DIY Design

For those readers with limited experience in website creation, here’s a recap:

1. Design the page or buy a design from somebody else. This is relatively simple to do. If you are good with computers and design, you can probably do this yourself in your favorite software or using your favorite online editing program. If not, you can buy design, and sometimes have designs for free, by downloading them from online. This would be the absolute easiest way for a beginner to get online. Just go to your favorite search engine and type “Web template” or “free website template” or something similar. Then you can find companies who sell good designs.

2. Get your content together. This part is crucial. The content of your site is the site’s lifeblood. Without content, why would anyone visit? You should always design to accommodate content, not the other way around, so start writing. Write articles, index pages, introduction pages, product descriptions and whatever else will appear on the site. For some, this is the hardest part. If you want to do this easy, you can always outsource, or hire someone else to do the writing for you. This is good if you’re not a particularly good writer yourself or if you can’t be bothered to work on the project yourself.

3. Make a tree. One of the hardest parts about getting a site together is determining how the “tree structure” or the basic shape and outline of your website will look. If you look at websites in

terms of how individual pages link to each other, you’ll see a sort of diagram of links within a site. Here’s one example of a link tree:

4. Put the whole website together: If you’re building a website using special software like an HTML editor, now is the time to create a whole website, not just a Web page. The reason you create a site before the site “goes live,” or is posted online, is so that you can work out the kinks within the pages. No matter how much planning you do, these problems will pop up once the site goes online, so creating and testing the site before going online is crucial.

5. Upload the site to a host. Now is the time when you put the site online for anyone to see. First, you have to have a host, a company that provides the server space and technology that will actually host the site and the people who will eventually visit the site. Most hosts will provide simple and basic tools to upload the site directly online. Otherwise you can use an FTP—file transfer protocol—program to move the files from your computer to the servers on which the public will be able to access your site.

6. Promote the site: Next you’ll want to find ways to promote the site. This portion depends entirely on your search engine marketing scheme, so the techniques you use are up to you. You’ll be reading about many of these throughout the book

Clearpath Technology is owned and managed by a team of experienced search engine optimizers, internet marketing experts, web developers and designers. Clearpath Technology provide the best Internet marketing services found anywhere and we build reliable, innovative software to complement your marketing and business initiatives. Clearpath Technology is a SEO firm based out in New Delhi, India.