Website Creation Issues
About this document
Table of contents
Purpose
The purpose of this document is to improve the website creation process and the result, whether doing it for yourself or someone else, or hiring someone else to do it. This document is written to be understandable by people not experienced in web development.
This document supplies issues and objectives to consider, including possibilities that might not have been considered otherwise. They are organized in a useful outline. They are explained, including reasons and tradeoffs, to assist determining preferences and setting priorities. Many decisions depend on what target audience is desired.
All of this helps facilitate communication among people creating a website. Expectations about what is included can be clarified, among owner, customer, developer, and service providers. Then a determination can be made whether omitted features are desired, whether they are available, and whether they cost extra. Possibly some things included should be omitted.
This document does not describe the steps to create or maintain a website. Nor is it organized as frequently asked questions and their answers.
Copyright © 2003 by David Cohen.
Content Considerations
Some beneficial content also have negative consequences, such as increasing cost in time and money,
or distracting website visitors from other information, or decreasing accessibility.
To help decide appropriate tradeoffs, rank features by how important they are.
Information quality.
How important is having information that is clear, concise, or grammatical?
How much time should be spent to ensure facts are complete, correct, or current?
How organized, symmetrical, or ordered do you want your website?
Having the information public quickly sometimes is more important than initial quality which long-term becomes very important.
Graphics.
Much more than text, graphics can significantly lengthen time to load pages when the Internet connection is slow.
Care should be taken to ensure message is conveyed when graphics are not rendered.
Sometimes, graphics are used to precisely control the appearance of text.
Graphics can increase the amount of time and ink used to print pages.
And, the additional data transferred from your website's server can increase your costs, and decrease response time.
Graphics, to reduce its negative impact, can be compressed, which sometimes reduces its quality.
Page dimensions.
Conserve paper used when your pages are printed, and minimize scrolling required when your pages are viewed.
Both can improve and degrade readability, depending on how it is done.
For example, extra spacing can obscure the big picture.
Artistry.
How important are having pages that are visually artistic, creative, unique, attractive, or memorable?
Do you want text that is verbally poetic, descriptive, or flowing?
Sometimes being poetic, cute, or stylish can hinder clarity and slow communication by not being straightforward.
See also the paragraph about using graphics, often used to increase visual appeal.
Sometimes the time to spent making pages artistic is better spent creating other content.
Privacy.
Decide what information, including personal information, should be public, and what should remain private.
For example, any email address on a web page will probably receive unsolicited commercial email (spam).
There are ways to reduce how much spam you receive, but will hinder contact.
Objectiveness.
Do you want to convince people at the expense of being unbiased?
Details.
Having complete information can be useful, but it can obscure the big picture if not also summarized.
For example, within your website, divide information by whether it changes often,
so people already familiar with older information can clearly see new or changing information.
Also, reduce clutter by not duplicating information that is already elsewhere on the Internet.
Instead, include links to it, unless you are presenting it with advantages over the information elsewhere.
Provide overviews to let visitors decide whether to read more.
Advertisements.
All the above issues should be considered for advertisements on your website.
Determined whether the money they earn are worth the costs.
For example, advertisements can increase the size of your web pages, and distract visitors from your information.
And, they are often presented as graphics, with those associated disadvantages.
Plus, some collect information about your visitors.
Consider what you are advertising; advertisements are often manipulative, misleading, or useless.
Using them as a source of information can be detrimental.
Do you want to support what is being advertised, or the advertiser?
Advertisements are usually inefficient on the world scope.
The information usually can be conveyed in a more productive manner.
We need a more efficient method to learn about products, and to compensate websites for the information they provide.
Linking.
Being a feature introduced with computers, links introduce new considerations.
- Provide and list link anchors to allow others to include links to go to useful places within your pages.
- Instead of a contact, consider a link to more information also containing contact information.
- Help visitors distinguish among links to within the same page, to other pages within your website, and to pages elsewhere.
