Get everything you need to plan and launch a web site, including detailed instructions and clear-headed advice on ready-to-use building blocks, powerful tools like CSS and JavaScript, and Google's Blogger. The thoroughly revised, completely updated new edition of Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual explains how to get your site up and running quickly and correctly.
5 Tips for Budding Web Site Creators By Matthew MacDonald
These days, aspiring Web site creators like you pick up a lot of Web-design theory before you start working on your pages. But as deadlines loom and the value of “do it right” falls victim to the imperative to “do it right now,” even the best of us sometimes toss good practice out the window. That’s perfectly understandable and no cause for panic—after all, if Web weavers waited until their pages were perfect before uploading them, the Internet would be a very lonely place indeed. However, sometimes innocent-seeming shortcuts can cause headaches later on. Here are a few pieces of Web advice that site creators ignore at their own risk:
1. Always include a doctype. Web browsers can translate two languages into Web pages: old-school HTML and today’s XHTML. You have to tell the browser which language (called markup) you use, and you do that with a document type definition, better known as a doctype. Doctype is arcane code that looks like this:
< !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN” "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
If you forget to include a doctype, your pages will appear annoyingly inconsistent. That’s because some browsers, including Internet Explorer, switch into a backward-compatibility state known as quirks mode when they encounter unidentified markup; in essence, they attempt to act like an outdated browser from the 1990s. Common problems that result include text that appears at different sizes in different browsers and layouts that wind up in different configurations depending on your browser.
2. Keep formatting instructions out of your markup. In a rush, it’s easy to get lazy and apply inline styles (or even worse, formatting tags like ) to a page’s XHTML or HTML. But it’s rare for a web site creator to use a particular format just once. Most often, you’ll use a design--say for a column, heading, or note box--elsewhere on the same page or on another of your site pages. To ensure consistency across your site and to make it easier to fine-tune the look and feel of your pages, move all your formatting instructions to a central location: an external style sheet. That way, when a browser processes a page, it grabs this central set of instructions and applies them to the page (see the illustration for the sequence of events).
3. Be under renovation, not under construction. Think of your favorite store. Now imagine shopping there if you had to wander around half-lit floors while dodging ladders, pylons, and heavy-duty construction equipment to find the aisles that still have products on the shelf.
It’s a similar story on the Web, where a site with empty pages, “under construction” messages, and vague promises of upcoming content will send visitors away in droves. Yes, it’s true that your Web site won’t be complete when you first upload it. But make sure that what’s there is genuinely useful on its own, and don’t draw attention to gaps and shortcomings. Instead, keep improving what you’ve got.
4. Think twice before you adopt copy-and-paste design.
Typically, Web sites use the same page design across all their pages. For example, noodle around Amazon and you’ll always see a menu header at the top of the page and a sidebar on the left.
There’s a very special circle in Dante’s Inferno reserved for Web developers who try to achieve consistent design by copying and pasting their XHTML from one page to another. It’s almost impossible to manage or modify this mess across all your pages without making a mistake, even if you have a small Web site. If you need a repeating page design, pick a suitable solution from the available options, each of which comes with its own caveat. Your can use server-side includes (which require Web host support), page templates (provided you have a Web design tool like Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web), frames (which can exhibit quirks), or a Web development platform (if you’re willing to take a crash course in programming).
5. Keep an eye on your visitors. Is anyone here? There’s no point in having a Web site if you’re not willing to pay attention to what content draws and keeps visitors and what falls flat on its face. Remarkably, the best way to do that is with a free yet industrial-strength service called Google Analytics. You simply copy a small bit of tracking code to each of your pages and within hours you’ll be able to answer questions like “Where do my visitors live?”, “How long is a typical visit?”, and “What pages are their favorites?”
