After this grace period and then another five-day holding period, the name is dropped from the registry and anyone can claim it.

Since 2004, however, a number of domain service providers, starting with SnapName.com, have created an auction process for expired names which bypasses the original drop process and makes the names available in as little as thirty days. GoDaddy.com begins the auction process even before the names have officially expired, although it does warn the auction participants that the owner could still claim their name.

These providers of domain services each have tools on their sites to make it easier to grab expired names. They provide constantly updated lists of expired names, various auction services, search engines, and other free tools for anyone to quickly and easily find available domain names. Some sites also offer software for sale that further simplifies the search for expired and soon to be expired names.

With the surge in online advertising, drop catchers will continue to seek out domain names from sites with good traffic, anxious to exploit the established links. Protect your site and your business by checking the expiration date of your domain name. Relying on the registrar to send a renewal notice that could easily be sent to an old email address or get lost in the spam catcher, could cost you years of hard work.

 Time to face facts: consumers hate Flash.

"If you must offer a 'skip intro' option, shouldn't your better
judgment kick in?" asked Anna Murray, President e*media inc.,
during a panel on Marketing to Women at the recent AD:TECH
conference.

On October 29th, Murray ran a poll garnering responses from 579
consumers voting for their favorite of two home page variations
for "Acme Haircare". One version started with a Flash intro, the other was static HTML. (Link to original poll below.)

80% of respondents voted for the site without a Flash intro.

So, why do so many consumer packaged goods firms -- including
Coke, 7 Up, Lipton, General Mills, and Clairol -- not to mention
many advertising agencies, love to plaster Flash intros on their
sites? (Perhaps it reminds them of good old television?)

Here's more data from Murray's poll, plus the top three other
homepage design mistakes she sees Fortune 500s make.

-> Flash intros & Flash navigation

70% of those who took Murray's survey have jobs that do not
include marketing or advertising. Of that number, 80% chose the
site without Flash. (Those within the industry disliked the Flash
site even more at just over 80%.)

Respondents' comments revealed how deeply anti-Flash feelings run
these days. "People really waxed poetic about how much they hated
Flash," Murray says.

A few sample comments:

o "Flash sucks. If I want a movie, I'll go to the theater. I
just want quick information,"

o "Flash should be banned from the face of the earth - such a
pain."

o "If I'm going to a Web site, I want information. I want
information quickly. It could be written in 10 point pica
for all I care. I'm already interested in what might be
there, why turn me off?"

o "When searching the Web, my most immediate concern is
generally time, how quick can I find/do it. This leaves
little room for animation."

Murray concedes that Flash may have its place, such as with user-
initiated requests to see something "rich." For example, one
respondent said that animation in the corner of the screen is
okay if you have the option to turn it on or off, and a few
mentioned that Flash can be useful when demo-ing products.

But, don't fool yourself into thinking it's slow Internet
connections that causes people to hate Flash. In fact, the
respondents who had cable or DSL disliked the Flash intro by more
than 80%.

More interesting stats:

o 75% of non-marketing professional women said no Flash.

o 81% of non-marketing professional men said no Flash.

o The youngsters of those polled (ages 18-24) also chose the
non-Flash intro, at over 65%.

-> Three More CPG Home Page Design Mistakes

Mistake #1. The Who-Is-My-Visitor syndrome

This happens with companies that are corporate-centric rather
than being focused on the consumer, Murray explains. Don't try to
be everything to everybody. Gear your main site toward your main
constituency, she recommends.

Unfortunately many of the biggest brands don't do this.

For example, on the L'Oreal site, the buttons on the nav bar
include Human Resources, Research, Press Room, Finance &
Resources. You have to search to find any mention of the
company's brands.

"Is it too much of a stretch to guess that someone who visits the
L'Oreal Web site wants to find a lipstick?" Murray asks.


Mistake #2. Look At My Print Ad!

Do you really want to devote the majority of your homepage real
estate to a single picture? Murray asks.

For example, with the Olay site, "80% of the page is turned over
to a picture that has no functionality," she says. Visitors to a
site like Olay want information, "and you're making them click."

And extra clicks, says Murray, are "the biggest sin on the Web."


Mistake #3. What Country Are You From?

"Why is this so important?" Murray asks. "Why, God, why?"

Seriously, many companies look at which division's site gets the
most traffic (Germany, Switzerland, The Czech Republic, the US --
you get the picture) and divide the budget that way, she
explains.

So putting a map of the world and making visitors click to get
into the site is a corporate need, not a consumer need.

"Get out your spreadsheet and figure out where your consumers are
coming from, then put a nice little drop-down menu for your
misdirected Germany visitor," she says. In other words, put
consumers' needs in front of corporate needs.

Say "Webster" to an ordinary person (that is, a person
whose life has not been taken over by computers! <g>) and they may think
of the dictionary man, or perhaps the playwright John Webster, but we, of
course, know that the word is really the name for those noble individuals who
devote a part of their life to the propagation of human knowledge and culture by
designing and creating web sites on the Internet! Names are like that. They
have different meanings to different people. There is one set of names, however,
that is a little different. This set has a specific meaning. While they may be
based on words or names in one of this planet's spoken languages, they designate
specific locations on the Internet, and are therefore held in high esteem by the
aforementioned Websters. They are, as you have already surmised, Domain Names.

