Can you really get a website even without knowing anything about code, and without paying a fortune? Find out.

The days when websites were primarily distinguished by their code are long gone. Nowadays, the web is a true publishing medium that favors well thought-out ideas. You can get a professional-looking website online in minutes with many website building services and software. But what should you look for? What are the features you really need and which are just clutter?

Content Editing

Some website authoring software packages only allow you to entire plain, unformatted text. Some of them allow you to entire HTML tags. Others provide a WYSIWYG (”what you see is what you get”) interface with options for font, links, and image insertion much like a word processor’s. Some will allow you to use more than one, or even all of these options so you have a choice on how you want to format your text.

Template Designs

Every website builder ever invented came with at least one or two templates for creating the graphical look of a website, so you don’t have to design the look of the site yourself. But some packages have very large libraries of templates, some have only a few. Some will let you mix and match elements of the design templates, while others will lock you in to one setup.

Ecommerce Functions

Many ready-to-go websites created by website builder software feature built-in shopping carts. Some even come with credit card processing. This is of course necessary if you’re going to be selling stuff direct online. But if you’re not going to be selling anything, ecommerce functionalities may just complicate the administration of the site and pad the price for the software or service.

Blogging Functions

Blogs are “web logs,” but blogging software involves more than just a simple online journal. Blogging technology allows you to send your new posts directly to subscribers via RSS, without them having to visit your site or receive an email from you. Still, unless you plan on updating your site regularly (at least once a month), your website’s blog will just gather cobwebs.

Email

Some hosted web authoring systems provide email accounts at no additional charge, while others do charge separately. Some web builder systems even come with modules for creating email newsletters.

Support

It is very likely that you will encounter a technical difficulty at some point while owning your website. Make sure you know in advance of paying whether the company provides only paid support, and if any included support is over email, a web ticketing system, or the telephone.

Photo and Image Management

For many, if not most, people who want personal websites, displaying pictures online is a primary motivation, if not the only motivation. If you want to display pictures on your website, make sure to choose a website builder system that makes it easy to upload and publish images.

Renting vs. Owning

You can buy website authoring software upfront for a flat fee, or you can “rent;” i.e., pay a company every month to use a hosted service. The choice is up to you, but remember that the hosted service will likely be a great choice as they will handle all your hosting needs and offer you a website builder to design your site without even knowing one line of code or web programming.

In short, you don’t need to know how a website is coded to make one, any more than a book author needs to know about printing ink. Don’t burden yourself with learning how to do web design. Having fun with your website starts with choosing a website builder software that will make it fun.

I highly recommend: Budget Website Services - Create Your Own Website

• 1 Comment

When you design a website, it’s easy to focus on what your visitors are going to see. What you have to realise, though, is that you’re going to have another kind of visitor with a completely different agenda: they’re not going to be looking at your pretty logo and they’re not going to be passing judgement on your background colour. What they’re looking for is the content and structure of your page.They’re the search engine spiders, and they are in control of probably the largest section of your traffic. You need to please these spiders if you want your site to be successful. Here’s how.

Make Your Structure Clear.

Resist the temptation to lay your page out in non-standard ways: you want it to be very clear to the search engine where the navigation is, where the content is, and where the headings are. As a rule, put navigation first in your page. Always use the heading tags (h1, h2, etc.) for headings and sub-headings.

Avoid using generic span and div tags and only making things clear to the user through CSS font sizes: instead, use every ’semantic’ HTML tag that applies to your content. If you’re quoting someone, use the blockquote tag; if you’re posting program code, use the code tag. Search engines love this.

Keep Keywords Consistent.

It’s not usually worth deliberately saturating your content with keywords in hope of a higher search ranking – the engines have pretty much wised up to this tactic – but do make sure that your keywords appear consistently when they occur naturally. For example, for these articles, I have stuck with ‘website’ throughout, as suddenly writing ‘web site’ instead would bring down my rankings.

HTML and Javascript.

It’s worth noting that search engines read HTML, but they don’t, in general, read Javascript. That means that using Javascript to insert text into your page is a bad idea if you want search engines to see the text. On the other hand, you might want to have just the text in HTML and insert all the other parts of the page with Javascript: this will tend to make your page appear more focused, although you should be careful not to insert navigation links this way if you want the search engines to follow them.

Use Meta Tags.

