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Do's
and Don'ts
We highly recommend that you put your files for
every major section of your web site in a separate sub
directory under your ‘www’ root directory. In the
beginning the files will be manageable, but as your site
grows you will end up with too many files in your
‘www’ directory and everything will become
unmanageable. It is best to do this in the beginning so
that you will be able to better manage your files in the
future as your web site grows and gets bigger
Also, we recommend that you
put ALL of your image files in the same folder off of
the 'www' folder, like 'www/images'. This way all
web pages that use the same graphics will be able to use
the same file. When you do this, you can change the
graphic by simply uploading a new file to this
directory. For instance, if you change your logo, just
upload it to this folder with the same filename.
If each web page has a different copy of this file in a
different location, it will make it very hard to change
all of your web pages.
If you plan to have a large
web site with the same menu buttons on each web page, it
would be very difficult to make a change to the menu.
The easiest way to do this would be to design your web
site to use the same file for the menu buttons on every
web page. Doing this will allow you to just change one
thing in one file to update the menu across your entire
web site. For instance, our header and menu across the
top of each web page is an SSI include file which can be
changed quickly and easily. If your menu is on the side
of the web pages, you may wish to use frames to do the
same thing.
Do's and Don'ts for compatibility are an
important issue too. You may create a wonderful looking web
site, but if the visitor to your site doesn't see the
same thing that you created, it may just look horrible.
Different browsers and workstations will have various
software and fonts installed which may not be compatible
with what you just created. Here's some of the most
common mistakes and how to avoid them:
Font
Compatibility
Use standard fonts installed on every computer.
If you use a font that doesn't exist on your visitor's
computer, it will not look the way you intended and may
even look horrible! Play it safe and stick to the fonts
that are always present on every computer like Arial,
Times New Roman and Verdana.
Tables
and Netscape
When you create a table to align your pictures or
text (with invisible borders) Internet Explorer will not
display these borders unless you tell it to display them. However, Netscape will display
borders around every table even if you set the color to
match your background color. If you want the borders to
be invisible, make sure to set the border size to zero.
Using
Browser Plug-ins
Class and Flash may look great, but remember, the
browser plug-ins you are using may not exist on your visitor's
computer and your visitor will probably not bother to download
and install a plug-in just to view your web site.
Straight HTML code will work on any computer including
Macs. This also includes things, which are only
compatible with the latest browser version.
All visitors will not have the latest version
installed.
Screen
Size
Remember who your target is. If your visitors
have very old computer equipment or are 'senior
citizens' with bad
vision, then your site should be designed to fit in a
640x480 graphics window without having to scroll left
and right all the time. Another option would be to make
sure that the font size on your web site is big enough
for people with bad eye sight to read. Our web site is designed to fit an
800 by 600 window, which is basically the current
industry web design standard for minimum hardware
requirements. We believe that anyone
looking for serious web hosting will at least have
computer equipment that isn’t extremely old.
Style
Sheets
Also, our web site was designed to use Style
Sheets, which requires at least version 4.x of Internet
Explorer or version 6.x of Netscape. We don’t care
about it not being compatible with Web TV because Web TV
owners can’t even download or upload files to build a
serious web site and people with extremely old web
browsers will not be serious about building a business
web site.
However, the target audience
you want to reach may be in one of these categories, so
you will want to avoid style sheets if that’s the
case.
56K
Rule of Thumb
The "56K Rule of Thumb": If your web
page takes more than 15 seconds to load over a 56K modem
connection, then most impatient visitors may click away
to another site before the page is loaded on their
computer. Don't forget that 50% of all web surfers
are still using dialup connections.
Our site takes 15
seconds for the first page and 5 seconds for all
following pages, all of the graphics are repeated on
each page and will be in the visitor’s cache after the
first page loads. For more info, please refer to the
article about Putting your
Graphics on a Diet in this same area.
JavaScript
If possible, use JavaScript
version 1.1 code and make sure that it works on all web
browsers, especially the two main ones (Internet
Explorer and Netscape). If you use an SSI (server side
include) or PHP file, everything will be processed on
the server and will definitely be compatible with every
browser.
XML and DHTML
There are a few bugs in
these formats with certain web browsers. For
Instance, our 'pull-down' menu button graphic files at the top of
each page are forced to preload before the rest of the
web page because some browsers may not display the
graphics for the menu buttons if you scroll down the web
page before it finishes loading, or if a web page links
to a bookmark at the bottom of the web page.
If you use either of these
things on your web site, you should make sure to test it
out with every type and version of web browser that you
want to be compatible with on your site. If you
find a problem, you will need to use a 'work around' fix
like we had to use for our pull-down menu system.
Graphics
Cool graphics look great and
enhance every web site, but don't go overboard. You
don't want your site to look like a cheap bill board.
Pages that are too busy with flashing graphics will
distract your visitors from the primary goal - the
sale! Use graphics to emphasize your point, not to
distract from it.
For instance, we use
graphics to embed the 6star.net
URL into our visitor's memory, but at the same time it
doesn't distract them from the focal point of the web
site. A healthy balance is always a wise choice.
Test
Your Web Site
You should ALWAYS test your
web site thoroughly. Click on every link and fill out
every order form in order to make sure everything works
as planned.
Test your web site using as
many different web browsers as possible. What works with
Internet Explorer may not work with Netscape, especially
JavaScript code which varies greatly depending on the
browser being used.
Frames
Frames have the ability to
'lock' pieces of the screen in place. If you visit a web
site where the header stays at the top of the screen
when you scroll down the page and/or the menu buttons
stay locked in place at the side of the screen, then
that site was done in frames. To learn details about how
to use frames, please read the Frames
Tutorial.
However, frames have a
problem with search engines. The search engine will
index the text part of your site and ignore the menu
button graphics and other things in the surrounding
frames. What happens is that the search engine
will link to the body part of your web page so that when
people visit your web site, they will just see the body
and no menu buttons.
There is a work-around for
this, just copy and paste the following JavaScript code
into the header part of your body web pages and it will
force the surrounding frames to load around it so that
the page will be displayed properly. This should go
between the "<header>" and
"</header>" tags at the top of the web
page for the 'body.htm' file.
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<script type="text/javascript"
language="JavaScript">
<!--if (window.top==self)
top.location.href =
'frame_name.htm';//-->
</script>
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Note:
Edit 'frame_name.htm' to be the name of the
startup frame file for that web page. This short script
will check to make sure that the surrounding frames are
loaded and if not, it will force them to load.
If you follow these
guidelines, your web site will be totally compatible
with every web browser and is destined to be a 'good
selling' web site.
Article by Don Itjen
at 6star.net
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