8 Tips for Designing a Great Website

Take a deep breath and read some practical tips for professional looking websites. 

1. Select a color scheme and stick to it.

If your company has a logo or preferred colors on its stationery that’s a good start. For those of you starting from scratch, choose two or three complementary colors and stick with them – don’t change colors on every page. 

The most common color schemes include:

- Red, yellow and white

 - Blue and white

- Red, grey and white

- Blue, orange and white

- Yellow, grey and white.

If you’re not sure what color scheme to choose, surf the internet and find a website that you like. You can then model your color scheme on what already exists. 

2. Use templates ideas.

Don't use complete templates. If u use you won't be able to get any marks. Can’t find a website you really like? Another option is to choose a template. There are many templates or pre-set designs. 

Visit:

www.web4business.com.au emplates1.htm

www.newtemps.com

www.website-templates-resale-rights.com

www.123webtemplatesandmore.com 

3. Provide an easy to use navigation system.

This is one of the most important issues to consider when designing a website. You need to ensure your visitors can find what they are looking for easily. Most websites either display their navigation bar on the left or at the top. And since most people are used to this type of navigation, it’s best to stick with it.

It also helps to include your navigation bar at the bottom of each page to save your visitors from having to scroll back to the top. 

4. Don’t go overboard on special effects

Whilst it is ok to have one or two special effects to jazz up your website, spinning graphics and logos often distract your visitor from the content, not to mention they can take too long to download. Your visitors may click away even before your spinning logo finishes loading.   

5. Backgrounds

Ensure your visitors can read the text on the background, i.e. no black writing on dark blue background or yellow on white. Also be careful that your links are visible before and after being visited. The default for links in most programs is blue (before being visited) and burgundy (after being visited), so if you have a dark background, ensure your links are light. 

6. External Links

It is a good idea to open links to other websites in a new window. That way your visitors can easily return to your site when they are finished browsing the external link 

7. Site Map & Search Feature

If you website is more than 15 pages, it is useful to have a site map or a “Search” feature to ensure your visitors can easily find what they’re looking for. 

8. Content is King

While it is important that your website looks clean and professional, it is far more important that you concentrate your efforts on the content and promotion. 

If you want a professional website, things to stay away from include:

1. Flash intros, revolving globes, beveled line separators, animated mail boxes

2. Loads of pop up or pop under boxes

3. Auto play music. Allow your customer to play music only if they choose. 

4. Hit counters of the free variety, which say “you are 27th visitor”

5. Date and time stamps, unless your website is updated daily or weekly

6. Busy backgrounds.

Don’t sweat the small stuff and get yourself focused on what to include on the website and the best way to promote it. We will cover these topics in future articles.   

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Remove Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) Link at the bottom of Blogger Template.

A blogger who read my blog, send me an email and ask that how to remove “Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)” link at the bottom of his blogger template. So I thought that it is good to post article about “how to remove “Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)” link at the bottom of the blogger template because some bloggers have this problem. So if you need to remove this “Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)” link, follow the instruction below.

1. Go to Template

2. Click edit HTML tab

3. Click on "Expand Widget Templates"

4. Find below code (click CTRL+F after copy and past this code)

<b:include name='feedLinks'/>

5. Now delete that code

6. Save your Template

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How to Create Blogroll (Link List Box)

As a bloger, we usually added our Friends link on our blog. Day by day and month by month it's number will increased. But if your friends link over than hundredsor or even thousands, it will be a problem, your blog space will full of your friends link list.

Now I will show you how to create a blogroll, You can fill it with as many as links, and it's size will not get bigger. So it will save space on your blog or sidebar.

Here's the code that you should to copy and place on your blog or sidebar ("Add Page Element --> HTML/Java Script").

<div style="border: 1px solid rgb(153, 153, 153);

overflow: auto;

width: 200px;

height: 300px;

text-align: center; ">

#link1 <br />

#link2 <br />

#link3 <br />

#link...

</div>

Note:

- Text width: 200px; and height: 300px; is size of the box, you can change it according to your place or sidebar size .

- Change the text "#link1 , #link2 , #link3 dst" with your friends link list.

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Display Yahoo Messenger Status on Blog

The advantage of showing Yahoo Messenger status on your blog is your visittors can talk or ask something to you directly via YM, it will make your relationship with your visitor to be more tighly. Ok lets begin.

If you’re oflfline, it will display image like this:

And if you’re online, it will display icon like this:

It’s very simple to create it. You just copy the code below and put it on your "Page Element" or sidebar.

<a href="ymsgr:sendIM?Blog Tricks"> <img src="http://opi.yahoo.com/online?u= Blog Tricks&amp;m=g&amp;t=2&amp;l=us"/></a>

Change the red text (Blog Tricks) with your YM id.

Look at the green number "2", you can change it. What the result of doing this? you will different image/icon as your YM status.

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How To Get A Feedburner Rss Feed For Your Blog

One of the first things you should do when you start Blogging is set up a Rss feed..All blogs no matter what platform have a default feed, for Blogger the default feed is

www.Yourblog.Blogspot.com/feed/post/default

But the Google Owned Feedburner offers so much more and don't worry it is very easy to set up.

Feedburner offer so many extras and as you build your blog you will notice so many areas that Feedburner can optimize your blog, we will also go into how feed burner give you the option to provide a 'Subscribe by Email' as you see on most blogs and also you can add AdSense units to your feeds.

I covered Rss feeds and how to use them in detail in a previous post Click Here to check it out.

Lets get your Feedburner Feed

As Feed burner is owned by Google you can log in with your google account details.
Step 1. Go to www.Feedburner.com log in or create an account if you don't already have a google account.

Step 2. You will now come to this page:

Now just enter your blog URL in the space provided :

Example :

http://www.yourblog.blogspot.com

If you have a custom domain :

http://www.yourblog.com

Step 3. 