About this product: Arms IT professionals with a complete blueprint for developing successful Web hosting strategies Written by a consultant who helped develop the Web hosting strategies at many of today's top e-commerce vendors, this book fills in IT professionals on the full range of services available. The book provides decision-makers with criteria checklists and other useful tools they need for determining what they need, why they need it, how to find it, and how to evaluate and manage it. Doug Kaye provides a clear, complete roadmap for building an effective Web hosting strategy, and offers practical advice and answers to critical questions. The book covers important topics, including the real cost of bandwidth, domain name services, shared versus dedicated servers, backup and recovery, service-level agreements, security, negotiating with and managing vendors, and hardware maintenance and support. Companion Web site includes links to Web hosting directories, tools for evaluating hosting services, and online articles and white papers.
About this product: The guides brought to you in this book are gained by series of my own failures by doing things the wrong way. I hope by going through this guide book, you won't have to go through the same failures which I have experienced. By the end of this book, you should have all the necessary knowledge and hopefully passion to go and get your first 1,000 clients and to manage them, all by yourself.
About this product: This is a hands-on introductory resource for effectively serving as a corporate Web host. Shows how to implement the essential technology--running servers, operating software, network resources, and database-management applications--needed to offer customers high-quality service.
About this product: The "Web Hosting Manual" describes step by step how to start your own web hosting business and/or how to add web hosting services to your existing web design business. When it comes to starting a new hosting venture, there are important details to consider. Making mistakes in the early stage of starting up a web hosting business can have a dramatic impact of how the new business will perform. The "Web Hosting Manual" guides the entrepreneur through the process of getting the web hosting business up and running. With this start-up guide as a mentor, the new web host will have all the tools at hand to be successful. Writing a business plan, business form, setup, reseller hosting, marketing, and many more topics will cover almost everything a start-up will need. The book also includes a small biography of how the author started his own web hosting business. This is the one-stop resource covering all the immediate basics needed to successfully launch a web hosting business.
About this product: "The Web Hosting Manager" is the one-stop business guide when starting a new web hosting business. This book is also targeted at existing web hosting businesses that are lacking customers and need to pick up "steam". Jumpstarting a new or existing web hosting business with the knowledge from this book is easy. This non-technical book guides the reader from the very beginning of starting a web hosting business to implementing highly sophisticated marketing strategies. This book is invaluable for the beginner and the pro.
About this product: The Linux operating system was initially created by Linus Torvalds, who began his work in 1991 and worked steadily until 1994 when Version 1.0 of the Linux Kernel was released. Developed under the GNU General Public License, Linux source code is freely available to everyone, and Linux is therefore often considered an excellent, low-cost alternative to more expensive operating systems. The Linux operating system may be used as an end-user platform as well as for a wide variety of other purposes, including networking and software development. By virtue of its functionality and availability, Linux has become quite popular. As a result, students around the world have been seeking Linux education. This book is a guide to setting up a complete Linux environment on which to learn about the various Web technologies. As you move through the text and the accompanying labs, you will build a system replete with a database management system, a Web server, and server-side Java. And you'll understand how it all works. Because the whole system is based on Linux, that wonder of the open-source era, everything you learn here is applicable to any platform on which Linux will run. These platforms include Apple hardware, Intel and Intel-compatible hardware, and, of course, the eServer iSeries by IBM.
This book is for Web Developers who want to learn how to use Linux & Apache for Website Hosting. The first chapters will teach you how to install Linux and Apache 2.0 on a home or office machine for testing purposes. Then you'll learn how to perform dozens of common tasks including:
Updating server software
Setting up new Websites, Email Accounts and Subdomains
Configuring various Linux & Apache files related to performance and security
Install spam filtering software
Perform automatic backups and crash recoveries
And much more.
This is the ideal book for anyone who wants to run Websites using a leased or co-located Linux server, without having to spends thousands of dollars annually on third party support and management.
About this product: This revised edition includes everything needed to launch a successful Web marketing campaign and bring a business online. For one-person operations or multinational corporations, this book provides the necessary Web marketing strategies to make any online presence a profitable hot spot.
BOOK