- Ask other websites to mention your organization with a link to it.
- Because pages disappear, move, and appear, consider linking to other websites' directories.
- Suggest possibly intended links for visitors arriving at your website accidentally.
- Search your site often for links to pages that are no longer available.
- Consider long-term persistence of web page addresses to assist others finding and sharing them.
- Give credit to the sources of information, and link to them.
- Specify the relationships between the current page and the link, using HTML and text.
- Specify the programs needed to render any links not returning HTML, using HTML and text.
- Make links out of descriptive text that describes the links. If graphic, include alternative text.
How much space do you want between sentences? To help see where one sentence end, and another beings, some people prefer to end their sentences with more space than the amount following punctuation that does not end a sentence, or more space than separates any two words within a sentence. Some people feel separating sentences with double the normal word spacing is too much, or can't be done simply or without other drawbacks.
Grammar standards. Do you want the grammar, especially punctuation, to conform to traditional rules, or do you want to be logical at the expense of conformity?
Development and Maintenance
How much do you want to...
- Learn about the website creation process, technology, and art? What do you want to learn?
- Be told about justifications for decisions? Do you want choices defended or explained?
- Know in advance the costs and limitations? How exact?
- Have control over the decisions affecting the website? Which decisions?
- Work to create the website? What do you want to contribute?
- Spend your time and money? How much of each?
- Take over tasks eventually? Which tasks?
Who and When
- Mostly done when first creating a website
- Obtains to Internet space and domain name for the website
- Determines the purpose of the website
- Designs the visual style, both artistic and functional, for the website
- Decides what, in general, will be on the website
- Organizes information among pages
- Supplies guidelines about what's acceptable to the organization and the web host
- Decides what work, new and changes, is included at what price
- Configures the server software
- For each page
- Obtains (finds, chooses, and/or creates) the content
- Puts content into pages that are readable by web browsers
- Organizes information within pages
- Refines the markup and style code in pages
- Posts the pages on the website
- Checks for problems
- Ongoing
- Supplies routine content
- Determines what additional content is needed
- Determines when changes and additions are needed
- Makes changes
- Receives and responds to email sent to the website
- Sets or changes email addresses, where email sent to them goes
- Monitors site usage statistics for possible upgrade needs
Process trade-offs: For initial pages and changes, how much/many...
- changes each time? Frequent small incremental changes, or fewer big multi-faceted changes?
- quality before posting? Some web presence soon but not perfect, or nothing until done with more quality?
- warnings when your requests have negative consequences, even if charged for time to inform?
- control over website? Or, use standard development tools?
- money/time/effort spent to save money/time/effort?
Sources of content
- From what?
- Created from ideas
- Converted from print or photographs (scanned into computer)
- Obtained from sources already in digital form
- Calculated when or while the page is displayed (generated dynamically)
- From where?
- Already available
- From other sources already known
- Through research
Content Types
Types of content presented
- Text, the words of human languages
- Graphics, possibly animated, including pictures, logos, icons, and background
- Audio, such as music and other sound
- Forms, allowing web site visitors to enter or select information
Page content relationships (HTML)
- Page structure (heading, paragraph, list item)
- Meanings (abbreviations, acronyms, alternatives)
- References elsewhere and their relationship (quotation citation, page link, email address)
- Identify content as a definition or citation, or its relation to a computer program
- Markup, such as showing emphasis
- Navigation within a page
Document information
- Description (title, date, author, language, format, character set)
- Search engine instructions (keywords, inclusion)
- Relationships to other things (documents, people, software)
- Organization, dividing information among the different pages
- Privacy policy
Style
- Layout, placement of content relative to each other on a page
- Spacing, such as margins, indentation, and between lines
- Color of text and background
- Text font (serif, italic, boldness, etc.)
- Size of text and graphics
Purposes of a website presence
- Be found when people are searching for you or what you provide.