"Ah yes," you nod knowingly, "Domain Names." But do you really know what a "Domain"
name is and how it works? Many of you do, I'm sure, but it is surprising to me
how many questions I am asked that have to do with them, so I thought a little
closer look might be a good idea.

Mr. Webster, the dictionary man, tells
me that a Domain is "the possessions, estate or land belonging to one person."
On the Internet, real estate takes on a slightly different hue. An Internet
Domain is a collection of addresses controlled by one server (under the direction, presumably, of a Server
Administrator!) A Domain Name's purpose in life is to provide an easy
to remember way of discovering a numerical internet address. It accomplishes
this through the Domain Name System (DNS) which is a clever, distributed system
(meaning it is made up of a lot of computers working together) for translating the name into an
address. The translation process is called "Resolving" a Domain Name. A computer
involved in the DNS system runs a program called a DNS Resolver. Here's how it
works:

A domain name is made up of two parts, separated by a period, like
this: domainname.com Technically, this is actually two domains, as you will see,
but that's too picky for this type of description! The part following the period
is known as the Top Level Domain, or TLD. In this example the TLD is com --
known as "dot com" because it always follows the period (dot). Every DNS
Resolver has addresses for "Root" DNS resolvers. These Root resolvers point to
computers that can resolve the Top Level Domains. In our example, they would
point to one that knows about ".com"s, which would in turn have the address of
the system that knows about "domainname". The ".com" resolver is given the
information about "domainname" when "domainname" is registered as
"domainname.com". This updating is performed by a group of service providers
known as "Domain Name Registrars". You go to a Registrar and register your
domain name. When you do, they update the TLD resolvers.

Part of the
information required in the registration process is the name of the DNS
resolver(s) that will hold information about domainname.com. The first of these
is called the Primary DNS Server. Information about the domain is updated in the
Primary DNS Server, which will then provide this to "Secondary" DNS Servers that will hold a copy of the information for
use in the event the Primary becomes unavailable. The TLD servers usually
require information about a Primary and at least one Secondary DNS Server,
though several Secondaries can be provided.

The Primary DNS Server (and
subsequently, the Secondaries) stores information about addresses within the
domain. One of the types of address that can be stored is a "Host" address.
There are several others, but that's a story for another day! A Host is usually
a particular computer. For example, you could have a hostname called "www"
(which is very common!) Taken from the initials of the World Wide Web, this name
is frequently used to point to a computer that houses (hosts) the web site for
the domain. By "point to", I mean that the name is associated with the address
of the computer. This association allows a DNS Resolver to translate
www.domainname.com into the address of the computer hosting the website. When
you type "www.domainname.com" into the address bar of your browser, the first
thing the browser does is to use DNS to translate the name into an address to
which it can send a request for a web page.

In this way, the Primary DNS
Server for a Domain controls all addresses within the Domain. By the way, a
Domain can contain a "Sub-Domain" -- as in sub.domainname.com -- which in turn
contains Hosts, such as www.sub.domainname.com That too, is a story for another
day. Think about it though, and you will probably be able to figure out how it
works!

The internet is huge. Google alone list over 3 billion pages, looking at one each second of the day would take you over 99 years to view them all!

Many people can do website design, but how many can actually design a website. The design element is so important and so often overlooked.

If you intend to send out brochures to your customers, or to potential customers, and the brochure was of poor quality what type of image will this reflect on your business? A poor website will do exactly the same.

When designing a website one of the most important task to remember is colour co-ordination. Ideally you should strive for a maximum of three main colours, with variations and tints of these. By using more you run the risk of non-matching colours and ultimately less easy on the eye for visitors.

Next comes navigation. Colour co-ordination and navigation are the top main priorities. If your site isn't easy to navigate, people will not stay around to delve deeper. Once you site is designed ask some friends or family to test it out. The easier your website is to navigate, the longer people will stay.

Accessibility is a key issue that has been highlighted recently with a AUD$20,000 fine imposed on an Australian website for not ensuring people with disabilities and sight impairments could use the website. These rulings are few and far between (for now) but to help always use ALT tags on images (helping to describe your image), plus use text based links where possible. For further information you can check out http://www.w3.org

You have your site ready, it's full of content, great design and ready to hit the super highway - now how will people find you. This is where SEO comes in to play (Search Engine Optimisation). Optimising your site for the main search engines can help bring free targeted traffic to your website. The main and basic rules of SEO are:

1. A good Title tag, e.g for C2 Web Design being a website design company based in Essex, UK and covering Colchester our Title tag is 'Website Design Essex | Website Design Colchester'. Using your main keywords for your title tag can instantly bring good results.

2. Make sure your keywords appear within your website. The % of times it appears has started to have less an impact, but the general rule is your keywords should make up around 5% of your copy - or ideally once every one to two paragraphs.

3. Request Linkbacks. Make requests for other sites to link to you from the day you website is activated. Search Engines, particuarly Google, base a large porpotion of their listings based on the number of websites linking to you - plus their popularity and themed relationship to the content of your site.

