When you start designing a Web site, your options are wide open. Yet all that potential can lead to problems that may cause your Web site to fall short of your goals. The following list of design mistakes addresses the needs of commercial Web sites, but it can easily be applied to personal and hobby sites and to professional nonprofit sites as well.

This information, based on the article “10 ways to improve the design of your commercial Web site” by Chad Perrin, is also available as a PDF download.

#1: Failing to provide information that describes your Web site

Every Web site should be very clear and forthcoming about its purpose. Either include a brief descriptive blurb on the home page of your Web site or provide an About Us (or equivalent) page with a prominent and obvious link from the home page that describes your Web site and its value to the people visiting it.

It’s even important to explain why some people may not find it useful, providing enough information so that they won’t be confused about the Web site’s purpose. It’s better to send away someone uninterested in what you have to offer with a clear idea of why he or she isn’t interested than to trick visitors into wasting time finding this out without your help. After all, a good experience with a Web site that is not useful is more likely to get you customers by word of mouth than a Web site that is obscure and difficult to understand.

#2: Skipping alt and title attributes

Always make use of the alt and title attributes for every XHTML tag on your Web site that supports them. This information is of critical importance for accessibility when the Web site is visited using browsers that don’t support images and when more information than the main content might otherwise be needed.

The most common reason for this need is accessibility for the disabled, such as blind visitors who use screen readers to surf the Web. Just make sure you don’t include too much text in the alt or title attribute — the text should be short, clear, and to the point. You don’t want to inundate your visitors with paragraph after paragraph of useless, vague information in numerous pop-up messages. The purpose of alt and title tags is, in general, to enhance accessibility.

#3: Changing URLs for archived pages

All too often, Web sites change URLs of pages when they are outdated and move off the main page into archives. This can make it extremely difficult to build up significantly good search engine placement, as links to pages of your Web site become broken. When you first create your site, do so in a manner that allows you to move content into archives without having to change the URL. Popularity on the Web is built on word of mouth, and you won’t be getting any of that publicity if your page URLs change every few days.

#4: Not dating your content

In general, you must update content if you want return visitors. People come back only if there’s something new to see. This content needs to be dated, so that your Web site’s visitors know what is new and in what order it appeared. Even in the rare case that Web site content does not change regularly, it will almost certainly change from time to time — if only because a page needs to be edited now and then to reflect new information.

Help your readers determine what information might be out of date by date stamping all the content on your Web site somehow, even if you only add “last modified on” fine print at the bottom of every content page. This not only helps your Web site’s visitors, but it also helps you: The more readers understand that any inconsistencies between what you’ve said and what they read elsewhere is a result of changing information, the more likely they are to grant your words value and come back to read more.

#5: Creating busy, crowded pages

Including too much information in one location can drive visitors away. The common-sense tendency is to be as informative as possible, but you should avoid providing too much of a good thing. When excessive information is provided, readers get tired of reading it after a while and start skimming. When that gets old, they stop reading altogether.

Keep your initial points short and relevant, in bite-size chunks, with links to more in-depth information when necessary. Bulleted lists are an excellent means of breaking up information into sections that are easily digested and will not drive away visitors to your Web site. The same principles apply to lists of links — too many links in one place becomes little more than line noise and static. Keep your lists of links short and well-organized so that readers can find exactly what they need with little effort. Visitors will find more value in your Web site when you help them find what they want and make it as easily digestible as possible.

#6: Going overboard with images

With the exception of banners and other necessary branding, decorative images should be used as little as possible. Use images to illustrate content when it is helpful to the reader, and use images when they themselves are the content you want to provide. Do not strew images over the Web site just to pretty it up or you’ll find yourself driving away visitors. Populate your Web site with useful images, not decorative ones, and even those should not be too numerous. Images load slowly, get in the way of the text your readers seek, and are not visible in some browsers or with screen readers. Text, on the other hand, is universal.

#7: Implementing link indirection, interception, or redirection

Never prevent other Web sites from linking directly to your content. There are far too many major content providers who violate this rule, such as news Web sites that redirect links to specific articles so that visitors always end up at the home page. This sort of heavy-handed treatment of incoming visitors, forcing them to the home page of the Web site as if they can force visitors to be interested in the rest of the content on the site, just drives people away in frustration. When they have difficulty finding an article, your visitors may give up and go elsewhere for information. Perhaps worse, incoming links improve your search engine placement dramatically — and by making incoming links fail to work properly, you discourage others from linking to your site. Never discourage other Web sites from linking to yours.

#8: Making new content difficult to recognize or find

cialis 5mg tablets align=”justify”>In #4, we mentioned keeping content fresh and dating it accordingly. Here’s another consideration: Any Web site whose content changes regularly should make the changes easily available to visitors. New content today should not end up in the same archive as material from three years ago tomorrow, especially with no way to tell the difference.

New content should stay fresh and new long enough for your readers to get some value from it. This can be aided by categorizing it, if you have a Web site whose content is updated very quickly (like Slashdot). By breaking up new items into categories, you can ensure that readers will still find relatively new material easily within specific areas of interest. Effective search functionality and good Web site organization can also help readers find information they’ve seen before and want to find again. Help them do that as much as possible.

#9: Displaying thumbnails that are too small to be helpful

When providing image galleries with large numbers of images, linking to them from lists of thumbnails is a common tactic. Thumbnail images are intended to give the viewer an idea of what the main image looks like, so it’s important to avoid making them too small.

It’s also important to produce scaled-down and/or cropped versions of your main images, rather than to use XHTML and CSS to resize the images. When images are resized using markup, the larger image size is still being sent to the client system — to the visitor’s browser. When loading a page full of thumbnails that are actually full-size images resized by markup and stylesheets, a browser uses a lot of processor and memory resources. This can lead to browser crashes and other problems or, at the very least, cause extremely slow load times. Slow load times cause Web site visitors to go elsewhere. Browser crashes are even more effective at driving visitors away.

