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.

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 < font > ) 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.

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. You 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?

Think you have to be a technical wizard to build a great web site? Think again. If you want to create an engaging web site, this thoroughly revised, completely updated edition of Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual demystifies the process and provides tools, techniques, and expert guidance for developing a professional and reliable web presence.

Whether you want to build a personal web site, an e-commerce site, a blog, or a web site for a specific occasion or promotion, this book gives you detailed instructions and clear-headed advice for:

* Everything from planning to launching. From picking and buying a domain name, choosing a Web hosting firm, building your site, and uploading the files to a web server, this book teaches you the nitty-gritty of creating your home on the Web.

* Ready-to-use building blocks. Creating your own web site doesn’t mean you have to build everything from scratch. You’ll learn how to incorporate loads of pre-built and freely available tools like interactive menus, PayPal shopping carts, Google ads, and Google Analytics.

* The modern Web. Today’s best looking sites use powerful tools like Cascading Style Sheets (for sophisticated page layout), JavaScript (for rollover buttons and cascading menus), and video. This book doesn’t treat these topics as fancy frills. From step one, you’ll learn easy ways to create a powerful site with these tools.

* Blogs. Learn the basics behind the Web’s most popular form of self-expression. And take a step-by-step tour through Blogger, the Google-run blogging service that will have you blogging before you close this book.

This isn’t just another dry, uninspired book on how to create a web site. Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual is a witty and intelligent guide you need to make your ideas and vision a web reality.

Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual

Description

Cascading Style Sheets can turn humdrum websites into highly-functional, professional-looking destinations, but many designers merely treat CSS as window-dressing to spruce up their site’s appearance. You can tap into the real power of this tool with CSS: The Missing Manual. This second edition combines crystal-clear explanations, real-world examples, and dozens of step-by-step tutorials to show you how to design sites with CSS that work consistently across browsers. Witty and entertaining, this second edition gives you up-to-the-minute pro techniques. You’ll learn how to:

* Create HTML that’s simpler, uses less code, is search-engine friendly, and works well with CSS

* Style text by changing fonts, colors, font sizes, and adding borders

* Turn simple HTML links into complex and attractive navigation bars — complete with rollover effects

* Create effective photo galleries and special effects, including drop shadows

* Get up to speed on CSS 3 properties that work in the latest browser versions

* Build complex layouts using CSS, including multi-column designs

* Style web pages for printing

With CSS: The Missing Manual, Second Edition, you’ll find all-new online tutorial pages, expanded CSS 3 coverage, and broad support for Firefox, Safari, and other major web browsers, including Internet Explorer 8. Learn how to use CSS effectively to build new websites, or refurbish old sites that are due for an upgrade.

About the Author

David Sawyer McFarland is president of Sawyer McFarland Media, Inc., a Web development and training company in Portland, Oregon. He’s been building websites since 1995, when he designed an online magazine for communication professionals. He’s served as webmaster at the University of California at Berkeley and the Berkeley Multimedia Research Center, and oversaw a complete CSS-driven redesign of Macworld.com. David is also a writer, trainer, and teaches in the Portland State University multimedia program. He wrote the bestselling Missing Manual titles on Adobe Dreamweaver, CSS, and JavaScript.

CSS: The Missing Manual

I hope that you are having a great day today. In my area of the US we are starting to get some cooler weather. A large cold front is making its way here from the North Central states. I personally do not like cold weather and I am not looking forward to the lower temperatures. Depending on where you live, you may be seeing the fall colors as the leaves loose their green colors. Some may have experienced that already and the leaves are falling or are already gone.

When the cooler weather comes, it is a good time to stay inside. You may be thinking about making your own website. This would be a good time to do it! You may have to pull yourself away from the new episode of your favorite TV show, because most of the TV series have started a new season.

With the economic uncertainties and the higher costs of everything, you may be thinking about how to make extra money. A website is a great way to make money. Once you set up your website, then your visitors can place orders 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and even while you are doing other things.

You need to decide what you want to do with your website. If you want to make money, then you need to decide how? There are many different types of websites, and there are many ways to make money with your website. Before you start making your website you need to decide what it will be about and how you will make money with it.

Website Hosting

You will need to consider which company to use for your website hosting. There are options that range from free to hundreds of dollars per month. If you are just starting out, then probably want to consider the lower end options. These are cheaper, but they should be adequate for your needs to start. Once you get your website established and have 1000′s of visitors each day, then you may want to upgrade to a dedicated server.