- Provide information without needing your involvement.
- Answer questions and supply requested information.
- Educate people beyond what they know to ask.
- Convince people to buy your products or use your services.
- Help people refer you to other people.
Page subjects (some of many)
- Front page, which people will see first when nothing but the web domain is specified
- Welcome visitors to your website.
- Summarize what is on the web site.
- Offer links to more information on the website.
- Planned activities (link each of the following with each other)
- Calendar, listing scheduled events
- List of recurring activities, events, activities, and programs
- Descriptions of events, activities, and programs
- About you
- Information about your organization
- News about your organization, such as press releases
- How to contact you
- How to contact your organization, or people within it, by mail, phone, and/or email.
- Contact form, useable by people without access to email
- Directions to your location, by car or public transportation, including a map
- About your website
- Site index and/or table-of-contents, listing your other pages, and links to them
- Changes to the website
- Copyright policy for website content
- Privacy policy, stating the information collected from visitors, and how it's used
- Allow people to search your website to find pages that contain words they specify
- What you offer
- Descriptions of your products and services available
- Membership form, and how and why to become a member of your organization
- Shopping, with things for people to buy
- Other information
- Message boards and chat rooms
- Past, archived information
- External links of web pages outside your website that may be of interest to visitors
Server technical features
Where
- What is the website's domain name(s), the address for the main page?
Is it accessible with and without the "www"?
- Who will supply the website's host computer, its server software, and its connection to the Internet?
- What computer will be used to develop the pages before they are posted?
Features of host server
- How available is the website. Will pages display quickly on the first attempt whenever that is?
- How and when are your support questions answered?
- What control do you have over the contents of the website and format of pages?
- What security measures does the server take to protect your website from unauthorized access and changes?
- Can you control page and site access, such as with passwords?
- Can you view summaries of website usage?
- How big can your website be?
- How much can your website be accessed?
Software
- Process forms that allow website visitors to type messages to you.
- Process, to your specifications, data entered on web page forms, such as to update a database, or register for membership
- Create pages from data, such as an analysis of others web pages or contents of a database.
- Install and use software you provide? Which computer languages are supported?
Email services
- Receive email messages using POP or the web.
- Send email via SMTP or the web.
- Forward received email to one or more addresses.
- Automatically respond to email with a prearranged message and/or attachment.
- Manage email using automated list server software.
- Block spam from reaching your email inbox.
- Enter and edit pages.
- Check pages for coding errors and compatibility.
- Transfer pages to the website.
- View pages in various browsers to see how they appear to other people.
Maintainability and Accessibility
A page usually includes, besides content, also instructions to specify how and where the content is rendered.
Those instructions, the code behind the content, affect how accessible the page is to how many people,
and how easy the page and website are to maintain.
Accessibility. The more useable your pages to more visitors, the more limited the number of technology and style options available to render them, and therefor, the less you can force your pages to appear as you intend.
If you want your content accessible to all, there are guidelines to which pages need to conform, to allow them to be rendered in spite of the varying capabilities of visitors.
A page's style quality for most visitors might need to be sacrificed in order to have the page accessible to other visitors.
Or, you can provide multiple formats of the same information, and let visitors or their browsers choose which to render.
Visitor capabilities.
Care needs to be taken if you want to convey your desired message in spite of the varying capabilities of visitors.
Designing pages for the web is in many ways more difficult than for paper because capabilities vary so much by web visitor, while there are only a few paper size standards. How a web page is rendered depends on many more factors, including the following.
- Browser software
- brand (Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Opera, etc.)
- version, among existing and future ones
- settings, whether default or user overridden
- Device hardware
- whether a computer, phone, television, speaker, or printer
- visual media size, resolution, and color capabilities
- connection speed, making some features not practical
- input and navigation methods available
- Features installed and enabled
- plugins (software)
- scripting languages, such as JavaScript
- graphics and animation
- text fonts
- sound
- Visitor (person viewing page)
- visual and auditory ability
- ability to use keyboard and mouse
- language and information comprehension
- personal preferences for presentation of pages
Alternatives for content that might not be rendered.
