Web Design 101
Web Design 101
By - Chris Crowder
2004... Updated November 27, 2006
A couple years ago I wrote the foregoing article
(READ.....SATIRE) on web design practices I found
annoying. Ironically, I find this more applicable
now than I did then.
I have been a regular net-citizen for almost 10
years now. Over the years I have viewed countless
websites. Some good, some bad, and others that
just plain sucked. There have been many books
and articles written by so called "Self Proclaimed"
experts about good web
design. However, the advice offered in these
books and articles is by no means a reflection
of how the web appears to its surfers today.
While trying to understand why this is the case,
I saw the light. Year after year after year
I've witnessed the same web design elements
implemented that are considered bad by the experts.
If these elements are so bad you would think
that sooner or later webmasters would quit using
them. They haven't; therefore, the experts are
liars! The experts have been purposely telling
webmasters to avoid certain design elements
in their websites. The truth of the matter is
these so called bad design elements actually
work very well. The experts have been playing
webmasters for fools. Out of the sheer goodness
of my heart, I wrote this article to uncover
the true elements of good web design. Let's
start with the most basic element of a website,
Hosting.
Every website needs a host. Since most of us
don't have web servers set up on our kitchen tables,
we have to find a remote server to host our sites.
There are two ways you can host your website. One,
you can rent space on a web server or two, sign
up for a free-host. Always use a free-host! Who
in the world can afford to pay $5 or less a month
to host a website? As long as there are free-host,
paid hosting is a foolish waste of money. It's
unbelievable that so many webmasters do not take
advantage of what free-hosts have to offer. Free-hosts
give away FREE hosting accounts in exchange for a
simple banner at the top of all your web pages.
Who pays any attention to the top of a web page,
anyway? Using a free-host creates a win-win
situation. You win because you don't have to
pay the exhorbitant cost of paid hosting. The
free-host wins because you work very hard to
drive surfers to see their banners that no
one pays any attention to anyway. If you ever
decide to switch to a different free-host, or
the free-host suddenly shuts down, you can
rest assured that all the traffic that you
worked so hard to get will not be wasted.
All of your hard earned surfers will be
redirected to the free-host's favorite
affiliate programs. Since all websites on
free-host are highest quality and rich in
content, you are sure to get high rankings
in search engines. As you can plainly see,
paid hosting is just downright foolish.
Some webmasters choose to have their own
domain name. This is OK if you are rich and have
like $10 extra cash to blow every year. Smart
webmasters using free-host do not need their own
domain name. If you are a rich webmaster that can
afford paid hosting and for whatever reason insist
on having your own domain name, there is a trick
of the trade that I should point out. Forget about
getting a short, easy to remember dictionary word
for your domain name. They were all taken about 10
years ago. Instead I'll let you in on a little
known webmaster secret... not everyone is a great
speller. For example take the domain amateur-porno.com.
In this domain name, amateur is spelled correctly
and of course the domain is taken. Amateur is a
commonly misspelled word. Don't believe me? Search
Google for this common misspelling: "amature". I
just did and found 2,820,000 matches (Update...
3,830,000 as of 11-27-2006). Surprisingly,
at the time of this writing, the misspelled
amature-porno.com domain is not taken (Update... as
of 11-27-06 domain is still available). If I were
a rich webmaster I would snatch it up right way and
turn it into a gardening site. However, I am not
rich and for some odd reason my free-host will not
allow me to use my own domain name. It's obvious
that many people misspell amateur, therefore the
misspelling should bring you loads of traffic
once being listed in search engines. Not to
mention the fact that the misspelled domain name
will make you look so savvy and professional to
you surfers. The surfers that are smart enough
to realize that you intentionally chose the
misspelling will understand how much of a genius
that you really are. 2,820,000 misspellings can't
be wrong.
Unless you are going to use the VCP
(View Source, Copy, Paste) method to create your
website, always use an HTML editor. Hyper Text
Markup Language (HTML) as the name implies is a
programming language that is far too complicated
for people to understand. HTML editors just make
more sense. There are no difficult HTML tags to
memorize, just point and click to create websites
that put the professional HTML programmers to shame.
Not having to waste time learning anything gives
you more time to pursue more important tasks like
spamming the search engines. For those webmasters
who are really short on time, the VCP is an
extremely efficient method of web design.
The authors of the web browsers would never have
included the option to view source or even copy
and paste if they did not intend for us to use them.