4. Be patient. It can quiet easily take a year or so to achieve a good placement in Google for a popular phrase - but considerably less time in other search engines e.g. MSN and Ask Jeeves.

By sticking to these basic principles and ensuring your site is pleasent on the eye, easy to navigate, and optimised for search engine visits you should be able to claim your stake in the World Wide Web.

 When it comes to building your own website for business, there are many things to consider when you build your home page to make it look professional, fast loading and easy to navigate. There are many ways and tools to make your site look good, entertaining and fun to watch, but that doesn't mean you should use them all.

First, using a lot of web graphics, flash, banners and pictures on your home page may make it look fancy or cool; but it will slow down the loading time extensively. And lets be real here, most people that look at your web page will leave if it doesn't load in 3 seconds or less. Because most people are naturally impatient. If they click on a banner or link that leads to your home page, they expect to see it the second they click, all of it. Not too many people will sit there and wait for your web graphics, flash intro, banners or 30 pictures to load. Keep in mind that not all visitors computers will load pages as fast as yours may. Set your screen resolution at 800x600, or at least put a notice on your page what resolution your site is best viewed in, because people hate to have to scroll back and forth to read from side to side.

Second, professionalism in the way a home web page looks doesn't usually include distracting backgrounds (use solid soft colors or white), loud and annoying background music or three inch tall caps that try to convince your visitor to buy now or feel like an idiot and lose out for the rest of their lives. Fonts should be clear and easy to read and in colors that don't clash with one another or the background. And be careful with text, too much is a turn off, people don't need to read a book about your service or product. Don't use colors such as bright red fonts on a blue page, they tend to bleed, blur and make the visitor feel like there is something wrong with their eyes.

Third, navigation should be as easy as looking at the screen. Navigation bars should be clear, in easy to read fonts and usually in alphabetical order, as well as in colors that don't clash with the rest of your page, make your visitor feel like their starring at the sun or have to squint to read font colors that blend in too much with the background. All contact and information page links should be easy to find as well. The worst thing you can do is make a visitor search for a link by hiding it in a corner somewhere or make them click link after link just to find out how to contact you. Keep you pages clean, clutter free and from appearing as if it is all over the screen.

Last, Ad banners and outside links should be kept to a minimum on the home page of your site, nobody wants to visit a link farm. If you belong to a link exchange or trade links (which is a good idea for the search engines and link popularity), make pages that are just for links or ad banners. One or two banners on your home page is plenty, and are usually placed at the bottom or in a skyscraper on the right hand side of the page. However, if you belong to google adsense, it's okay, and a good idea, to place those links at the top of the page just under your header, because they produce revenue.

If your home page and other pages are easy to read, clutter free, easy to navigate and don't take long to download or make your eyes blur out, then you're probably doing okay. To get some ideas, surf the web and look at other business and product web sites to see what they have done.
A good website can eventually produce a very good income.

Unless you think it is funny to annoy people, you probably don't want to make your site annoying. Search the web and you will come to one of two conclusions; either web designers want to annoy you or they don't know how to design. Whichever is the case, here are a few pointers you could use to make your site annoying.

RULE #1 - Do Not Provide Useful Content

Content is the King. Very little matters about your site without content. One of the biggest threats to the Internet is the amazing number of people beginning to use it. It is starting to become a large entanglement of meaningless information. Many pages say nothing more than "This is my home page," with a collection of links that connect to the same collections of sites as the last page the web visitor just looked at. Besides the person who created it, who would want to visit such a site. The real key is content.

A web site could restate what other web sites have said, and attempt to create the ultimate navigational tool for web visitors. A page of only links adds to the clutter and chaos of the web. There are plenty of great search engines out there, like Yahoo and Google, that already provide an adequate assortment of links. Why would anyone want to go there when they can go to your page and get your 20 links.

Do you not know what you want to say? Well, then say anything. After all, you have to fill up the page somehow and justify the existance of your site. Many people are excited about the opportunity to make a web page, but they don't know why they want one or what they want to accomplish by doing so. If you are a small business, include hobbies and facts about their employees. Personal information can be interesting, and it makes your site more unprofessional.

RULE #2 - Make The Navigation Un-navigatable

The single most important aspect of any site design is navigation. If the users cannot move through your site with ease, little else will matter because they will leave. Provide a hard-to-understand navigation system. Design your site to make sure it does not have a pattern that leads your visitor through it.  Get several people (friends or relatives) to visit your site and watch them as they navigate.  Notice the places where they stop (as if they're finished) and also the links that they click on. If they can't figure it out, great job!

Another important navigation concept is to make your user click through many pages to get where they want to be. Doesn't everybody enjoy having to click on a dozen links to actually get information? Besides annoying your user, this leads to increased page count. You can brag about how many pages you had visited last month.

Poor navigation comes in many forms.

1. Do not have a menu system for major parts of the site. There is nothing more frustrating than having to go back two or three pages to get to other areas of a site.

2. Use unintuitive navigations systems. Assume your audience can identify an icon by its appearance alone. With few exceptions (perhaps an envelope signifying "mail" or "contact information", a house signifying "home" and maybe a magnifying glass for "search") there are few icons which are universally understood.