#10: Forgoing Web page titles

Many Web designers don’t set the title of their Web pages. This is obviously a mistake, if only because search engines identify your Web site by page titles in the results they display, and saving a Web page in your browser’s bookmarks uses the page title for the bookmark name by default.

A less obvious mistake is the tendency of Web designers to use the same title for every page of the site. It would be far more advantageous to provide a title for every page that identifies not only the Web site, but the specific page. Of course, the title should still be short and succinct. A Web page title that is too long is almost as bad as no Web page title at all.

Achieving success

These considerations for Web design are important, but they’re often overlooked or mishandled. A couple of minor failures can be overcome by successes in other areas, but it never pays to shoot yourself in the foot just because you have another foot to use. Enhance your Web site’s chances of success by keeping these design principles in mind.

Have you ever had trouble opening a new link from your e-mail or even on a Web site? When you click on the link, just basically, nothing happens? Well, I'm here today to help you with that!

I've gotten several e-mails recently about this very problem, so I'm glad you asked. This seems to be a somewhat common problem, so I did a little research on it, in hopes of finding a quick fix for you all! Fortunately, I found a few things that could be causing this to happen.

To refresh, basically the problem is that whenever you're using your e-mail program or an instant messenger type program (or any other application) and a link is included, you click on it, but nothing happens. Your computer may freeze up for just a second, but when it's done, you're left right where you started from. Your browser will not open and you cannot, for the life of you, get a new window to come up from the link. How annoying is that?!

Like I said before, there are a few things you can try to resolve this problem. cialis buy on line Before we go any deeper, the first thing to check is your popup blocker. If you have a pop up stopper installed on your computer, it could be interfering with the links you are trying to open. If this happens to be the case, you can always hit the Ctrl button and click on the link again. Ctrl + a click allows the link to open. If that was your problem, you are very lucky.

Another simple cause could be that you don't have the correct browser set as the default for your computer. If you use Internet Explorer, you have to make sure it is set as your default browser. To check this, open IE and go to Tools, Internet Options. Click on the Programs tab and make sure the box clear down at the bottom that says "Internet Explorer should check to see whether it is the default browser" is checked. This will allow IE to open any links you click on. If you use Firefox, go to Tools, Options and choose the General tab. Make sure the box that says "Firefox should check to see if it is the default browser when starting" is checked.

If those two things still don't fix the link problem, there are a couple more options you can try. We need to check and make sure your folder options are set to your specific browser. Go to Start, Control Panel and make sure it is in the classic view. Once there, click on the Folder Options icon and choose the File Types tab. Now, you're going to look for the item "(NONE) URL: HyperText Transfer Protocol." Highlight that and click on the Advanced button, then the Edit button. This will bring up some information on your browser. You're mainly going to be looking at the Application line. If you use Internet Explorer, make sure it says IExplore and so on (for whichever browser you use). If you've recently switched browsers, you may still have your old settings in there and that could be causing the problem with the links. You just have to make sure you have the right browser selected so the links will open in the correct way.

Okay, there's one more tip for you in case nothing has worked thus far. Go to Start, Run and type in "regsvr32 urlmon.dll" (without the quotes). Click OK when done and if a message pops up that says "DllRegisterServer in urlmom.dll succeeded," the problem should be fixed. If that still doesn't work, try typing in the following commands in the Run box:

– Shdocvw.dll
– Msjava.dll
– Actxprxy.dll
– Oleaut32.dll
– Mshtml.dll
– Browseui.dll
– Shell32.dll

One of these options should solve the link problem you are experiencing and you can enjoy link freedom once again!

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I often run across a friend who is reading something interesting or have one who asks me what I’ve read lately. Now, with Good Reads, we don’t have to ask. We can just load up this Web site and see what everyone’s been reading!

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This site has a lot going on! You can rate books, keep track of your books, recommend books to friends, add books to your Web site, import/export books to a spreadsheet, create groups and even browse by different lists!

I have so many books, I don’t even want to try to catalogue them at this point in time. But at some point, it might come in handy to weed out the duplicate copies of books and send them off to other readers.

My Books – This is your book shelf, where the books you rate and have read will be listed.

Friends – This is where you will find your friends listed. This tab makes it incredibly easy to keep track of them and what they are reading.

Explore – This is where you will find the most recent reviews of all the books on the site. If you’ve read the book, you can rate it by clicking the number of stars you would give it. Just below that, you’ll find the button to add it to your own books. You can also add a comment by clicking the Add a Comment link beneath the book's entry.

To change from the most recent view, you can use the Categories link at the top of the page. You can explore books through many lists and those are: popular shelves, popular, unpopular, friends popular, friends unpopular, friends reading, top authors, book discussions, stories and writing and quotes.

Meet People – Here you will see a listing of the people who are: online now, top readers, top reviewers, near me and top profiles. This is the heartbeat of the community, where you can poke around and see what other people have been reading recently.

Authors – Here you can see a listing of all the published authors who have signed up at Good Reads. It’s wonderful to know that authors read voraciously too and want to know what others have been reading as well.

Groups – Here you can find different reading groups you can join and participate in. This is a great way to have a book of the month club experience from the comfort of your own home and at your own pace!

You can also search this site with the handy search engine at the top of the page. You can search by author or by a book's title.

If you are an avid reader, like me, I think you’ll find this site to propecia to buy be a real gem. I’ve got a huge list of books I want to read now that I never knew about before I found this site. Happy reading!

http://www.goodreads.com/