Make A Good Website - an introduction
Posted on Saturday, January 16, 2010 - last modified on Friday, April 16, 2010.
To make a good website from start to finish can be a daunting task, especially if you are beginning from not understanding a thing about it. If you are going to do everything yourself you need a wide range of skills in order to end up with a good working site, and a lot of those skills may be completely new to you, even if you have quite a lot of experience using computers. But none of the individual skills is particularly difficult to get to grips with for you to make your own website – there's nothing that the average reasonably intelligent person can't master. So don't be put off before you start – you can do this!
In this introduction we'll go over some of the processes involved in making a website and the skills that you need to make a good website. The points laid out on this page aren't a plan of how to proceed – they probably won't be in the right order for a start. They're just an overview to give you an idea of all the sorts of things you'll need to get to grips with so that you can make a good website when you've learned at least enough to get started. You'll find one of the most important points to bear in mind right from the start is talked about toward the end of the page, so don't even think about starting building a good web site without reading everything through first. There's also information you'll need right at the outset that appears near the end of the page.
By reading this page you might decide for whatever reason that this is not for you, and so you may save yourself the heartache of starting something that you're not going to finish. These points are not designed to put you off, either, but it's best to be aware of what you are getting into, so that you end up with that good website. Also, there are ways around a lot of this stuff and you can avoid a lot of the hard work, or things that you may find too challenging, by a number of means, mostly involving spending some money. The reverse also applies – if you're short of cash, you can do everything with very little, even without any expense at all, just expect to trade that lack of spending for time – time to learn and time to do. The general rule of thumb is that the less you want to spend, then the more time it will take to achieve the same result. If you want to make a good website but decide you would like some help, it's still important to understand the range of processes that any site, however it's made, needs to go through – so read on.
You need somewhere to host a website
A website consists of pages of text and perhaps images too that form the content of the page – the words and sentences that anyone who reads the website sees – and code called “markup” that tells the browser which has to display the page exactly how to show it – what size text to use and the colour of the text, where any images go, all that sort of thing. The pages need to be stored on a computer that's connected to the internet and runs a program called a web server whose job in life is to serve up the pages to anyone who requests to see them. The computer that hosts the pages, because it runs the web server software is itself called a web server.
Having your site's pages on a web server is called web hosting and you need to arrange hosting for your site. There is lots of free hosting available, but most people who are serious about making a good website pay to host their site with a hosting company. When you're starting out it doesn't have to be complex or expensive hosting, either. You can get excellent, reliable hosting for just a few dollars a month.
For a lot more information about hosting, see the Host A Website page.
One very popular option that provides hosting, and a whole lot more, is available from a number of companies that provide you with a weblog (or “blog” for short) for absolutely zero cost. Generally speaking, with this option you don't have to worry too much about the design and structure of the site – a lot of that will be done for you. But this may be a bit restricting for you – you may want to be in control of everything. In that case you'll want to start from scratch and be completely involved in the design and structure of the site and have the satisfaction of doing everything yourself. If these sorts of free blogs interest you, you may want to investigate this option further. You can even make money from sites hosted by some of these companies, so if it's your goal to make some dough, you'll find further information on the make a free website page.
One benefit that your own hosting gives is the ability to have your own domain name attached to your hosting, so that when someone types your domain into the address bar on their browser, it is your site served from your hosting account, that they get to see. This is done by what's called the domain name system (DNS). Every webserver needs to be part of the domain name system so that people are able to be routed to the correct web site they want from just the domain name. Each hosting company has computers called nameservers that look after all the translation between domain names and actual machine addresses that makes the internet work.
You need a domain name
Your domain name is your site's address. For instance, this site's domain name is www.makeagoodwebsite.com. Actually, strictly speaking the domain is just the “makeagoodwebsite” part. The “www” is the sub-domain, and the “com” is the top level domain (TLD). So when you go and purchase a domain from a domain registrar, or from some other source, you need to decide what you want for your middle part – the domain – and the last part – the TLD. As you can imagine, all the best domain names have gone – at least ones that have popular TLDs – you have to get a bit creative perhaps with your namimg, or maybe purchase a domain from someone that has already registered it, or get one on the very active domain aftermarket, where expiring domains are sought and traded like real estate. But let's not worry about that just now. Just be aware that you can hand register a new .com domain for $10 or less a year. You register that with a domain registrar – there are tons of them – and at your registrar you get your hosting's nameservers allocated to your domain so that your fully qualified domain name points to your hosting account.