3. Use complex navigation systems. Few things are as frustrating and will turn off an audience faster than a complex navigation system. Too many moving objects (animations, flash, scrolling text, marquees) - all of these will annoy the visitor and cause him to click elsewhere (i.e. NOT IN YOUR SITE)

4. Make sure that your navigation does not work. Broken links and error pages only frustrate the user.

RULE #3 - Bleeding Edge Technology

Abusive use of bleeding edge technology causes too many users to abandon your site rather than seek out the required plug-in to display some useless animation that otherwise serves no purpose. Abuse the new technologies because they do cool things. Who cares if they do not enhance the site?

One of the worst mistakes on a web site has to be too many applets on a page. When the page takes over 5 minutes to load because of the applets that really don't do much, it is a waste of time. Applets do not need an intended purpose. Make liberal use of applets that do wonderful things like such having a snowing picture along with something that follows the cursor.

RULE #4 - Use Sloppy Techniques

Introduction or Title Pages

When users enters a site, they prefer to see the information immediately. Displaying an introduction page that shows your company logo with an "enter here" button is a ridiculous waste of time. Annoy the user by making them load useless information before they get to the good stuff.

When the user finally does get to your "real" main page, innundate them with useless statements like "Welcome to our web site" and "This is our web site...". Statements like these talk down to the user. Furthermore, it shows a touch of unprofessionalism. Have you ever read a brochure or flier that says "Welcome to our brochure"?

Images

Images are the second largest waste of bandwidth, exceeded only by applets. Challenge your user's bandwidth by using large images. You can rest assured that the user will have plenty of time to think about your design incapabilities while they wait to download your images.

There are two other things you can do with images to annoy your users. First, large images downsized (e.g. an 800x800 reduced to 32x32) are nightmares. There is no need to create a 3k preview image when you can use the original 500k image instead. Second, having too many images on a page (particularly large graphics), can cause your site to load entirely too slow.  Visitors will get impatient and often times click out of your site -- never to return.

Look and Feel

Poor design was a problem with desktop designer newbies and now it is a problem with web designer newbies. Designers are caught up in all the available fonts, colors, sizes and styles, and they are using them all. Even though text needs to convey information, you can still complicate it. Use dozens of fonts and make sure that they are not consistant throughout the pages of your site. Also, when text is too small or too large, it is difficult to read. Large body copy is distracting and a sure sign of the web designer's insecurity. Use big fontswto distract the user from your lack of conent.

Other common ways to make your design awful:

Centering everything on the page.
TYPING ALL TEXT IN CAPS.
Placing everything on one page.
Creating very long paragraphs.

Contrasting Colors

Along with making text annoying, designers can use non-contrasting colors for the background and the text. If a light text color is used on a light background, it will be hard to read, as dark text on a dark background will be hard to read as well. Poor font color/BG color choices will immediately render a page unusable or at best "not worth the effort." The human eye relies on contrast when reading and fatigues without it.

Complex Backgrounds

Many web sites offer libraries of background graphics that designers can use free on their web sites. It is tempting to pick the most beautiful or ornate background styles, be like Adam and give into temptation. A complex background may make a beautiful art piece, but it does a lousy job as a backing for text.

Skip Grammar School

Proofreading is for papers that are graded. Ending up with a site full of 'typos', misspellings and/or incorrect grammar, punctuation or syntax is one of the quickest ways to frustrate your user. If they don't understand what you are saying, you are one step closer to disguising the true lack of message in your site.

Use Excessive Banners

Banners are graphics that can slow loading time and are a turn-off for many users on the internet.  For most, "banner" is just another word for "ad" and they avoid clicking on them. Why stop with one banner? Add dozens of them. Banner ads quickly fill up your page and make the page look like you have something to say. Be sure to add banners that have nothing to do with your site.

Popups, Popups and More Popups

There is nothing more exciting on the web than to play "Close the popup window." Users love this game where they have to chase popup windows and try to close them before they open more windows. Entertain your user by allowing them to play this game. Besides providing the user with entertainment, you increase the hit counts for your site.

Finally, the last thing you want is to be innundated with e-mails from people telling you what they think of your site. The best way around this is to omit any contact information. Make your site a one-way street. You know that your site annoys them, so why clutter your e-mail with obvious accolades of your web design abilities?

So, if your intent is to be the Ambassador of Annoying take heed of these simple rules. Floow them and you are guaranteed to have a web site that is useless, meaningless and, to say the least, quite boring.

One of the most difficult tasks a Web Designer faces is using new technologies or browser specific effects without alienating people with other browsers. For example, a useful tag on Web pages is the IFRAME tag. But this tag is only viewable in Internet Explorer. Or you could set up pages using the LAYER tag, which is only viewable with Netscape. As a Web developer, I could decide to just ignore the browsers I don't support, but unless I'm developing for a tightly controlled intranet, that isn't always possible.

While the browser of choice has shifted from Netscape to Internet Explorer, there are still a lot of Netscape users out there. As a designer, I want to write dynamic HTML and HTML that gets the most out of the browsers' abilities, but I also don't want to lose some of my viewers simply because I didn't take their browser into account.