The VCP method ensures that your site will look just
as good as the original. If you change all the
affiliate links to your own, your site will look
even better. Some picky so called professional
webmasters like to call this method "plagiarism".
However, you are much smarter than they are. You
realize that you simply archived a copy of their
site on your free-host. Since paid hosting is so
much less reliable than free hosting the original
author of the site should thank you by making a
cash donation for making their site available
while their paid hosting is down.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is complicated tool
which can be used to define across the board the
layout of your web pages. CSS is a waste of time
as it could take an whole hour to learn. If you
can type the word "font" 250 times a minute, you
have never heard of CSS anyway, forget I even
mentioned it. Knowledge of CSS is not necessary for
those using HTML editors to program or code their
websites. HTML editors give you full control over
your site design, allows you to use your creativity
to its fullest potential, while only knowing how to
point and click.
Always design web pages for the highest resolution
that your monitor will do. The important thing is that
your site page looks good on your monitor. Why would
you care if your surfers have to scroll right to read
your beautiful 1600 pixel wide logo? You charged your
credit card to the max to have the latest greatest
technologically advanced computer equipment that is sure
to remain cutting edge for many, many years to come.
This makes you a better person than the average surfer.
Do not ever compromise your investment by using a lower
resolution. It's not fair to you. Just like if you have
a car that will go 200 miles per hour. It's not fair that
the law limits you to a measly 55 MPH. Your surfers should
know better than visit your website with inferior computer
equipment. Remember... It's your website, right? It's your
computer, right? Crank up the resolution! You deserve only
the best! Screw the stupid surfers with last year's computers!
The time it takes for your website to load is very important
to you. You can check the load time of your site by opening
it from your local hard disk with your browser. Have a stop
watch ready for this task. Once your page has loaded, refresh
your browser and start your stop watch. When the page finishes
loading stop the stopwatch. It loaded really fast, didn't it.
This is excellent! There is no need for you to worry about how
long your surfers must wait for your page to load. You have no
control over the equipment your surfers use or the speed of
their internet connection. It is entirely the surfer's
responsibility to be sure their computer equipment and
internet connection are up to par with the capabilities
on your end of the rainbow.
Black text on a white background was perfectly acceptable
way back in the days of typewriters. Times have changed.
In order to prove that you are a cutting edge webmaster,
always incorporate colorful background images on your web
pages even if it makes the text difficult to read. Light
colored backgrounds with high contrasting text prove to your
surfers that you don't know anything about graphic design.
Surfers spend more time at websites with highly complicated
background images. Remember, the longer a surfer has your
website open in their browser, the higher you will rank in
search engines. It's true! Surfers that come to your site
for a few seconds then leave are hurting your search engine
ranking. Short visits are a sign that your site is dull and
boring. Longer visits prove that your site is an enjoyable
surfing experience.
An easy way to keep your surfers on your website is to set
some background music. Surfers love it! Especially 80's pop music
in MIDI format. MIDI is so realistic that your surfers will think
they are right in the recording studio with the band.
IMPORTANT! Never change the song. If you do some of your surfers
will think they came to the wrong site by accident and leave.
Surfers understand the quality of good MIDI music and will return
to your site several times a day to hear your better-than-live
MIDI rendition of your favorite song.
The advanced webmaster will find his/her website growing at a
phenomenal rate. A Jedi webmaster gets trillions of hits per hour
and makes zillions of dollars a day from affiliate links and surfer
donations. As your site grows the menus can grow to more than 20 items.
In some rare cases I've seen as many as 27 items in a single menu. A
website with excess of 20 items in the menu, uses 69 times more
bandwidth than a website with only 19 menu items. Do not distress.
There is a solution. Frames! Putting your menu in a frame means that
it only has to be loaded once. This saves your free-host millions
of dollars in bandwidth cost and helps improve the ozone layer due
to less TCP Web Emissions. Your surfers also lose weight by getting
lots of exercise doing their second favorite activity. It's a proven
fact that surfers love to scroll. Up, down, left, right, round and round,
it doesn't matter. They love it! Sometimes surfers sit for hours
and scroll up and down a page just for the fun of it. The more
frames and scroll bars you have, the more fun your site will be.
Once you have mastered frames you will be a Jedi webmaster.
Webmasters are a special group of people that honestly and
openly share information. This is why so many newbie webmasters
become millionaires overnight. The Internet is just like television.
It can't be shown if it ain't true. Webmasters understand the value
in sharing information with fellow webmasters, such as how to get a
top 10 ranking at Google. Due to this fact, 90% of all websites currently
have pages that rank in the top 10% at Google.