It's as well to know at this point that many web hosting companies are also domain registrars. Some companies just do domain registration and others just do web hosting. Don't assume it is best to find one that does both and that it will simplify things. It may well make things a bit simpler, but it may be that they are poor web hosts for instance. It may well be a wise move, if you have any ambitions of owning a number of sites, to find a domain registrar that you like and keep all of your domain registrations there, but keep the registrations completely separate from the hosting, and get your hosting from one or more web hosting services, so keeping the hosting of the domains completely separate from the registrations. Take nothing for granted. One of the tasks in building a good website is finding good suppliers of services of all kinds.
You need to make the website – the structure and the content
Having sorted out hosting and a domain, you need to make a start on building the content of the site and, depending on whether you've gone the free route or the total control route, you may need to get down to some serious design issues. You may, in the back of your mind, be thinking that building a good website may be something that you would like to do as a job or business at some time in the future. If so, then the quicker that you get stuck in to learning as much as possible, the sooner it will all make sense and become part of what you know and understand.
An overview of the different sorts of sites
Static versus dynamic
Making a good website means that you understand the various benefits of both static web pages and dynamic ones. A static web page contains within itself all of the content that is to be displayed by that page. The content is all hard-coded within the page, in the same way that the words of a regular books are held on the page. Static pages are typically straightforward to make and are quick to load from the server to the browser. Static pages are built from hypertext markup language (HTML) or a more modern development of HTML called XHTML, or even XML. Page markup is in a constant state of development – don't think you'll ever know all there is to know about page markup.
In an important move to separate a good website's content from its structure, a system known as cascading style sheets (CSS) has been developed. The sooner you understand how CSS works alongside HTML, the sooner you will be making good websites.
A dynamic page as opposed to a static page usually contains a lot of static code, but important parts of it will be generated dynamically. That means they are created at the time they are served to be transported to someone's browser that's wanting to view the page. A straightforward example of this sort of thing is seen in shopping sites, where someone wants to see, for example, what the store has on offer. For instance, I might go to Amazon.com to see if I can find a good book about building a good website! I put a term like that in the search box and Amazon dynamically makes a good web page just for me with a selection of books it thinks fits the bill. Dynamic web sites like this often use a database to store details of the inventory and lots of other details that it may need to make pages. The basic framework of the page may be hard coded, but the important details are all got from a database system just at the time they are needed to fill in the details of the framework.
Client-side and server-side
The sort of dynamic sites just introduced, where the pages are constructed on the server, use scripting and programming languages often called server-side code. Typical languages for server-side coding are PHP, ASP and Java.
Web pages can also contain code that is to be executed not on the server, but on the computer of the person that is being served the page. It is executed by the user's browser or client, and is called client-side code. This typically uses a language called Javascript, which is not to be confused with the server-side language Java – the two are not really related at all.
A typical use for client-side Javascript include validating user input. If I go to a site where I need to input say my email address, then there may be some client-side Javascript that has a look at what I type and confirms that it conforms to what e-mail addresses look like before it sends it back to the web server for further processing.
You need knowledge of coding
So with all this code going on – HTML and XHTML, along with CSS for both static and dynamic pages, PHP, ASP or Java (or in fact many others) used for dynamic server-side programming, and Javascript for client-side programming – there's a lot to get your head around there. Take it gently. Start with simple static pages and understand what's going on there, and add the other stuff – if you need to – slowly over time.
You need knowledge of design
To make a good website, you need to have at least a bit of an eye for design. Websites can be seen as performing similar functions to, and extending the scope of more traditional print media such as books, newspapers and magazines. There are lots of design principles that are used in those and many of them are useful to someone who wants to make a good website. There is a wealth of information available about good design principles. Most of them are quite straightforward and easily learned. A lot of this is common sense, but a certain artistic flair will help too.