Yes, meta tags are out of fashion, and search engines pay no attention to them any more when it comes to ranking your site, but they’re still important in one way: the meta description tag is still often used to decide what text search engines’ users see when they find your site in their results! This can be just as important as the ranking itself – write something here that will look useful to the searcher, and you’re more likely to get them to click-through. Don’t forget that, while search engines are just machines and algorithms, the end result of it all does involve a human decision: to click, or not to click?

Avoid Splash Pages.

You might think it’s a great idea to have a ’splash’ page displaying a full-page version of your logo (or an ad) to every user who arrives at your site, but search engines really hate that. Using this trick will get you ranked far lower than you would usually be, so you should avoid it – it’s annoying to visitors anyway.

Include Alt Tags.

Any time you use a graphic, include alt text for it – especially if there is text in the graphic. Remember that, as far as search engines are concerned, all your graphics might as well just be big black boxes. Test by removing all your graphics and seeing if your content remains relatively intact. If it doesn’t, then you’ll be turning search engines away.

Finally, Write Great Content.

The key with modern search engines (and, at the same time, the thing you have least control over) is how many people decide to link to your page from their page. How can you make more people link to you? Make your content useful. Make it something they’ll want to quote on their blogs. Content is more King than it’s ever been, and the best way to design for search engines is to make your content really stand out.

• 0 Comments

Traffic Exchange Sites are websites where you get page views of your own site in exchange for visiting others. Many such sites are available. However, choosing the right one or a combination of them can be a very time consuming process.

Basically there are two types. Manual surfing and Auto surfing. Some Traffic exchanges cater for Manual surfing only, some cater for Auto surfing only and some cater for both.

Manual surfing - This requires your input by clicking a button after a specified time period, generally 15, 20 or 30 seconds, although there are a few other variations. With manual surfing, the surfer is expected to view each site. However, with most exchange sites, it is possible to minimize or resize the windows. This defeats the purpose because it allows multiple sessions to be run simultaneously. On the better exchange sites, security measures are often used to deter this. These are normally random prompts that require user input. For example, after x number of page views, you may be required to enter a code, select a color or image or perform some other variation of this.

Auto surfing - This requires no input. However in reality, your input may be required because of popup or frame breakers. Some traffic exchange sites require that the pages run are maximized and although you can minimize the page yourself, it will automatically maximize at the next refresh. You will also find that with some exchange sites, pages will run on top whereas with others, pages will run quite happily underneath, allowing you to do what ever you like without ever viewing the page content.

Both manual and auto surfing will bring traffic to your website, but there is a much greater likelihood of your web pages being actually seen with manual surfing.

Credits - As well as surfing, credits are usually acquired for subscribing, for referrals and for any winnings associated with exchange site lotteries, games or competitions. These credits can then be used to increase the traffic to your site. Some exchange sites will also allow you to sell your credits to other members.

Free or Paid - The majority of Traffic Exchanges offer a paid option. This option may give you a better surf ratio, bonus credits, money for referrals or other benefits. Before paying however, it is important that you test how targeted the traffic is that you receive. There’s no point in paying for extra traffic if it doesn’t generate any more income for you.

Click for Credits or Buy Credits - Is it worth buying credits?

This can depend on a number of reasons. The two main ones are time and money.

If you enjoy this sort of thing or want a break from train spotting, you could expand on this. Increase your sample size, increase the number of samples, select a good representation of traffic exchanges and tabulate your results. Choose enough sites and you will be able to create your own league table. There’s a market for everything.

Whether you use traffic exchange sites or not in the quest for more visitors to your site, you should at the very least know what they are and what they do. But don’t totally dismiss them. They are part of an expanding market. I recommend that you try at least one traffic exchange site. You could read every book on the subject, but without active participation, you will not be qualified to comment on their worth or suitability. The time taken for a few mouse clicks is a small price to pay. If it works for you, you have learned. If it doesn’t work for you, you have learned.

Visit our site for search engine submission: www.websitepromotioncenter.com

• 0 Comments

What Is Web Hosting?

Web hosting is simply a type of hosting service that allows people to provide there site as accessible to the internet. When you have a web hosting service you have a spot on a web server that allows people to view your content. It makes since that everyone who designs web pages has their own hosting space. More often than not when you purchase a domain you get hosting with it, but a lot of the times these are windows based hosting which are not always reliable and don’t always support the latest php scripts, javascripts, etc.

Windows or Linux?

