the web developer’s journal

A short but sweet list of guidelines to follow while building a web 2.0 website.

1. Learn XHTML. Make sure your pages are XHTML transitional or strict. This will help with your visibility to search engines and cross-browser compatibility.
   1. XHTML Tutorial by W3Schools
2. Learn CSS. With CSS, you can start separating content from appearance and CSS is more cross browser friendly than tables. One thing to avoid while programming with CSS is to use too many nested divs. If you start using too many, it’s kind of pointless to start using CSS rather than tables in the first place. If you are just learning CSS, Apple released a small tutorial on building (mostly) css websites.
   1. CSS Tutorial by W3Schools
   2. Apple: Web Content
      1. Apple: Web Design Best Practices
3. Use friendly URLs. For example, bizwidgets.biz/blog or bizwidgets.biz/contact. Try to stay away from long URLs with a bunch of data in them. If you use PHP, a framework such as CodeIgniter helps you do this.
   1. CodeIgniter
4. Use a tracker such as Google Urchin to keep track of your visitors and their habits at your website. You will identify bottlenecks and user-favorite pages. You can use Google’s PageRank to identify your search engine visibility.
   1. Using Google to Promote Your Business
   2. Google Rankings
   3. Google Urchin/Analytics
5. Keep page sizes low. Most people are on broadband these days, but they will notice if your pages are very large and take a long time to load. The same goes for search engines. If your site has a lot of images, movies, or javascript libraries, try to condense them or remove as much as you can. I use mootools for javascript in my websites because it is compact, object-oriented, and fully featured.
   1. MooTools
6. Keep navigation simple. I would say no more than 10-15 site-wide navigation links. Google says the more options you give someone, the worse their choice will be.
7. Use a blog if you can make it relevant to your business. This will greatly increase your traffic.
   1. WordPress
8. Your website should convert users to do something. For example, if you are selling products, your site should be easy enough for the user to order a product online or give you a call.
   1. Creating a Website for Your Service Business
9. Learn about SEO (search engine optimization). I am learning every day about building websites that rise to the top of google with their PageRank system. You can submit an XML sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools to enhance your visibility.
   1. Free XML Sitemaps
   2. Google Webmaster Tools
   3. The 80/20 Of Search Engine Marketing Part 1

This will be an ongoing article and I will post new tips and links when I come across them for help with these topics.

Need a Custom Design for Your Website?

Outline2Design appears to be a great place for custom design.

Any tips, links or comments will be greatly appreciated.