So, you’ve probably decided on using Wordpress to host your site, but now you need to really think about what you’re trying to put up on the web, and how you want people to interact with it. Since we’re all somewhat experienced with the basics of how the internet works, we have all seen many different webpage designs and implementations. As time has gone on, things have somewhat distilled down to a few basic rules about how a webpage should work. We all expect some kind of navigation area, with buttons or links to connect us to the different parts of the website. We expect that the main page of a site (usually index.html or index.php) will be it’s intro or news page where you will find the nav area) Beyond this, things can get a bit fluid depending on what the site is designed for. This is where life for a website designer gets to be difficult.

There is one big dilemma that most new website creators encounter: Different or the Same. Do I want my site to be different and unique, or look the same and consistent with people’s expectations. To some degree this is dependant on the goals of the site. It is my opinion that in 90% of all cases you should choose to look similar to expectations. In a small amount of cases, looking and acting totally different from other sites can work….these cases usually revolve around “artistic” sites that are specifically designed to show off something unique about the web creator, but they are NOT meant to be information sites or to allow the user to really get in touch with the artist or their work (think all show, no real depth). They act like a picture in a museum–nice to look at, but of no real informational value other than a pretty picture. Even in these cases I would suggest you consider otherwise. I know there will be many people screaming at this, but there is a bigger issue here.

Consider this: In studies done on average websurfers, if the person is unable to discern what they are supposed to do on your site within 7 seconds of arriving at your site, they tend to leave. As a design function, it is best to make it very obvious what is on your site, and how to get to this information. While this might seem boring or inartistic from a design perspective, it’s important for your overall main goal:having people come back and use your site, not just look once and leave.

Many website designers fall prey to the “designers dilemma”. This is where you as the designer come to believe that everyone who goes to your site automatically knows as much about the site as you do. Imagine you are going to a meeting somewhere you’ve never been, to a building you’ve never been inside. You walk inside the building–what do you want to know first? Well, it’d be good to have a panel or sign saying where all of the offices are. It would also be good to have this sign give all of the company names and what floors they are on, and maybe in the case of a big multi-floor company, exactly which floor houses each department of that company. Many website designers forget this experience. Grouping of information on pages should be as obvious as possible. You aren’t in the business of hiding information. Just because YOU know that the company Bio or About info is listed on the financial page doesn’t mean everyone else will consider that the “correct” place to put that information.

In addition, keep in mind that symbols and pictures are not universal in understanding. Anyone who has seen Japanese symbols for things knows that in many cases pictures have hugely different meanings to different people. A picture of a house could mean homepage, or for a financial company it could be their their rental/house sales page. I personally think that words are better than symbols, but a word AND symbol combo can help people remember things easier in some cases. (also, remember to use alt tags for all navigation images…on handheld devices and some work computers images off is the regular setup)

A top or left side nav bar is the norm these days. Yes, it’s boring, but it’s what people expect. Putting your nav bar on the bottom of the page might make you different, but remember, some people might have a different screen dimension setup from you (like 800X600 instead of 1024X768) and it might not even be visible once the page loads….therefore 7 seconds later the person is gone. Also, you might want to take a look at a book about color interactions. Some color combinations react poorly together and can make it hard for people to read or use the site, especially if they have altered their browsers basic settings. White text on a black background might be nice to you, but it could be unreadable to someone else. Most people have white or light colored background on their computers.

The most important things to imagine in setting up the content of your page is to assume that your visitors are from mars and have no idea what to do. Imagine they are so new to things that they need their hands held. The important element of your page is the information it carries. While with style sheets and tables it’s somewhat possible to dictate how your page will look…it’s not a total lock. Different browsers and personal settings (including leaving images off and different screen resolutions) will always make your pages somewhat out of your control in how they look….but you have control over the content. By keeping the focus on the information, and not the trendy look, you can make sure that visitors to your site get the information they need…which is the main function of your site.

One last area needs to be discussed: The pull of your needs versus the viewer’s needs. Many sites make one huge navigation design faux pas….they disregard the time it takes a visitor to do certain functions. Imagine you are a store….What do you want most from a visitor? Well, I’d say it would be a purchase and getting their money. Why then do many sites force a potential customer to fill out a form or create a login id first? In these cases, the site has decided it’s needs (which they mistakenly decided was getting your email or info above getting a sale) are more important than your desire to quickly and easily buy something. It’s silly really, as a result of going through the checkout you always add this information anyway. Why not get the sale, then afterward have an option to create an id or account…or fill out a survey. You get both and the person feels like they’ve accomplished THEIR goal.

It’s the same with many non-store sites also. Watch our flash intro, or fill out this form to be able to download our demo. Yeah, I know that information is worth money to these companies….but it isn’t worth anything to ME. It’s actually a negative. Keep this in mind.

If you can get someone else to test your site before it goes live, someone who has no idea of it’s content, this can give you a good idea of what the average person will encounter. You might be surprised.

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In many cases companies or individuals decide “I have to have a website NOW!” and run off and create something, or more likely, have someone else create something, with no idea of what they want or how they’ll keep it going, or even a defined business purpose. One of the worst things you can do in creating a website is improper planning for it’s continued development and maintenance. How often will it be updated? Will it be checked for continued validity of content? What if it gets very popular, what then? What if I’m not getting viewers, what do I do? All of these questions need to be considered in advance.