There are several ways around this:

1. Write a page that uses no special features
2. Take a little extra time to tailor my site

Since I've already stated that I want to use special features like IFRAMES and LAYERS, I'll take the time to make sure that my site is tailored to the viewer. The answer is using JavaScript and meta tags to redirect customers to the appropriate pages.

While this method requires that you write multiple versions of the front page, that is what computers are best at. When I do this, I write the copy` and design for the high-end browsers that I want to support. Then, I simply copy and paste the results into the other versions of the page. For this example, I will create three versions of my page:

1. HTML 4.0 with IE 4.0 extensions (ie4_index.html)
2. HTML 4.0 with Netscape extensions (ns4_index.html)
3. A standard page with no fancy tags or extensions (standard.html)

   Note: I can have 3.0 viewable JavaScript on this page, because most older browsers will ignore it when I keep it in the comment tags <!-- --> Make sure to make the 2.0 browsers ignore the JavaScript if it's not optimized for them.

How to Do It

• First, I add a meta tag to the head so that browsers without JavaScript will go to a non-enhanced page (put this in the HEAD of your first page):

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="2;http://mydomain.com/standard.html">

• Then I add in the JavaScript so that 4.0 browsers go to the appropriate page and 3.0 and lower go to the standard page:

<!-- ignore <script language=javascript> manufacturer=navigator.appName; version=navigator.appVersion; // Communicator if (manufacturer.indexOf('Netscape')>=0 && version.indexOf('4.0')>=0) location.href='http://mydomain.com/ns4_index.html'; // IE4 if (manufacturer.indexOf('Microsoft')>=0 && version.indexOf('4.0')>=0) location.href='http://mydomain.com/ie4_index.html'; // 3.x browsers if (version.indexOf('3.0')>=0) location.href='http://mydomain.com/standard.html'; </script> -->

• Finally, I add in a NOSCRIPT section of the page for browsers that can't \ handle meta Refresh so that they can get to the correct page as well:

<noscript> Your browser does not support scripting. However, we do have a <a href="http://mydomain.com/standard.html">special area</a> of our site for you to visit. </noscript>

Notice that I didn't imply that someone using a browser that doesn't support scripts was old or defective. For one thing, some people browse the Web with JavaScript turned off, even though they use a newer browser. Many other people browse with older browsers for specific reasons, not just because they don't know to upgrade. In fact, at this point, if someone comes to your page with an older browser they have probably been told over and over that they should upgrade. The fact that they haven't ought to be a clue that they don't want to. Customer centered pages are ultimately going to attract more hits and return visits.

It is easy to create a simple redirect at the beginning of your site to keep your readers on the pages that best suit them. And, as I said above, it's easy to set up a second, simplified version of your pages using just copy and paste.

Search engines favour well designed web sites with plenty text content for their top rankings. Here's some tips on how to design a web site to be ranked at the top in the search engines.

Text Content

The cornerstone to your web site is the text content. Make sure the site contains plenty subject matter right from the start. Your home page will introduce and describe the content of the site while each section goes into more detail on the relevant subject.

When adding text content to your site, identify the key search terms and use them in context. Where possible highlight the search terms by placing them in bold text or within tags. This makes the key search terms stand out so that search engines mark them as being important.

Frames

Although all search engines claim to be able to navigate frames, they still complicate matters. The best advice is to avoid frames entirely. Framed sites are listed in search engines, but no matter how many tricks are employed, they never seem to get listed as high as their non-frames equivalent.

If you have a frames based site, consider rebuilding it without frames. You'll see your listings skyrocket.

Page Forwarding

Many sites are now using page forwarding. It is used on the home page of a site to determine if a visitor has Flash installed, or what browser they are using. After testing the visitors machine, they are then forwarded to the appropriate real home page.

This practise does not help with search engine listings. Your home page should be designed to work with any browser, and visitors should be given the choice of proceeding into a Flash site or a standard HTML site. In any case, forwarding past your home page is missing the chance to introduce plenty of good text content to visitor or search engine.

Heavy Graphics

Don't use too many graphics on each page, and certainly don't embed valuable text in your graphics. Search engine spiders see all graphics the same - indecipherable binary code - and embedded text will not be read.

Where you do use graphics, make sure to add alt-tags to describe the image, including key words and search terms where applicable.

Dynamic Pages

One of the great things about the internet today is the immediacy of information. Dynamic web sites make it possible to keep content bang up to date with minimum effort. There is a fallacy that if your site contains dynamic pages it will not be indexed by search engines. This belief is only partly true. Search engines will visit any page, .asp, .php, .cfm etc. If the URL for the page ends with the extension such as /pagename.php it will be indexed and added to the search engine. If however dynamic information is passed within the URL e.g. pagename.php?section=2&user=xyz, then the page will not be indexed.

The idea behind gaining listings for your dynamic pages is to ensure that your home page and other top level section pages do not include dynamic information in the URL. Deeper into the site, sure, include all the dynamic information you want, but at the top level make sure there is enough apparently static information to gain some search engine listings.