Windows and Linux frequently use two different web server applications. Windows sites use the Windows IIS server, but nearly all Linux sites use Apache. Linux sites focus on PHP, Perl and other open-source script languages for server side scripting. Windows-based sites use, NET and ASP technologies. They might also offer support for PHP. However, Linux sites offer MySQL as the database for backend content storage. Also, Windows sites will offer SQL Server, though some offer the Windows versions of MySQL.

How Do You Pay For Hosting?

Many companies offer a fixed monthly rate for web hosting, which you can host, a limited amount of domain with them under your account. A lot of companies offer you an automatic payment plan, in which you can set up and it will deduct your bill from your checking account every month. You can chose to get a dedicated host which just means that your hosting space is not shared with anyone else. The advantage of this is that you will get much faster load times.

Web hosting is vital to your web site. Without hosting your site on a server no one could view your site. Budget Website Services and Budget Hosting Services is the best web hosting service available. They offer an unlimited amount of hosting space starting @ 5.99/month. With BWS you are also allowed to own unlimited domains.

There customer service is truly amazing and they offer great support and live help. Check out their service here: Budget Website Services

• 0 Comments

Who doesn’t own a web page nowadays? If you’re thinking about spicing up your web page or (heaven forbid) move your web page off that blogging host, consider some of these web design programs that will make mastering the art of html a breeze (well, not exactly, but with these WYSIWYG—What you see is what you get—tools, you’ll be a designing maniac in no time).

My best Choice for DIY (Do-it-Yourself) Website Builder, please visit this link:
http://www.budgetwebsiteservices.com/build-a-custom-website.php

Dreamweaver MX
This is probably the best web design tool. Dubbed as the “Swiss Army Knife” of web developers, Dreamweaver at first could be quite overwhelming. But with a little practice, you’ll wonder how you ever survived without it.

Don’t let the “flash” and “Perl” options intimidate you. What rocks about Dreamweaver is it supports CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), which means you get to preview your work before uploading it. It also integrates seamlessly with other Macromedia products, so if you’re a genius when it comes to creating Flash presentations, adding them in would be a cinch.

If you’d like to learn a little bit about html, you can also split the work screen to show the WYSIWYG screen and the HTML encoding (what better way to learn than to see what the code actually looks like?). If html encoding is your kind of thing, you can ditch the WYSIWYG option altogether. And when you get really good at html, Dreamweaver offers a “code hinting”, which displays code options as you type, as well as “Snippets”, which is a panel that stores common pieces of html code that you always seem to need.

Dreamweaver generally takes a lot of time to learn, but take heart, it’s worth the training.

Microsoft FrontPage 2003
For those who love working with Microsoft Office’s tools (especially Word), this is the web design program for you.

It’s easy-to-use interface makes it easier to access the editing features (unlike previous editions). Just like Dreamweaver, it splits the screen to show the html coding and the site’s layout. It also features CSS, which means stacking up layers an option. Its Coding Editor also has the Microsoft IntelliSense software, which presents possible choices for the code that you’re laying out.

Although not offering as much eye candy as Dreamweaver, FrontPage is perfect for small business and school projects.

Adobe GoLive 6.0
If you swear by Adobe’s products, then this is a no-brainer for you. The format is just like any other Adobe program, so getting familiar with this software will be as easy as pie. It also integrates all the Adobe products in it—you’ll get to work closely with Photoshop, Illustrator, and LiveMotion. Which means you get to drag other Adobe files into GoLive. How sweet is that?

But as with any other Adobe program, if you’re not familiar with most Adobe products, it needs a little time to get used to. It’s quite a heavyweight tool, and if you’re not serious about putting up that web page, you might end up trading in this software for another.

• 1 Comment

It should be remembered to get a high ranking in the top three search engines- Yahoo, Google and MSN while designing your website.

A web designer needs to consider a variety of online selling principles while designing an eCommerce website.

In designing a website we must take into consideration the following facts. Content is very important in website designing. For more details go to http://www.budgetwebsiteservices.com/features.php Planning and organizing are the most crucial steps in designing a website. Well, driving high traffic to website is very important, but what’s even more important, is designing a website in that way which makes them stays longer.

While designing your website, it is important that you switch from your own profit-oriented perspective to the prospective customers’ perspective. Keywords are one of the most important areas to consider when designing a website/webpage. If you don’t have a website or have a poorly designed website, you should consider creating or re-designing a website to adequately market your products.

It is not only about designing a website. During designing your website, remember to try to get as much meet or substance to the top of your code just below the tag as you can. Possibly you would like some help in writing proposals, designing a latest website, or sending out press releases. I’ve listed few items that I feel you must know a little bit about before seriously embarking on designing a website.