If you don’t go into a project knowing the “dangers” then you will have to react very quickly when things happen, or lose all of your hard work. One example of this is the rocket to stardom problem. Say you have a funny Flash Movie, and somehow this gets picked up upon by a major portal site like SlashDot, Digg, Reddit, etc. It is very possible to go way over your bandwidth in less than a day. What do you do? Do you have a plan for this? Do you just take the site down and lose any chance of gaining from this exposure? Do you have a plan worked out to buy extra bandwidth if this occurs? (and more especially, do you have the $$$ to cover this) Losing your site at a time when it could benefit the most is terrible. People who could become fans will see a blank or 404 error page, and assume your site is unprofessional. Knowing your hosting companies costs and knowing how to contact them quickly is necessary. In addition, a backup site design, that requires very low bandwidth, is also a good idea to have in these cases.

Something else to consider is consistency of updating. Keep in mind that viewers go to your site for information or entertainment. If they go a few times, and nothing has changed, then they might decide to not come back. Letting the viewer know when new content will arrive, and sticking to the schedule is important. (Or at least stating why you didn’t keep to the schedule) It is said that if a viewer doesn’t get the info they want in 7 seconds or less, they will move on. Keep that in mind, make the information front and center. You want to provide reasons for people to return to your site on a frequent basis.

In addition, don’t leave old stuff up on your site. If you have something stating how people need to check their system to make sure it’s Y2K compliant, remove it please. Always check your site to make sure it’s up to date in regard to any dates or notifications. People will think you are crappy if you leave old stuff up. Professional is the name of the game. At least once a month re-read your site to see if it’s still valid.

It is frustrating to have a “brilliant” site, but no visitors. Did you make sure to submit your site to Google, Yahoo, etc? You can go to those services and submit your site with a description. It usually takes a while for them to catalog your site, so a small advance submission should be on target for them to reach you when you are up. setting up advertising at other similar sites in advance, so that it corresponds with your launch date will be helpful. Just DON’T SPAM. It will kill your buzz. No one likes spammers. It’s okay to place statements on forums where they encourage placement of links…but only if it’s appropriate for your websites content. Imagine a pestering salesman, that will be you if you’re not careful.

Lastly, Make sure you have time in your schedule for backing your site up. At first this will be easy for a small site. As time goes on though, it can get to be a huge task. No one wants to find out that their host had a crash that wiped out their hard drives….and you never backed your site up. Poof, all gone. You can be up and running again in a short time with timely backups. At least once a week is necessary for a forum or very updated site. better to do it twice a week. People can get cranky if their forum posts get wiped, especially if it’s a very important issue they are trying to resolve. Plus our friendly hackers exist. So leave time in your mental schedule to backup your site. The one time you say “ah, I’ll wait till later” it’ll kick your ass.

Doing a successful website is a time consuming and repetitive task. You need to be able to do things in a timely fashion and a regular basis. Nothing turns people off more than an irregular mess. Going in with a strong mindset will help you make things work right the first time through.

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The Geeks.com website hosts a ton of hardware and software tips and tutorials, which is a neat bonus in addition to their tech sales items. They just posted a 2 part series on blogging software which may benefit some of you who are looking for some software or ideas on what to do with your site.

Part 1:
http://www.geeks.com/techtips/2007/techtips-22JUL07.htm

Part 2:
http://www.geeks.com/techtips/2007/techtips-29JUL07.htm

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I can’t stress more strongly the need for testing of a new or updated website before it goes live. This is true with Wordpress or any other method of setting up a website. The problem I hear the most in regard to this though is most people don’t know how to set up a non-live (as in not visible on the internet and open to anyone going to it) version of their site to do the testing, usually on their own PC. Well, Mac users really have no excuse, since being based on Linux it has a web server built into the regular OS, all you need to do is go to your preferences area and enable it (I won’t bother explaining how to do this, there are millions of google sites that will do that for you).

For Windows users it has traditionally been a whole lot harder. Windows doesn’t really have any support for doing web server services built into it–and in most cases actively makes it hard to get this working. It’s also not really a great idea (in my opinion) to utilize the Windows server system of web services (known as IIS) even if you could since they are really not that great–and most of the world still uses Linux style web services (known as Apache).

So what are Windows users able to use? Luckily a group of people realized this lack and built their own pseudo-Linux style web services install for Windows called XAMPP. The group is called the Apache Friends and they actually have set ups for pretty much every platform also. On Windows the web server package is a simple .exe file that you download and install. At first it might seem a little daunting, but it’s really pretty easy once you get it installed. Instead of going to a “real” web page in your web browser, you instead go to “localhost”, with everything else a branch off of that (so it’s like localhost/mywebsite/). Read their setup instructions and you should be able to figure out where to put your wordpress files.

For the novice the best usage of this environment is to tweak your Wordpress themes or try out plugins. Once you finish with these files you can simply copy them to your live web server.

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It appears that some people are a bit confused about the difference between Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org. Wordpress.org is the website that hosts the Wordpress CMS development files and is where you can download the Wordpress setup files to utilize the program on your own server. Wordpress.com is also part of the overall Wordpress organization, but is a place where you can sign up for a free account and use a copy of Wordpress that is hosted by them. It’s works sort of like Livejournal or MySpace, but utilizes the Wordpress engine. If you want to get a blog site up quickly and want to do a test of the Wordpress system without having to do much work, it might be a good idea to sign up for an account at Wordpress.com and try it out.

There are differences of course. You are much more limited when using a Wordpress.com account than if you set up the program on your own server. They have a limited selection of approved plugins and themes–though the benefit is they usually just work and don’t require much if any set up. Unfortunately my plugins are not a part of their service (yet!). Also, they pay for allowing you to use their service by selling ads on your account site–money which you don’t get– and you aren’t allowed to add your own ads. Ultimately if you plan on really making any money you’ll want to transition to your own server set up.

If you don’t have webspace purchased yet and are still in the decision making stage, go get an account, it can’t hurt. It’ll get you an understanding of the basic workflow of posting.

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