You need knowledge of layout
Design goes hand in hand with layout. The same applies here. Print media has been following good layout principles for an age. It works just as well for you to build a good website.
You need knowledge of colour
For me, colour can make or break a good website. Simply put, some colours go well together and some do not. There are many excellent resources on the web that can help with appreciating the subtle art of colour. Try to get into the habit of making a conscious appreciation of the colours used in every website you go to. Does the colour scheme work, or does it make you uncomfortable? Colour is more important than it is usually given credit for. It seems to work on a subconscious level.
You need a way to get your website to the host
Having built some excellent content into wonderfully designed pages with a great layout and amazing colour schemes, you now need to get those pages to your hosting server.
A word about the internet and its protocols
The internet runs by means of a number of what are called “protocols”. For instance, the protocol that runs the worldwide web on the internet is the HTTP protocol. HTTP means hypertext transfer protocol and is basically the set of technical rules by which the web is made to work. As a maker of good web sites you don't need to worry too much about the details of it all, but just need to have a good idea of what it is about when you come across the terms. Another internet protocol is the file transfer protocol (FTP), which is a very early protocol in the life of the internet, that specifically concerns itself with transferring files across the internet. Yet another is the simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) which is designed to send internet mail from email clients to email servers.
Earlier we talked about those free sites and blogs. They often use a system that means that you use the same HTTP protocol to upload your content to your sites pages using your browser, as you do to look at web pages normally. But if you are making a good website from scratch, then you most likely need to upload your pages to your host using a different protocol called file transfer protocol (FTP). This is very similar to copying and moving files around within your computer, but instead of the files being moved from one folder on your computer's hard disk to another folder, they are simply moved from one folder on your hard disk to a different folder that just happens to be on a remote computer, perhaps on a different continent. The remoteness makes hardly any difference at all.
You need writing skills
How are your language skills? I think it's important, to get your point across effectively and convincingly, that you can write a coherent sentence, and that you can string those sentences into logical paragraphs, and assemble paragraphs into sections...and so on.
I think it's similarly important to spell well and understand grammar and punctuation and all that stuff reasonably well, too. Maybe it isn't as important as it used to be in the good old days. Perhaps almost anything goes. It's up to you, ultimately, how you deal with language – it's your site.
I suppose it's a fine balance between your language conveying what you want to communicate without itself being a barrier, and it being something that makes your reader miss your meaning because the language just gets in the way.
You need ideas
If it matters how you say it, it is absolutely vital what you say. You'll see it said everywhere on the internet – content is king. Nobody sets out to be boring, but that can so easily be the end result if you don't have a good idea, well constructed, and can write interestingly, knowledgeably and authoritatively. That leads us on to knowing your subject.
You need knowledge of your content
Some people who build web sites say that you don't need to know anything about a subject in order to build a good web site about it. Some people want to build sites about a subject because it gets a lot of web traffic for it. The subject may be worth a lot of money in terms of advertising revenue and they want to cash in on that. I think differently. I'm not doubting that they can research a subject and then build a good website about it. Perhaps they can. What I do know is that I have never been able to do that – I've tried. If I am forced to write about something I have no interest in, then I simply have no motivation to write about it at all. Just can't do it. Are you like that? Get that one sorted out quickly, and don't give yourself untold heartache trying to do what you find you don't ultimately want to. There are enough topics in this world to find plenty that you're passionate about and can write about without a lot of research. Your writing will be the better for it.
You need a plan – is the site to be monetized or not?
In that last section I brought up the thorny subject of making money from web sites. If that is something that doesn't concern you, then we need to say no more. Maybe you want to build a site about you and your family, or a hobby, and have no interest in it making money. That's fine. Your path just got a lot easier.