By default text links are underlined and change color according to
whether they are active, visited, or unvisited. This is really stupid and
confuses the average surfer. Links should be neither underlined nor should
they ever change colors. Instead you should underline key words and
phrases in your text. Search engine spiders will automatically recognize
underlined words and phrases as being important and get you a really high
search engine ranking for those terms/phrases.
Webmasters aren't called webmasters without reason. All webmasters
earn this title by knowing and understanding the needs of all surfers.
A webmaster knows that surfers really do want unsolicited porn in their
email. Every night, hundreds of surfers go to bed completely unsatisfied
because they did not get something nasty in their in-box. Without
unsolicited pornographic emails surfers cannot get the satisfaction
of doing their number one favorite activity, because porn is impossible
to find on the web.
Always include a hit counter on your main page. Hit Counters prove to
your surfers that your site is popular. If your site has only been live
for 3 to 4 minutes your hit count will naturally be low. To remedy this
I will let you in on a trick that professionals use to obtain a high
initial count. Make sure your counter is set to count all hits, not just
uniques. Open your site in your web browser then tape down your F5
key (Refresh). Just sit back and watch the counter roll. Naturally
the speed at which your counter increases will be directly proportional
to the speed of your Internet connection. If your Internet connection is
slow you may want to draft a few of your buddies to do this as well.
Lots of flash animations and animated gifs make a site look top notch.
If you put enough animations on a page your surfers will think they just
stepped into a Las Vegas casino. Your surfers will be awed by your
brilliance as a webmaster. Dial-up users will even stick around and
wait hours for your page to load just to see your graphical capabilities.
Popup ads are a great way to bring well deserved cash to the webmasters that use them. Popup ads complete the web surfing experience. There is a
reason why the Internet has been called the information super highway.
The whole web surfing experience is very similar to taking a road trip
in an automobile. Both the Internet and highways make it easy for us to
visit many sites without leaving our seats. Between interesting sites
on a road trip almost all highways are heavily decorated with beautiful
billboards. Billboards keep drivers from getting bored to tears between
stops. Without billboards, our driving trips would be cluttered with
scenes of ugly nature stuff. Many surfers felt the lack of billboards
on the web took away from the whole surfing experience. In an effort
to combat the issue over 40 million surfers got together and demanded
more Internet advertising! A few weeks later the popup ad was introduced
to the web. The surfers rejoiced! Just like the billboards, popup ads
can be shown as the surfers enter a site, and when they leave. The web
surfing experience was complete. As webmasters, we can reap the same
tremendous financial gains generated by billboards by adding popup ads
to our websites. Your surfers will thank you for it.
Show your surfers that you are on the cutting edge of technology.
Incorporate as many of the latest internet bells and whistles into your
website as possible. It does not matter if they will not render correctly
on most browsers. Not only will you look super professional, you will
be encouraging your surfers to keep their equipment up to date. Most
surfers will take any measures necessary to view your cutting edge
designs. Some will only have to upgrade their browser and/or download
third party plug-ins. Others will rush out and buy a new computer system.
Many dial-up users will abandon their homes and move to an area where
high speed Internet access is available.
Inconsistency is the spice of life. It's what keeps life from being
so dull and boring. Inconsistency in web design keeps your surfers at
the edge of their seats. For example, lets say your site links are
located at the top of your main page right below the free-host sex toy
banner. If you do the same thing on the second page the surfer will
think your site is dull and boring cause it's too predictable.
Always put your page links at different places on each page. To
make your site really exciting, include a few pages with no links at all.
Surfers love a challenge. So make your site challenging to navigate.
Some surfers have been know to search for weird stuff like the name
of their hometown. How boring is that? As a webmaster I'm sure you
understand that the surfer would be much happier viewing your unique
site about penis enlargement pills. You can help the confused surfers
by incorporating irrelevant keywords into your web pages. Irrelevant
key words offer a chance for ignorant surfers to find what they are
really looking for. This will require a little effort on your part.
However, you will feel really good about yourself knowing that you
are doing your part to snuff out ignorance. At the bottom of all
your pages list the names of every town in your country. With a
little luck your penis pill site will rank higher in search engines
than many towns' homepages. All of the guys and girls in these towns
will have larger penises and thank you as a webmaster for guiding
them in the right direction.
If this article helps only one webmaster improve their web design
skills, the few hours I spent writing it were well worth it. I know I
have probably pissed off all the "design experts" by exposing the true
elements of good web design.
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