Database templates also facilitate you to make changes to your site much more easily, and help you change certain elements without recreating the entire page from scratch.

Similarly, thinking about the navigation, how the site will work, and why users are coming to your site will give you greater insight to what you need to achieve when designing a new website. You can find freelancers to take on just about any other non-administrative project you can think of - designing your website, writing a business plan, sending out press releases etc.

Web designing is a perfect combination of creativity & technical expertise and both are equally important. Just to name a few, there are - Selection of a product, preferably a niche product - Selection and registration of URL - Acquiring web hosting for your website - Designing the website - Optimizing the website for top search engine placement and ranking & Submission of your website.

Business owners and marketers have a tendency to think in broad terms about their marketing objective by focusing on ones such as “generating traffic” or “designing a website. It always happens that html editors write clumsy tags, especially when you amend the webpage layout again and again during your website designing process, which may possibly deter search engines from reading your web page and in turn poorly affect your search engine ranking. Building and designing website is not as difficult as you think.

• 0 Comments

More firms are beginning to put a greater emphasis on websites design. However, not everyone can have an effective website. A website design can make the future of your business very bright by bringing in new enquires and assets your business by generating sales.

A website can be a promotional advertisement or it can be a source of knowledge. In order to have an effective website, you will have to create an effective layout design immaterial what topic your website is about. Website designing can be done on various platforms such as java script, .net etc. Various other languages used in web design are HTML, XML, CSS, and DHTML. With new plug-ins and latest technologies you can also add graphics, images and videos, some of the web design are such that the web pages don’t require additional plug-ins.

Having an effective website design with good layout, content, graphics and easy navigation will ensure that visitors to your website can easily read the contents of your website while getting information that would be useful to them and they will want to return to your site.

1. Layout - You website should have a layout that is attractive and understandable for website visitors.

2. Content - Having just any content is not enough. The content on your website should be informative and useful to the website visitor.

3. Graphics - Care should be taken about using the appropriate graphics on your website. Too many graphics on your website will keep website visitors with slow internet connects away.

4. Easy and quick navigation - Give your website visitors quick and easy access to your website pages.

Website Design Company provides you the various services and facilities for building your own website. It offers your business a full circle approach in website development. The website designing services covers intelligent planning of your website to match your business strategies, innovative application development, as well as, comprehensive promotion, maintenance and time to time revamping of your website. For more information logon to www.budgetwebsiteservices.com . A web design company makes your website by understanding your business type, business objectives and other peripheries. It firstly considers the purpose for which you require a web site. It is the first step in the planning process. Setting up goals of your website helps in tracking the progress path of your website and will decides is success.

Content or text on your website gives information about your business and your work. This part of the website is of intense importance, as this along with web design intricacies attracts people to join hands with you. So, a good web design company may also avail you quality content creation and management services to benefit your commercial venture.

With the growing realization that content is the key, more firms are beginning to put a greater emphasis on website content. Website owners and operators are beginning to take a more critical look at the content of their websites. Gone are the days of content that is solely geared towards search engine rankings. It is now important that website content be both optimized for search engines and compelling for the website’s visitors, requiring a more sophisticated approach towards content writing supported by an effective website designing.

• 0 Comments

Blogs are another kind of website. The content is usually organized by date and category with the most recent post/content displaying first.

Blogs are also easier to setup than websites, and because of this reason people are often lured into thinking blogs are a better option than websites.

But don’t be fooled.

That doesn’t mean they are easier to promote, build traffic and generate a profit (if that’s your goal).

Both websites and blogs require work, patience, an understanding of Internet marketing and search engine optimization (the process of getting ranked high in Google, Yahoo, etc.)

So please don’t go into this thinking that creating a blog is an easier way to make money online. Even bloggers making a lot of money have put in their share of time and effort.

Another thing you should know is that blogs can be somewhat limiting compared to a website (in terms of design and data manipulation) until you learn more about how blogs are coded.

However, if you use WordPress, you’ll have the flexibility to do so much with your blog’s content and layout. (More on that in a sec.)

Blog or Website? Can’t Decide?

A lot of people get confused and wonder if they should create a blog, website or both?

Watch the video below to get my take on the subject.

• 1 Comment

I will start off my first blog post by explaining what my blog title is and represents. Many users over the years have been constantly in the need to expose their business to the online world. With technology advancing so fast at the speed of light, there are users, let alone beginners that constantly struggle to build a website.

• 1 Comment