If you already run a fully dynamic site, take a look at our optimisation section for some ideas on promotional and traffic capture pages.

Flash

Try and avoid building your main site entirely in Flash. If you do, you'll also have to build an alternative site in HTML or you will receive no listings whatsoever. Search engines cannot read anything within a Flash file.

The use of Flash within a web site is acceptable, provided its use is monitored. Animation and moving logos are great - they add interest and depth to a site. Flash buttons and text embedded within Flash is not so great. Search engines will not follow the links to other pages and cannot read or index any text within the Flash file. Use Flash sparingly.

Navigation

Search engine spiders start at a site home page and follow all the links within the site until they reach a dead end before jumping to the next site on their list. The key to good navigation is to make sure that search engine spiders can reach as much of your site as possible before jumping to the next site.

At the very least, every page within your site must have a link back to the home page. This is crucial. In addition, links to each of the other main pages within the site help the spider move around more efficiently.

If your main navigation is a set of buttons at the top of the page, like in this site, add some small text links at the bottom of each page just to make it easier for search engines and visitors to get around your site.

Web Design, as design in general, is subject to changes and trend influences. Words like "fresh, modern, innovative' seem to conquer the world of design while artists strive to discover new directions. As websites are different, the profitability of a site is shaped by its objectives, resources and users. For a site to be successful, designers need to go ahead of the rules. Breaking the rules is not a problem. The inability to find something on a website is.

Contrary to many beliefs, a user-friendly website design is not easy. There are several factors shaping the web layout and the architecture of a site; some see them as rules, others believe there are no rules at all. Yet, as far as business websites are concerned, certain guidelines do exist.

About Us and Contact Us

The role of a business website is to represent a company and its products on the web, describing the company's objectives and providing enough information for the users about who they are dealing with. The "about us" area should include general information about the management team, company history and company philosophy. It is also advisable to display photos of the team and the managers here. The simple reason behind this advice is that pictures enhance credibility, as people believe that you are not trying to hide.

Some websites use the "about us" category to show maps and addresses for the company, while others employ a "contact us" area where they display contact forms, phone and fax numbers or department emails. For some users there is nothing more annoying than being forced to fill in long contact formularies or registrations. Try to avoid such practices by being flexible and providing options. Let your users decide if they want to fill in all the details or if they'd rather save some time and fill in a short form.

Products and Services

Depending on what a company has to offer, the "products" and "services" areas are devoted to goods or services that are either sold on the website or advertised there in order to be sold somewhere else. The categories should be clearly structured, the descriptions simple and relevant, illustrated by related pictures or graphics, if necessary. Avoid overloading the section with too many images, because they will distract users from the content.

News

The section should answer these simple questions: what's new about your company or products and services? Do you have any recent awards or events worth a web presentation? Write a text and publish it in this category. Keep it simple and try to use as many business related keywords as possible. See the rules for writing press releases. More: distribute your news and press releases on relevant web outlets and drive traffic to your site.

Try to get testimonials from your clients and display them online. Sometimes even a critique shown online can bring you positive reactions. People will appreciate your honesty, and will trust you more than they trust companies which praise their own success too much. Be realistic, careful and show concern for the users, not for yourself.

Disclaimer or Privacy Policy

This is not just a rule: it's a must! Companies deal with clients who wish their privacy to be protected. Unfortunately, sometimes sites can provide illegal or harmful information, so you should assure your visitors they will be safe. Wikipedia defines a disclaimer as follows: "A disclaimer is a legal statement which generally states that the person/group authoring the disclaimer is not responsible for any mishap in the event of using whatever object or information the disclaimer is attached to." The privacy policy is, according to the same source, a disclaimer as well: "A privacy policy is a disclaimer placed on a website informing users about how the website deals with a user's personal information."

Put simply, maintaining audience expectations and delivering usable content are the main factors influencing the success of a business website. But the website architecture has to be followed by a cutting edge design and reliable ways to increase users' loyalty.

Newsletters

If you are planning to have a lot of fresh content that changes often, you may offer users the option to sign up for eNewsletters. These should not be sent too often: studies show that too many reminders become an annoyance for many clients. As email newsletters feel more personal than websites, they will generate different, more positive, emotional reactions for the users. The subscribe and unsubscribe options allow companies to measure success by monitoring how many users are interested in receiving periodic information and how many lose their interest? The key to successful eNewsletter campaigns is simple: DO NOT SPAM! Let people go if they choose to unsubscribe. If your messages become annoying, the negative feelings from one client will easily go to another. "Verba Volant!"

Just like website design, the newsletter design should be uncomplicated and user friendly. That implies people should be able to find what they are looking for fast. Even the subscribe and unsubscribe processes should be fast: the longer the time needed to subscribe or unsubscribe, the higher the loss of customer satisfaction.

So keep the newsletters simple, useful and easy to deal with. Do not overload clients with information. Just tell them the basics and, if they are interested, they will certainly get back to you requesting more information. To succeed, write good subject lines that will help users distinguish the newsletter from spam. Each headline has to make sense and preferably be followed by a short abstract of the general content. Plain language is the best approach. People don't need to get the feeling they are teased or led on. For reference visit Pamil Visions and get the "Writing Newsletters" *.pdf document you can find in the downloads area.

