Web Hosting Geeks' Blog » template http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog Web Hosting Industry News, Latest Trends, and Analyses. Thu, 24 May 2012 11:11:11 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Top 10 Tips for Web Designhttp://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/web-design-tips/ http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/web-design-tips/#comments Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:08:40 +0000 Art http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/?p=3248 With the increasing number of people who use the Internet on a regular basis, more people are creating and developing their own websites. Whether the website is for personal use or for business and marketing, web design is essential. The design of the website is most important because it is what drives traffic to the page. A website that is not fully developed and lacks in the design department will typically experience far less traffic than a website that has a professional looking website. There are several tips that you can use to ensure that you master web design on your website which can lead to higher traffic volume and hits.

1: Concise content

The content of your website is obviously the most essential part of your website. However, it is important to keep your content concise. Most viewers of websites are turned off by tons of words and paragraphs placed all in one page. Your content should be detailed and informative but you should also use short sentences and avoid repetitive information as well as fluff, which is information that isn’t really needed. While your content should be concise, it shouldn’t be too short to the point where the viewer has no idea what message you are trying to send. Your content should display information that covers some of the most crucial points of your website.

2: Set up a navigation system

A navigation system should include links to different pages on your website. An easily accessible navigation system will come in handy for viewers of your website because it helps them figure out where they need to go to find the information they are looking for. Placing a navigation system on a website is quite simple; it is a very basic step when designing a website. The links for your navigation system will probably look somewhat like this:

About

Summary

Frequently Asked Questions

Products

Portfolio

Contact

Of course, your links may vary depending on what type of website you have. If you have a website that is designed to sell products, you would typically want to include links for information on those products, pictures of those products, as well as contact information and how the viewer can buy the product. If your website is designed to display some of your work, you would create a portfolio link which will include pictures or downloads to some of your work.

3: Include images

A website should always have some sort of images. The images should be crisp, clear, and professional. Using actual images instead of clip art images is highly recommended. In many instances, an actual image will give a much more professional look and feel to a website when compared to traditional clip art images which are definitely not as professional. If possible, using your own images would be the best thing to do. If you cannot use your own images for your website, check out stock photos on different online websites.

4: Use a professional template

A template is basically the layout of your website. You can create your own template if you know how, you can hire someone else to create a template for you, or you can buy a pre-made template for your website (Some pretty cool WordPress themes can be found at FabThemes.com or TopWPThemes.com). Regardless of what you choose to do, it is important that you have a professional looking template on your website especially if you want your website to receive positive attention.

5: Run your content through a spell check

Nothing looks worse on a professional website than having misspelled words and dysfunctional grammar. It is in your best interest to run any content you create through a spell checker and even through a grammar checker just to be on the safe side (Also tools like Respelt.com can be used). If you hate writing, you may even want to hire a freelance writer to do the job of writing your content for you. Remember, the content on your website is most important and, if words are misspelled and not used properly, it will reflect poorly on you and your abilities.

6: Give out your contact information

If someone wants to get in touch with you after having a look at your website, they should be able to do so with ease. After you have created a navigation system (as seen in tip #2) you should have a contact link on your website. The contact link should take viewers to a page with your information so that they are able to get in touch with you. You should provide your name along with an e-mail address. If you want, you can also add your phone number but that is ultimately your decision.

7: Have a hit counter

You should have a hit counter so that you can find out how much traffic you are receiving to your website on a daily basis. However, you should not have a hit counter displayed directly on your website. It is a disservice to have a hit counter displayed on your website because most viewers find them pointless and pay little to not attention to them. It is also important, if your website is new and you aren’t receiving much traffic, because you wouldn’t want viewers to think your site is too boring to receive high amounts of traffic.

8: Avoid pop ups

The truth is, most website viewers hate having to deal with pop ups. If you can, avoid placing any of them on your website at all costs. Some viewers find pop ups so annoying, they will leave a site almost instantly after a pop up appears.

9: Keep things organized

A primary rule of keeping a professional website is actually keeping things organized. Once you have all of your content set up on different pages, it is important that you keep up with the website to keep it organized. Do not keep adding stuff in random spots every time you think of more content to add.

10: Introduce yourself

Introduce yourself and what you stand for on your website. This will offer website viewers a sense of comfort because they get to find out more about who you are as a person. However, as with the content section, keep it short and sweet so that you are not gloating about yourself.

If you follow these ten web design tips, you will likely have much more success with your website. Remember, following these tips can change your website for the better and can end up truly benefiting you in the long run. If you want a website that receives high traffic, these little adjustments are easy to do and can make a huge difference. If you need a custom logo design for your website, visit a DesignContest.com.

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]]> http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/web-design-tips/feed/ 0 Meet the Xoops CMShttp://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/meet-the-xoops-cms/ http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/meet-the-xoops-cms/#comments Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:52:21 +0000 Art http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/?p=252 The introduction of more powerful web development tools has increasingly led webmasters away from simple website builders to robust content management systems.  These programs enable the creation of dynamic, feature-rich content with the ability to power everything from thriving social networking communities to corporate portals.  Many people have the belief that using a CMS requires that you to have programming skills and vast technical knowledge.  However, this isn’t necessarily true, especially when working with a user-friendly software package known as Xoops.

What is Xoops?

Short for eXtensible Object Orientated Portal System, Xoops is an open-source content management system that is free to use, modify and redistribute.  Power and ease of use makes it an ideal tool for creating data-driven community sites of all sizes.  Many developers use Xoops to create blogs, corporate intranet sites and content-rich information portals.  The major draw of this software is that it enables fast, simple management for whatever task is required.  The Xoops CMS is largely supported on the web hosting market.  All you need is a provider equipped with the Apache web server, PHP and an SQL database, preferably MySQL.  .

Xoops Features

Xoops is integrated with a number of features to simplify content management and enhance functionality.  Some of the most common features include:

Advance Access Control – As an administrator, Xoops give you the ability to grant access rights to certain groups of users.  You can allow them to access specific content and features such as publishing their own content and uploading files.

Module Administration – Like many open-source content management systems, Xoops can be greatly enhanced through a wide variety of add-on modules.  These add-ons can be installed, uninstalled, enabled and disabled directly from the intuitive module administrative system.

Xoops modules offer the following capabilities:

Personalization – Xoops gives you the ability to set permissions for specific users, providing you with control of all the individual elements they are able to access on your website.

User Management – Through user management, you can search for your users by a multitude of criteria, allow them to send email and private messages to other users via a template-based messaging system.

International language support – Xoops is supported by a large group of developers and users.  The project has numerous support sites all over the web for users who speak various languages.  The software itself offers support for multiple languages.  Some include Chinese, Korean and Japanese to name a few.

Customizable interface – Xoops uses a theme-based template systems that allows you to instantly enhance the presentation of your site.  What is so unique about this CMS is that it lets both you and your users change the look of web pages by choosing from a wide range of available themes.

Optimization – Xoops supports many add-ons to help make your site more search engine-friendly.  These modules better the chances of your meta tags, title tags and URLs being recognized and indexed by the search engine spiders.

Xoops has won several awards for its power, straightforwardness and support for multiple languages.  This CMS is easy to find and incorporate as it can typically be installed directly from your control panel software.

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