Posts Tagged ‘Newbie’

You’ve spent hours/days/weeks on your website’s design; now it’s time to build it. The thought of actually building a website can make many a newbie affiliate marketer cringe and is often the biggest stumbling block on their road to success. But it can be done…

First, let’s look at some building basics. HTML (hyper text markup language) is the simple programming language that tells a browser what a webpage should look like online. HTML is made up of elements such as paragraphs, text, or headings. Elements are in turn, made up of tags, attributes, and some times content. Tags are simple descriptive terms that tell browsers what they are dealing with. Attributes are modifications to an element. Content is anything that goes between the tags.

Next, what about page building programs? If you have knowledge of HTML you can create a web page using only a text editor such as Windows Notepad or with text editors such as Coffee Cup or Hotdog. If you are a first time builder a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) program is a great learning tool. There are hundreds of programs out there including Web Studio, Go Live, Front Page, and Dream Weaver to name a few. Creators of both text editors and WYSIWYG programs often give free online trials for their products. I’ve listed possible resources at the end of this article.

Now comes structuring your site’s content. Some of the things you might want to consider are the use of frame sets, as well as text size and font, headings, color, images, and links. Frame sets are used to divide a webpage into to different areas. Each area or frame contains its own webpage. A site without frames (or a regular page) consists of a single webpage. A regular page is less complicated to build and also easier on search engines.

Navigation is very important to your site. It should be usable and consistent on every page. If your site consists of more then one page it would be helpful to visitors to have links to your home page and a search function (for your site only) on each page.

Finally, In order to get visitors to stay (and hopefully click) your site must be unique, but not create sensory overload. You can add sparkle and shine to your site through graphics, audio, and video. The key is to remember not to get carried away and to check and re-check all links to make sure they work. Other possibilities include guest books, blogs, or message boards, free weather, news, or articles.

Building a website for the first time can be challenging, but fun. The possibilities for your site are as endless as your imagination. You can do this—so get out there and build!