If you want to build a site that makes some money – perhaps lots of money – then you really do have your work cut out. Building web sites as a business – because that is the only way to approach it in this case – as a serious business – then give up all ideas of having a merry time writing some stuff about some pet subject and making a ton of dough. It doesn't work like that. I'm sorry to be the one to shatter your illusions, but making money from good websites is serious hard work that will take all your energy and more. Don't misunderstand me, though. I'm not saying it's not possible to make money from good web sites – it is – but it takes a long time and a lot of knowledge, and takes a lot of hard work and dedication, especially if you're starting from scratch. There are a lot of people out there that will tell you they have just the system you need to make a good living on the internet – for just $49.99, or $149.99, or $1,499, or whatever price. You can spend a lot of money before finding out that there's no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. But again, not everyone is out to sell you something worthless. There's a lot of valuable information for sale on the internet – you just need to have the ability to separate the good from the bad, so take it easy and be careful.
You need to get your website seen by others
So you've got your hosting plan, your domain name and you've written and uploaded at least the bare-bones of your good website. How do other people find it? Will it just sit there with nobody to see it? If you cannot attract traffic to your good website, then it may as well not exist because it will be invisible. Nobody will just stumble across it. Unlike the shopping mall, there's very little passing traffic on the internet. There are ways to buy traffic – some are excellent but many are very dubious in their effectiveness. However, as a beginner in the big wide world of the internet you don't want to even start to think about buying traffic. For many types of web sites it's a totally inappropriate means of getting traffic anyway, and it's not something a beginner should be considering. Buying traffic is a considerable skill in itself.
Instead of paying for traffic, you would be much better thinking about free traffic sources. There are a number of ways to get free traffic, but only two main ones. The first can loosely be called “social traffic”. Social traffic comes about when your site (or particularly blog) is part of the social media scene and takes part in the whole Web 2.0 type of thing that majors on such social sites as StumbleUpon, Digg, del.icio.us and so on, and uses techniques such as blogging and pinging, and blog commenting and a host of other ways to get social traffic. More on Web 2.0 later.
The second main way of getting free traffic is from the search engines. This way of getting traffic is the one that this site will talk about most. There are 3 main search engines and hundreds of lesser ones. The big 3 are Google, Yahoo and MSN (Microsoft). Of those the most popular, and therefore the one that is capable of sending your site the most traffic, by a long way, is Google.
Just in case you're new to search engines, this is the simplest introduction to how they work from the perspective of someone doing a search (and they're all similar in this regard). You type in a phrase that you're interested in finding a good website for – one that will be able to answer your particular query – and the search engine will return a list of web pages for you to consider, ranked in order that the search engine considers the most relevant down to the least . Top of the list will be what it considers the best site about your query phrase, followed by those which it thinks are gradually less and less relevant.
So your task, as someone that has built a good web site, is firstly to make sure that your site's pages are known by the search engines, and secondly that they will find their way near the top of the search results when someone does a query for topics relevant to your pages, so maximising that that they will visit your site. How do you achieve that? Well that is the biggest question of them all. This is where your work begins. You may have spent months getting to grips with all the things I've talked about on this page so far – but that has been the easy stuff. This is where the real work begins.
The key to this stage of the work is to understand how the search engines work. Easy? No, not in the least. With search engines the devil is truly in the detail, and they are not about to reveal the details. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors as far as search engines are concerned – and that's smoke and mirrors provided by those that to seek to understand the search engines rather than from the search engines themselves. The search engines, on the whole, are very tight lipped about how they work, but the amount of speculation about them by others that seek to understand them is tremendous.
You need to understand how search engines work
The secret to understanding search engines is not to worry about all that devilish detail. A few general principles will be more than enough to get you a long way in getting pages of your good website to the top of the search results. It is these general principles that you will need to bear in mind right from the start in building a good web site. They will be important in the choice of your domain name and in the building of your pages, too. I'm not even going to introduce those topics here, on this page – they're too important to just gloss over. They really are at the heart of your success if you want a good website.
You need to be able to determine your popularity
Having built a good website that gets great traffic, because you've done all the hard work, you will want to be able to assess your traffic – where it comes from, what search terms they are using to find you, which pages on your site they visit and how long they hang around. All of this will help you see what you have done well and what maybe needs changing around, so that you get even more visitors. A good website is a site that doesn't sit around getting stale. A good website is in a constant state of test and tweak, build and change, so that you see constant growth rather than a slow death.