I recommend two website hosting companies that I have used and have had good service with. IX Web Hosting and Site 5 Web Hosting. You can use any web hosting company that you choose and can find more options by doing a Google search for “web hosting”.

Pick Your Domain Name

You may want to take the time to pick a good domain name. Your domain name is the URL address for your website. In case you are not sure what a domain name is, it looks like this:

www.your-domain-name.com

Your domain name should be memorable, so that your visitor can remember how to get back to your website when they want to return. It should also be short as possible. If you do any offline marketing, then you want people to come to your website. If your address is 40 characters long, they may not want to type it out to get to your website.

Another consideration is the use of dash ( – ) or underscore ( _ ). These may make your website address easier to read and understand, but most people are lazy. They may enter your website address without the dash or underscore and end up on someone else’s website. One way to prevent this is to get every varience of your website domain and have them point to your website. Only use one actual website address for your website and the other addresses will point to that one.

Make Your Website

Most website hosting companies provide website creation software as part of your C-Panel of control panel. This is a basic website design package. They may have a number of ready made templates for you to choose from. When you click on the Publish Button, then your website will be saved to your server and be active for your visitors to see.

Another option is to get software loaded on your personal computer to create your website. There are many options available that range from free to $100′s or even $1000′s. There are complete suites of software that cover every aspect of website creation, such as Adobe Creative Suite 4. Here is a review of the Best Windows HTML Editors. Here is a review of Free WYSIWYG HTML Editors.

You could also pay someone to design and create your website for you. This will be the most costly. I recommend that you at least try to create your own website to start. This way you will better understand what is involved and will be able to make sure the person you outsource your projects to in the future is doing what they are supposed to be doing. There are also security issues with allowing someone else to have access to your website hosting account and other sensitive information.

More Information

Check out the Free Report that I offer. This report will give you 20 secret website techniques that will help you explode your bank account. You will also receive a newsletter delivered to your email on a regular basis that will give you even more information about website design, creation and maintenance as well ways to make money with your website. You can sign up for this by using the form in the upper right side of this Blog, or click on this link to Get Your Free Report.

I wish you success in all your legitimate business ventures and in your every day life too!

Sincerely,

Jim Van Dyke

The King of Scripts

I have several websites that are general in nature and therefore a wide range of topics. I see many other websites that have a similar wide range of topics. For Search Engine Optimization (SEO) you need to have a more narrow range of topics that are closely related.

You can still create a website with a wide range of topics. You need to create sections for your website and you need to group closer related topics together in the group. I can illustrate this with the example of a pet supply website. Your home page will be used to link all parts of your website together. Your home page address should look like this:

www.your-domain-name.com/index.html

The pet supplies should then be grouped in general groups based on animal type. The main page for the general group will then link to all parts of the general group. Let’s look at dog supplies for example. The main page address for the dog supplies should look like this:

www.your-domain-name/dog/index.html

The dog supplies should then be grouped in more specific groups based on the type of dog supply. The main page for the specific groups will then link to all parts of the specific group. Let’s look at dog collars for example. The main page address for the dog collars should look like this:

www.your-domain-name/dog/dog-collars/index.html

You could create more specific groups depending on the amount of information available for the specific groups. The main page of the more specific group would then link to all parts of the more specific group. Let’s look at small dog collars for example. The main page address for the small dog collars should look like this:

www.your-domain-name/dog/dog-collars/small-dog-collars/index.html

This may seem like a lot of work, but the boost in your Search Engine Optimization and the resulting higher page ranking with the search engines will make it worth your time and effort. What this does for you is create mini websites on your complete website. Each part would be closely related in topic and would then be viewed as an information authority by the search engines.

All webpages in a group should link to other pages in the group and to the main webpage for the group. This makes the main webpage in each group the hub for the group. This makes your website more organized for the search engine to crawl your website and provides the internal link structure that is necessary for search engine crawling and logging of your website.

The best time to do the structuring of your website is when you are building it. It will require a complete overhaul if you wait until after the website is created.

You can see a live demonstration of this website structure at the following website:

http://www.info-4-prosperity.com

http://www.info-4-prosperity.com/info.html

http://www.info-4-prosperity.com/inform/budgeting/index.php

http://www.info-4-prosperity.com/videos.html

http://www.info-4-prosperity.com/Videos/College_Road_Trip/index.php

Notice how the structure is similar to the pet supply website example. You can use this structure for any type of website that you are designing.

Would you like to add to your website? There are complete website packages available for you to download in the membership area of this website. You can see what the packages look like on live websites by clicking on this link and then clicking on the links for the specific package that you are interested in seeing.