Other Issues

Branding your business doesn't refer only to stationery and printed brochures. The website is an ideal means for promoting your business visual standards. Include your logo at the top left of all pages linking it with the home page. Respect your corporate color scheme to have a consistent look and feel in all your pages. Again, I encourage you to visit Pamil Visions or other branding and public relations related sites for advice in this matter.

Consistency is a powerful tool. When things stay the same form page to page, users know what to expect. They will not feel intimidated by new approaches or exasperated by unnecessary artifices. For example, Flash effects collected the bronze medal for annoyance. Leave them out. Why should you open your site with an intro most of the users will skip anyways? The same goes for pop-ups!

Make the site easy to read choosing the fonts and their colors carefully: not too big or too light. The most legible fonts are standard serif and sans-serif (Times, Arial; Verdana). The pictures and graphics should have small file sizes to avoid slow loading pages. They should also be optimized for the web and described in the HTML code of the pages to facilitate faster loading.

In general, the content you write for the web should be short, scannable and to the point. Some business sites are afraid that users will copy their valuable texts and use them somewhere else, getting commercial advantages, so they ask the designers to display texts as a picture. Wrong: have you ever heard of print screen? If someone wants to copy your work, they will do it anyway no matter if we talk about text or graphics. You'd just lose search engine points by avoiding texts. So, good luck in this responsible task of content writing!

 Speed Networks website design servicesWhat are Web standards? Just as standards exist for almost every kind of electrical equipment, every class of machinery, or every chemical product that we encounter on a day-to-day basis, there exist free and non-proprietary standards for the Web. Web standards help the different parts of the Web (your computer, a Web server, your friend's cell phone and an internet fridge) communicate in a way that is understood by the different devices connected to it. Web standards make the Web a place where files can be read by anyone, regardless of what they are using to access the Internet. How do Web standards work? Although there are Web standards that apply to all aspects of the Internet, such as ECMAScript (JavaScript), DOM, XML, RDF, as well as user agent and accessibility guidelines, when people talk about Web standards they are often talking about standards that govern HTML and CSS. HTML (Hyper-Text Mark-up Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are two types of authoring (authoring is also known as coding) that can make a Web page. Like a grammar rule book for Web languages, the standards specifications for HTML and CSS describe how to write HTML and CSS. user agent: a user agent could be a browser, a cell phone, an internet fridge or a page reader for the visually impaired — it's something used to read the Web. Web authors: people who create documents for the Web using a mark-up language or software that generates a mark-up language — often Web designers or developers. Web standards not only tell Web authors how to code Web pages, they also tell user agents how to interpret and display that code so that users can read Web pages. Web standards are a way to make sure everyone is following the same rule-book — a way to mediate the Web. What is the separation of content and presentation? Why is it important? HTML tells a user agent where and how to denote the different parts of the document (headline, paragraph, block quote, etc.) — the structure of its content. CSS tells the user agent what the document should look like (fonts and what colours, etc) — its presentation. This separation of duties between HTML and CSS is often called “the separation of content and presentation.” Recent Web standards encourage the separation of presentation and content. bandwidth: the amount of data that can be transmitted in a given time period through a communications link. It is often said that a Web site “uses” a certain amount of bandwidth, meaning that a certain amount of data has been transmitted between the Web site and the users of the site. Web pages used to be coded so that information about the look of the page was part of the HTML. Each sentence in the HTML document would have information about how it should be displayed. If the company colours changed, then someone had to go through the company's whole site, line by line, changing each place where the HTML said which colours should be used. This was not a very efficient way to code Web pages. When presentation information is separated from the content of the Web page it is possible to change the font (or even the layout) of all of the pages of the whole Web site by changing one CSS document. This ability to easily change the look of a Web site is what makes the separation of content and presentation so powerful. What is standards-compliance? How do I know when my site is standards-compliant? To be standards-compliant means that your Web site is built following the published and relevant Web standards specifications. You can determine if your site's pages are compliant by checking them with a piece of software called a validator. A validator is a bit like a spell checker, except it tells you whether or not your HTML is correct and follows the rules set out in the standard. Are all sites standards-compliant? What does it mean if your site isn't standards-compliant? Not all sites are standards-compliant. Some user agents will display code that deviates from the standard in a minor way. In some user agents this would cause no visible problems, but it would mean that the Web page was not standards-compliant. Not following standards may cause severe problems. In some cases, pages that are not coded to the standard will not display at all. Why aren't all sites standards-compliant? There are various reasons why not all sites are standards-compliant. Sometimes Web authors: create pages that have mistakes in them don't know how to create sites that meet the standards use software tools that don't create standards-compliant code use code that takes advantage of features that exist in only one browser. How can I reap the benefits of standards? Reaping the benefits of standards is as simple as requiring that your vendors or employees deliver standards-compliant products. Discuss standards-compliance with your Web development team. Existing Web sites can be incrementally updated by adopting standards on the most popular few pages and, on a regular schedule, slowly working through the whole site New Web sites can plan to adopt Web standards. By planning early and adopting the most recent standards, you can reap the most benefits . Web sites already in development can adopt Web standards — it may cost a little extra in the short term, but in the long-term standards will save you money. Work closely with your Web development team to develop a standards-compliant site best-suited to your company's needs. For more information, refer to the W3C guide to buying standards-compliant Web sites. Who Decides What the Standards Are? The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), one of the most influential organizations setting Web standards, releases technical specifications, recommendations and other missives for the Web infrastructure. Several other organizations also contribute Web standards, such as: the International Organization for Standardization, the Internet Engineering Task Force, Ecma International, the Unicode Consortium, and many others. What do I tell my Web developer/IT manager? I want to know more about Web standards! An in-depth (and more technical) discussion of Web standards is available in the MACCAWS white paper, “The Way Forward with Web Standards”. Also available through MACCAWS are research studies, survey reports and case studies supporting the commercial case for adopting Web standards. More standards information is available at the Web Standards Project (http://www.webstandards.org) and the W3C. (http://www.w3.org)

