Now you've seen a variety of web sites, found some you really love and some you just can't stand. I bet you are even thinking, "I could do that!"
Even if you're saying "I could NEVER do it!" stick with me and pay attention. Don't deny yourself without so much as a lick on the cone.
There are 1001 ways to design a web site. Narrow your options by settling some questions.
What is your goal? What do you want people to do when they come to your site? Buy, learn, love you, be warned, be encouraged, or inspired? Whatever it is, name it. Take time to put up your feet and mull this over thoroughly. Otherwise you'll waste for yourself heaps of time and probably money.
Next, what will it take to get strangers to do what you most want from them in response to your site? What kind of words and pictures and sounds do they like? What words trigger responses in that kind of visitor? Write these all down. You will be amazed at how seeing these words on paper will inspire you to think up more good ideas.
If you only want to express yourself and play by yourself with your favourite things, you need only to ask yourself what you like. This is not a put down.
I recommend highly that you create your first web site - for practice - just to express your own personality, tastes, and thoughts. You need to get that out of your system, and it is a chance to learn how to do the technical stuff.
That's what my first one turned out to be. I revised and polished it, and some day I will do it again. Right now I'm busy with my other sites.
Instead of the year it took me to teach myself, you could be professional in just a couple of months! It would save you heaps of trial and error learning.
Not meaning to step on your toes, if all you want to do is play games, but I want to publish books and sell them on the internet. There, see? I'm not too shy to say that anymore!
It might be a good idea to stick with one example. I know you have the intelligence to adapt it to your dreams. I've dabbled in poetry publishing a bit, and have recently urged a friend to put hers up on the web. Let's use that to illustrate. Let's call our new-to-the-net novice, Jeanne. (Put in your name).
Jeanne, here's some daydreaming and scribbling homework for you.
1. Make a list of keywords that sum up your poetry, and how you want people to think of it. Visit the search engines, and search those words. Any sites come up? What no competition at all?! Yippee!
2. What colors go with your theme? What mood do they project? Do they make reading hard?
3. What word or logo picture would describe your site to a perfect T?
4. Draft the text portion of your site. We'll fix it yet. Just put down the jist of it for now.
5. Using search engines and directories, and good recommendations from friends, snoop all over the net to see what is already being done in the area of your idea for a site, or, what has been ignored.
6. Look up various free courses and e-books on designing your own web site. Keep refining your ideas from all you learn.
Next time we'll stake out your estate on the web.
Meantime, here's some extra resources.
Oops... I had! Those older resources are no longer on the internet. I recommend you do your own search and find out what is available currently.
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