There are many more digital products available for download with Resell Rights, Master Resell Rights, or Private Label Rights. These products can be sold for 100% profit. You can sign up for membership and start downloading immediately after your payment is processed and you have confirmed your information.

The key to Search Engine Optimization is to implement the structure when you are designing your website.

I wish you success in all your legitimate business ventures and in your every day life too!

Sincerely,

Jim Van Dyke

The King of Scripts

Most people today are considering the Internet as a way to make extra money to make ends meet with the soaring cost of Gas, food, and utilities. When you are barely making ends meet as it is and the price of everything goes through the roof, what can you do? My post from yesterday dealt more with creating a personal website, so today I will address creating a website to make money online.

There are many free ways to get a website or a webpage, but if you want to make money online the best way is to have your own website. The cost to have your own website can be as little as $4.95US per month if you pay for more then one year when you you sign up. For $120US you can have your own website paid up for two years. You can find this deal at IX Web Hosting, and you also get one free domain name for the two years. I recommend that you select the Linux OS Server to host your account, because you will have more features that you can use and full PHP compatibility. You can see that it does not cost a lot of money to get your own website hosting account.

Most web hosting companies will provide a server side software to help you design and create your own website, but there are limitations as far as the number of templates that you can use and the graphics that are available. You can also use some free software to create your own website and to upload your website to your web hosting server.

I personally use Free Website Builder to design and create my own html webpages for my own websites. This is a free software program that you can download and install on your own computer. You can use the What You See Is What You Get editor, which is very easy to use and displays the webpage as it will appear online. This software also has a script editor so you can add scripts directly to your HTML code for your website. If you know how to code in HTML you could create the whole website from this editor. This feature is handy for adding Google Analytics tracking script to your webpage. This will also be how you would need to add your Opt-in Form code from your AutoResponder service provider. For a free program, there are a lot of useful features.

I personally use Smart FTP to upload my website files to my web hosting server. This is a free software program that you can download and install on your own computer. You will need to set up this program with the FTP information for your web hosting server as well as the login information to access and upload files to your web hosting server. Once this is set up you will not need to do any more set up, unless you get a web hosting account with another company or you get an additional account with the same company. The best feature with this software is the transfer cache, because you just click and drag files into the cache, then click and drag the files to the folder you want to upload to on your web hosting server and then it does the rest automatically.

I personally use TS Web Editor to design, create, and edit PHP webpages. This is a free software program that you can download and install on your computer. There is a tool to find syntax errors and other problems that may make your webpage not function right. This will not be as easy to use as the Free Website Builder, because this does not have a What You See Is What You Get editor and is all codes and scripts. Like anything else, once you learn how to work with the codes and scripts you find it much easier to use this software program.

Why Should You Create Your Own Personal Website?

Some people can make money online without having their own website and it is possible to do so. There are all sorts of free services that you can use to post articles, videos and audios that will help you to promote an Affiliate Program and products that you could make commission when someone makes a purchase through your link. This is a long hard road and may not be the best choice.

Most Internet Marketers will agree that the true money is in your list. The list they are referring to is an Opt-in List that you create by posting an Opt-in Form on your website that visitors can enter their name and email address. By having your own website it makes it easier to build your list. You can have your Opt-in Form on every page on your website and this will increase the exposure. You can write a mini sales page called a squeeze page that will give information about the newsletter, e-zine, email course or other features that your visitor will gain by giving you their name and email address. Then you would direct traffic to the squeeze page through your advertising and promotional efforts. You could also offer a free gift to sweeten the deal and to encourage people to give you their name and email address.

It has been shown through experimentation that most consumers will not make a purchase unless they have been exposed to the advertisement or product 7 times or more. Most people stumble upon a website through a search or following a link, but do not make a purchase before they leave. Once they leave most people will not be back to that website. By getting the visitors name and email address, you now have a way to remind the visitor of your website, your products and/or servcies. By sending them a series of email messages that offer useful information about the topic of your website, you can also include links to your website, or your sales page. By doing this you can expose your list to your product and/or service more then 7 times and this may give you more sales.

Once you have a list of potential buyers, then you could send them useful information in email messages that is followed by a product or service that you are offering yourself or are promoting through an affiliate program. You can see the value of having an Opt-in List.

There are many more reasons why you may consider designing and creating your own personal website. It is my sincere hope that the information that I have provided through my Blog will help you make money online by creating your own website.

I wish you success in all your legitimate business ventures and in your every day life too!

Sincerely,

Jim Van Dyke

The King of Scripts