With so many different resolutions (640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, etc.), browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.), and platforms (Windows, Mac, etc.) in use, it is very difficult to design a page that looks good (or at least looks the same) in all configurations.

To design a page that looks good with most configurations, let's start by defining our main objective: we must never force a user to scroll horizontally. In other words, our page must always fit within the available screen width. This would suggest that we have to design our page for the lowest common denominator: 640x480. However, less than 1% of Internet users utilize this archaic resolution (which was common when 14" screens were the best you could get).

Therefore, we can rationally make the decision to ignore the 640x480 resolution (since forcing 99% or users to read a low resolution page to accommodate 1% of our user base doesn't sound too efficient), and design our page for resolutions of 800x600 and higher. Since 800x600 remains the most popular resolution today (May, 2003), we must optimize our page design for this resolution, meaning that our page should look best at 800x600. Bear in mind that I'm not saying that we must necessarily design an 800 pixel wide page, only that it must look best in screens with 800x600 resolutions (read on and you'll see what I mean…).

At this point, we're ready for our next decision: should we design a fixed-width page, or should we specify the width of our page in percentage terms?

There are pros and cons for both. The main advantage of a fixed- width page is that the layout will always remain as you intended, even when viewed at higher resolutions. The main disadvantage is that users with larger screens, set at higher resolutions, will not be able to fully utilize them, and will instead see large, unused blocks of space around your page (certainly, a disappointment to those users who spent a lot of money for a large computer screen).

The advantage of establishing our page width in percentage terms, as 100%, is that the page will adjust itself to the resolution of the screen. This is called a "liquid page design" (although I like to call it a "bubble-gum page design", since the page looks as if it has been stretched horizontally when viewed at higher resolutions than intended). The main benefit of this method is that all the available screen real estate will be utilized. The disadvantage is that the layout of your page will change, and users may find it uncomfortable to read the extremely wide sentences that will result when higher resolutions are used.

If you decide follow our advice to optimize your page for 800x600, and then decide to follow the fixed-width page method, you must take into account that not all the 800 pixels will be available (some of them will be used by the browser to display the scrollbar and other "browser chrome"). To accommodate most browsers and platforms, specify your page width at a maximum of 750 pixels.

If you decide to specify your page at 100% width, you won't have that problem, since it will adjust automatically to the available width. Just make sure that your page looks best at 800x600, and that the layout doesn't change much when you view your page at 1024x768.

The essence of creating a website is not just launching it. Every detail on its own, must count!

The fact is - details mater a lot. Hence, every site must be a product of careful planning, conceptualization and concentration to details.

Effective website is all about stepping into the shoes of the visitors. Every designer must have the same mindset as the visitors so as to be intimately related to them. To know what to expect and to feel about a certain site is an advantage that can only be reckoned if you place yourself in the place of another person. To know the wants and the needs is also another added factor. This will enable designers to deliver to the visitors what they expect and need.

Understanding specific needs, benefits and concerns gives us the idea of what we should create - from page layout to graphic design and overall site organization. Anticipate the queries that might come out upon seeing the page. Be sure that these queries and objections are answered and understood so as to draw out loyalty and trust.

In order to be sure of what you are designing here are the rules of thumb in designing:

1. Provide simple, clear and straightforward directions. Do not forget to emphasize the 'call to action'. This is the most important aspect of web designing thus, make sure it is not overshadowed by other aspects.

2. Aside from emphasizing the 'call to action', also emphasize the functionalism of the site. Make the benefits more understandable and apparent. These are your weapons to achieve persuasion. As we all know persuasion is the most important factor that affects the purchasing decision of visitors. This should not fail so as not to fall short in the site's objective.

3. Objections must also be answered. If the visitors have hesitations, this may hinder his decision to buy or subscribe. Hence, the site must remove the clouds of doubt in order to direct the visitor to buying or subscribing.

4. The goal is to draw a path that leads to the site's goal. Bear in mind the link between the 'all to action' and the end goal they must result to the site's satisfaction. The design must motivate a person to do the next big thing and that is to do the 'call of action'.

Finally, after doing the web site, evaluate whether each element are present and that principles are practiced. That way, you are secured that you are producing an excellent site!