Once you know exactly what you intend to publish and
who the targeted audience will be, the next step is to
determine the mood of your website. Should the ambience
be informal, professional or high tech? Will you use
graphics, animation or music? How will the text be
structured and which fonts will be used? How will
visitors navigate through your site? Whatever you
decide, try to maintain the same theme and conventions
throughout your site.
The most important part of your website is the
textual content. What you write should add value and
make the visitor want to return. Review your web page
objectives and your target audience and make your
message suit that audience. Don't forget to check your
spelling and grammar before publishing your pages. There
are a few tricks to keep in mind regarding word
repetition, use of headers and titles but these will be
discussed later. At this point, focus on content!
At this point, construction of your home page is
complete but your page still resides on your computer,
not on the internet. If you log on to the Internet,
however, you should be able to test all your links to
external web sites.
You are now ready to publish your page on the World
Wide Web. To do this, you will need to copy your page
and all graphic and music files which your page uses
from your computer's hard drive to a web server
(computer).
The Internet service provider (ISP) that you use for
Internet access might provide free web hosting to its
customers. Many do. If not, there are a number of
companies that will provide server space at no charge.
You will, however, be required to include a banner or
icon somewhere on the page to promote the free hosting
service or their sponsors.
Many web page developers seem to think
that if you build a page, people will come. Unfortunately, life isn't quite so simple. With several
billion pages on the Internet, the odds of someone
bumping into yours is rather remote, unless it is well
promoted.
Web page promotion entails registering
your URL with one or more search engines and portals.
There are literally hundreds of search
engines in existence today. Although it is free to add
your URL to some search engines, the registration effort
does take time. Most major search engines now
charge fees for registration.
Search engines can be national,
international, of subject specific. A few very large
search engines, however, are used by most internet users
on a regular basis. You should certainly register your
site with each of these.
Don's 80's Blog 