When using capabilities that are not always available, such as scripts or graphics that need proprietary software, many web pages provide alternate forms of important information.
Visitor preferences.
Do you want to allow visitors to adjust formatting to their preferences and needs?
Do you want to override visitor-controlled formatting settings that are used when formatting is not specified in the page?
Some style, such as colors and fonts, when not specified by your pages,
will be determined by the visitors' browser settings that might be set but rarely are.
Do you want to allow visitors to override the formatting you specify?
Or, do you want to specify exactly how your pages will appear, ignoring style preferences specified by the visitor?
Maintainability.
Certain coding practices can help make a web page and site more maintainable, easier to change and keep consistent, by current and future developers. For example, centralizing style specifications allows common settings to be changed one place to adjust all relevant locations and pages. It also facilitates consistent formatting, because repetition makes inconsistency more difficult to find. But, it can be done only with methods that are not as widely supported, so some visitors will not see all your formatting, so your pages will often not appear exactly as you want. Another good practice is well formatted code and an organized file system, although they don't affect how your pages appear.
Language standards.
Adhering to published standards allows code validation.
The version used should be specified in each page's coding.
Each later HTML specification, and strict variations of earlier ones, encourage better coding practices and help future compatibility.
The latest version of HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
is XHTML 1. The previous version is HTML 4.01.
The standard style languages are CSS and XSL.
For JavaScript, see
Standard ECMA-262: ECMAScript Language Specification.
To verify that pages comply to the specified standard, they should be check using the appropriate validation software
Style languages. Where and how should a page override visitors' browsers' style defaults?
The coding method used to specify a page's style differs between older and newer HTML specifications.
Specifying style is a part of the older, but not newer, versions of the HTML specifications.
Newer, but not older, versions of the HTML language allow stating a non-HTML style language to render style specifications.
As time goes on, the new browsers usually support more of the style languages, as well continuing to handle the older HTML.
But, even the latest browsers don't fully support the latest style language specifications.
In other words, most newer browsers still render the old commands, but older browsers ignore the new ones.
But, accessibility is improved by using the new standards.
Therefor, you often need to choose between having pages that are usable by alternate devices and visually impaired people,
or having pages appear as you want presented, especially by older browsers.
Organize structure and style to help pages be more accessible and maintainable.
- Use HTML in a way that conveys each page's informational structure.
Only for a more limited audience can visual style be used to make a page's structure apparent to the viewer.
- Separate formatting style from informational structure.
The style languages allow style to be specified separate from the document's HTML
which can then be dedicated to define only the structure of its content.
Separating style from HTML allows the same style to apply to multiple places within a document.
When the style sheet is in its own file, it can be used by multiple documents.
- Group style formatting by purpose.
A group of related style details placed together is called a style sheet.
Style specifications can be organized by where or why it is used.
Other Sources of Information
- Accessibility and Standards
- Code Validation
- Web Page Design
- General website creation advice
- Website creation f.a.q.,
at Kelly's Web Studio
- Creating a website, FAQ, at
Stratecomm Web Site Design Company
- How to Set Up and Maintain a Web Site, book by
Lincoln Stein
- Internet Guide to Construction of Quality Online Resources,
by Ciolek & Goltz
- Directory of pages about creating webpages, by Minot ND Public Schools
- Creating a Web Site, by
John Russell
- Web Page Design, at Juniper Graphics
- Web Site Design and Construction, by Richard Piccard
- W3Schools Online Web Tutorials, by Refsnes Data
- WebsiteTips.com, web design tips
- Test your Website using free HTML validation and spell check, at 1st Site Free
[web] [home] [about] [contact]
This page, last changed 2003-August-6, is copyright © 2003 by David Cohen.