Your feed will be created and feed burner will take you through a few steps to get you started, don't panic and think you need to set up everything now as you can go back and make changes.

The one thing you need to set up is the address of your feed, this is similar as choosing the address of your blog and it is best to use your blog address or name.

Your feed URL will be :

http://feeds.feedburner.com/YouPickThis


Once you feed is ready take some time to look through the options in the menu to: Analyze, Optimize, Publicize and Monetize your new Rss feed.

You can now also change your blogger settings to use your new rss feed as default.

In your dashboard click 'Settings'--> 'Site feed' for your blog to find this option.

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What Is Rss / Subscribe / Feeds?

What is RSS?

RSS is a technology that is being used by millions of web users around the world to keep track of their favorite websites.

In the ‘old days’ of the web to keep track of updates on a website you had to ‘bookmark’ websites in your browser and manually return to them on a regular basis to see what had been added.

The problems with bookmarking

• You as the web surfer had to do all the work
• It can get complicated when you are trying to track many websites at once
• You miss information when you forget to check your bookmarks
• You end up seeing the same information over and over again on sites that don’t update very often

RSS Changes Everything

What if you could tell a website to let you know every time that they update? In a sense, this is what RSS does for you.

RSS flips things around a little and is a technology that provides you with a method of getting relevant and up to date information sent to you for you to read in your own time. It saves you time and helps you to get the information you want quickly after it was published.

RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. Many people describe it as a ‘news feed’ that you subscribe to.

I find the ’subscription’ description helpful. It’s like subscribing to a magazine that is delivered to you periodically but instead of it coming in your physical mail box each month when the magazine is published it is delivered to your ‘RSS Reader’ every time your favorite website updates.

How RSS actually technically works is probably a lesson for another day but the key today is for you to understand why it’s good and how to use it.

Let me say right up front that I’m not the most technically savvy guy going around - but even I can use RSS. At first I found it a little strange to make the change from bookmarking to RSS but I found that when I started that I just couldn’t stop.

How to Use RSS

Get an RSS Reader - The first thing you’ll want to do if you’re getting into reading sites via RSS is to hook yourself up with an RSS Feed Reader.


There are many feed readers going around with a variety of approaches and features - however a good place to start is with a couple of free and easy to use web based ones likeGoogle Reader and Bloglines. Either one will do if you’re starting out,as I say there are many to choose from but to get started either of these are fairly easy to use and will help you work out the basics of RSS.


Both of these feed readers work a little like email. As you subscribe to feeds you’ll see that unread entries from the sites you’re tracking will be marked as bold. As you click on them you’ll see the latest update and can read it right there in the feed reader. You are given the option to click through to the actual site or move onto the next unread item - marking the last one as ‘read’.


The best way to learn how to use either Google Reader or Bloglines is to simply subscribe to some feeds and give it a go. Both have helpful help sections to get you up and running.


Note: other options to tracking websites that you might already be familiar with include using pages like MyYahoo, MyGoogle and MyMSN.


Find Some Feeds to Subscribe to - there are two places to look for a site’s feed:

1. On the Site
2. In Your Browser
   
   
   

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Add E-Mail Link For Blog

           
           If you need simple but useful email link, which will allow visitors to contact you, then you should use this html code


01 -  E-Mail Link With Image

Code:

<a href=" lifestylewebs@gmail.com "><img src="http://littletechgirl.com/wp-content/uploads/1197149991928309730zeimusu_Thumbtack_note_email.svg_.hi_.png" alt="Cool Html Codes" title="contact-us" width="100" height="102" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2686" /></a>                                                                                                                         


02 -  Usual Email Link

E-mail Me!

Code:

<a href=" lifestylewebs@gmail.com ">E-mail Me!</a>

03 -  Email Link with subject

Email Me!

Code:

<a href="mailto: lifestylewebs@gmail.com?Subject=Advertise on Blog Tricks">Email Me!</a>

Note: “lifestylewebs@gmail.com” in this part of the code write your email addresses

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HTML Marquee Codes

If you want to get someone’s attention, then you should use the marquee codes . But,don’t use it too much,particularly if your site contains too much marquee text , it irritates and spoils the concentration of the reader.You can add marquee codes to tell your visitors what will be your next updates,popular posts,advertisements,etc.


1- Bouncy Text


Blog Tricks

Code:


<marquee behavior=alternate width="190" scrollamount="7" scrolldelay="96" height="20" bgcolor="#E0FFFF"><font size="5">Blog Tricks </font></marquee>


2 - Scrolling text
B
l
o
g
T
r
i
c
k
s


Code:


<font color="#FF0000"> <marquee direction=up scrollamount=0scrolldelay=0 style="filter:wave(add=13,phase=1,freq=3,strength=25)" width=100 height=220>B<br />l<br /> o <br /> g <br /> T <br /> r <br /> i <br /> c <br /> k <br /> s </marquee></font><br />


3 -  Scrolling Text
Blog Tricks

Code:


<marquee direction="Blog Tricks " bgcolor="#E0FFFF"> Blog Tricks  </marquee>

WIDTH: how wide the marquee is

HEIGHT: how tall the marquee is

DIRECTION: which direction the marquee should scroll

BEHAVIOR: what type of scrolling

SCROLLDELAY: how long to delay between each jump

SCROLLAMOUNT: how far to jump

LOOP: how many times to loop

BGCOLOR: background color

HSPACE: horizontal space around the marquee

VSPACE: vertical space around the marquee

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Add Auto Redirect Code To Blogger

Step 1. In Your Blogger Dashboard Click > Design > Edit Html.

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Add The Transparent Notification Bar To Blogger

Step 1. In Your Blogger Dashboard Click Design > Edit Html 

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