Web Design Information |
How To Design Your Web Site With CSS
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) allows you to create fastloading pages, increase your search engine rankings, andmodify your whole site with one style sheet. So why don'tmore people use them? This is because they got so used tohtml design and are afraid or too lazy to upgrade theirskills. Some will also use ready made templates that contain flashy graphics, bloated code and sometimes even contains hidden code embedded in the page. In this series of articles I will show you how to create asimple web site using CSS, so you will have no excuse tobegin incorporating them into your future designs. What are Cascading Style Sheets? Cascading Style Sheets is the name of a simple languagethat allows you to add any style (font, colors, graphics,links, layouts) to your web pages. Benefits of Cascading Style Sheets 1. Separate content from presentation - you can separateyour HTML markup, text, graphics and multimedia frompresentation. 2. Consistent site wide look and feel consistency - you canapply one style for 100s of web pages all at once. So ifyou had to change the color of all pages on your site, youonly have to edit one style sheet. This saves you a hugeamount of time, especially if you had to edit each pageseparately. 3. Web site maintenance - apart from being able to makesite wide changes easily through one CSS file, the cleancode it generates makes it easier to update. Properlymarked up web pages permit them to be maintained by morethan one person. It will also work in more browsers. Website redesigns will take much less time. 4. Improve search engine rankings - search enginesgenerally spider the code at the top of your web page first. For most sites that means the navigation bar will be spideredfirst (resides at top of page code). CSS enables you toposition the code for your content at the top making yourpage search engine friendly. Properly marked up HTML pagescan easily found and properly categorized by search engines 5. Fast loading - CSS reduces the amount of tags usedtherefore producing clean code. Tableless design can reduceyour load time by 25% to 50%. 6. Reduce bandwidth - compacting the amount of code usedwill reduce the amount of bandwidth needed to host your webpages. Therefore you won't have to pay higher fees whenadding more web documents to your site. 7. Accessibility - increasing accessibility with CSS meansbeing able to serve web content to a larger audience,increasing web site usability, even for non-disabledpeople. Content can easily be formatted for projection aswell as screen display. Tableless layouts display well onhand-helds. 8. Improve the printing of web pages - most printers willonly allow you to print a portion of the web page. With CSSyour whole document can be printed. When you use CSS it becomes quick and easy to apply newstyles that can not only effect all styles on your web pagebut even your whole site. In the next article I will explain how to layout a web pageusing CSS. Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com AffordableWeb Site Design and Web Hosting. Subscribe to his "Marketing Tips" newsletter for more original articles.mailto:subscribe@isitebuild.com. You can read more of his in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles
MORE RESOURCES: Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting |
RELATED ARTICLES
Why Dot-Coms Fail - a Webmasters Perspective Everyday we hear that another company goes out of business.When and why does a dot-com become a dot-bomb?After checking few dozen defunct companies, I think the main reasons for dot-coms failure are:Poor business plan. Design Matters in our Visual Culture FIRST IMPRESSIONS. First impressions often leave lasting impressions. Small Business Website Design - How to Get Professional Results on a Shoestring Budget Just because you are a small business with an even smaller website design budget, does not mean that you cannot have a professional looking website and presence on the web. All it means is you will have to do some of the work yourself instead of paying some design firm to do it for you. Sales Versus Customer Oriented Websites Should Generating Revenue From A Website Be The Prime Motivator? A pure sales site has only one purpose.. Web Site Design Mistakes - Database Parameters In URLs Creating a web site takes thought, planning and execution. Unfortunately, many designs are dead in the water before they are even published as far as search engine optimization is concerned. 5 Instant Tips for More Online Sales Even after you've managed to bring traffic to your site you may be losing sales because of problems with your site's usability. What's "usability"?Usability is how easily people are actually able to use your site. Drupal Modules There are plenty of Drupal Modules that you can install for your site as add-ons. What we liked best about Drupal modules is that it already comes pre-shipped with several modules. Give Your Website A Chance I often wonder how serious people are when itcomes to their websites. I thought that mosteveryone knew that the phrase "Build it and they will come" no longer applies on the internetbut I'm not sure how many people really believe it. Very Cheap Website Design Services Are you looking for somebody to build you a website, however do not have a very large budget? This is the position many people find themselves in and are on the lookout for very cheap web design services.There are companies out there or people who are just starting out in a career building websites who to start with will often offer their services at a very reasonable rate, basically to build up a portfolio. Do-It-Yourself or Hire a Professional Designer Remember your vision for your company and the brand or statement you want to make when any of your current or potential customers come in contact with you. You have to impress them in all the ways you connect with them. Web Site Design Mistakes Some wise human once said "Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't nearly enough time to make them all yourself. Do You Make These Common (But Deadly) Website Design Mistakes? Building a website can be overwhelming, here are some design tips to help keep you on the right path (or is that web?)--- Designing a Frames-based web siteFrames may make the job of maintaining a big web site easy, but search engines hate them. Most search engines cannot find their way through them and end up indexing only the home page. Sell Yourself First...Your Key To More Sales Selling on the internet is a challenge. There is noway to come "face to face" with your potential buyer. Why You Want to Include an FAQ In Your Site Congratulations! You've got a brand new site and it's doing pretty well. You check your statistics every day and the hits and page views keep climbing, your links are all in order and everything looks very good. 5 Ways To Improve Your Website Immediately If you are reading this, I assume you either have your own website or planning to get one. Either way, these 5 tips can help you create a better business website immediately. What Happened to My Website when I Deleted the Home Page by Mistake? There is a widespread confusion among lots of new website designer concerning the home page.If you get any book, any course, or ask most web page designer how to build a website, they will advise you to build your home page first. KIS - Keep It Simple There are many ways to add fancy bells and whistles to your website, but most of them are not going to do you any good. In fact they will slow down the time it takes to load your website and take up valuable space that you are paying for. Effective Website Design For Massive Traffic STEP 1:Do your homeworkPlan and think about your content. Think big, have a vision of at least a 100 page site. Web Page Building for Beginners 2 A search engine robot actually reads the wording on your web pages and places a certain amount of importance on what the content says, but not quite like a human does. A human will place the words together in their head and try to decipher the relevancy to them personally and decide within a few seconds whether they will continue reading or click to another site, whereas a robot counts words and places all relevancy in the numbers it finds. Do You Hate Your Website? Web Site Sales To Hit $316 Billion Over The Next 6 Years What dollar amount does your web site contribute to this $316 billion dollar trend?Have you spent thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands on your web site only to discover that it attracts more flies than customers?Do you hate your web site, your web developer or your entire IT department?Do not despair! You are not alone!A great web site is crucial in order to effectively communicate to a business's target audience. It is important for Chief Executives and small business owners to pay close attention to the effect that their web site has on their business. |
home | site map | contact us |