Custom web site design directory: WebmastersLookup

by: Christopher Heng, thesitewizard.com

If you have been using computers and surfing the Internet for some time, as is likely the case since you're visiting a site for webmasters, you would probably have acquired a large number of skills that enable you to find things on the Internet, navigate a site, deal with the annoyances that some sites pose, and the like. The problem with such proficiency is that it is easy to lose touch with how a large portion of Internet users actually operate on the Web, and thus design a site that does not take advantage of the special needs of these "average users".

By: www.webdesignexperts.net.au
A professional looking website uses images to raise the interest of its visitors. Learn how to make your website attractive and keep visitors interested using images.

By: onlinetools.org

Why accessibility? What does it mean?
Making web sites accessible means opening them for a wider audience than people with vision and the ability to use the internet with a mouse and a keyboard. This is a natural process in every media, books became printed in large print and braille, TV became captioned. As of start of this year in the US and in the UK it is necessary by law for certain web sites to be accessible.

Accessibility does not mean the end of web design and web development as we know it. It simply means the end of immature use of a new technology. When the web was new, everything that was different was a great success. Rollovers, status bar scrollers, dragable or moving elements, zooming and animation were used widely and, almost most of the time, unnecessarily. These gimmicks are cool, when you see them for the first time, but they don´t add any extra value to the web site. They are products of the design playground, touching the edge of what is possible. These times are over, we should grow up as designers and developers and think "What does make sense" rather than "What can be done"

Building accessible software or web sites generally means one thing: Making allowances for characteristics a person cannot readily change.

- If I am blind, I cannot become sighted just because your web site looks great and relies on graphical elements for navigation.
- If I am colour blind I might not be able to use the navigation, because it uses two colours that look the same to me for text and background.
- If I have bad eyesight I cannot focus on small buttons and miniscule pixel fonts to navigate around the page.
- If I am physically unable to use a mouse to navigate through a DHTML dropdown navigation, I cannot do so just to justfy the idea that those save time.

All these above problems have to be tackled by an accessible web site. That is the bad news. The good news is, that not much changes for designers.

By: Maneet Puri
Accessibility is a crucial factor in website designing. Investing thoughts and elements on how the website looks is all well but what is more important is how accessible the it is to visitors and prospective customers.

By: Netlink.co.in

It is said that the content is king. A quality website design company knows this well. This is quite true since content is what coveys information and services. If the information that you furnish on the Internet is similar to content on ten other websites then what sense does it make to have ten similar websites conveying the same information. This is an important aspect to keep in mind during web development process.

By Stephanie Nichols, Customer Service Specialist

Established in January of 1985, the .com is one of the five original generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs). It has become the most recognizable Top-Level Domain (TLD) available and investors continue to utilize its popularity for profit. In fact, according to VeriSign’s Domain Report in Sept, new registrations for .com alongside .net domains continue to grow by 20% percent year over year, with the .com remaining on top with more new registrations than any extension. Even with the introduction of new and targeted domain extensions, such as the most recent .mobi and .me domains, the .com still remains the top dog of TLDs.

By: Ross Dunn

Are you baffled about a recent drop in your search engine rankings? Do you know where to start and get a handle on what the problem might be and how to remedy it? One option to consider is using search engine forums as a resource. They are full of questions from people who have experienced similar situations and are great resources for an answer or two. But let’s say you really want to get to the bottom of the problem and you want to do it yourself. The following are some of the beginning steps StepForth takes when evaluating dropped rankings.

By: Scott Van Achte

So, you have finally decided to build yourself a website, but really have no idea where to start. The following 10 steps will give you some insight into what you need to address when creating a search friendly website from the ground up.

While this article is not an exhaustive list of everything you need to know, it does touch base on many of the important aspects of creating a new website.

by: Bo Sandkvist
Website templates are very affordable and they save you a lot of effort and time when you want to create a new layout for your website. However, a lot of people make mistakes in the process of choosing and using a web template and end up with something that was unlike the image they had in mind. Here are some guidelines to help you avoid those mistakes.

By: Judy Cullins

Once your Web site is up, you must maintain it. That means changes, and each time you make a change, you may make a mistake. I'm really grateful when people point out my Web glitches by emailing me, and these encourage me to be more proactive by checking my site each week.

By: Brian Osborne

To reduce your exposure to such scams it is essential to carefully vet all potential link partners in the first instance. Enter link back partner details in a database. As an absolute minimum, enter their URL, the location of the link back on their site, the page rank of the page on which your link is located, the date of the link exchange and a real e-mail address for the contact person.

Use a good link checking program monthly and contact offenders as soon as you find your link is missing from their site. This is now essential to keep link partners honest. This problem is a direct consequence of the current page rank system and fierce competition for top rankings. It is easier to retain existing link partners than to continually find new ones.

Points to look for when Assessing Potential Link Partners

By: Christian Heilmann

Clients want to hear success stories from market leaders before they spend money. Unfortunately, pointing out that Amazon.com does not have a 450KB rotating logo splash page will not convince inexperienced clients that it’s a bad idea.
Working as an accessibility consultant in an IT company is a very frustrating job right now. Highly publicized lawsuits and deep-rooted accessibility myths leave us with a lot to explain when the final product does not really help visitors. Our clients simply don’t care about accessibility as much as we’d like them to, and there are several reasons for that.

By: Phoebe Moon
Your home page should contain links which will help both the visitor and the search engines
reach every page in your site. If you have a large site, you can break your site into categories (named for your keywords, of course) and just have a link on the first page to that general category. The category pages contain links to internal pages relevant to that category. Do not use an image as a link. While people can see it, search engines cannot.

By: Kris Driessen
The subject of copyright as it applies to handmade items is a subject dear to the heart of someone who is making a living through their creative efforts. A copyright protects an authors income by giving them the exclusive right to control the reproduction of that work, whether they have created patterns, music, art, books or any other specialized design. For work to be copyrighted, it must be significantly original. An item or a technique so common it can be considered in the public domain cannot be copyrighted. It must be something unique and distinctive already in existence. Facts and ideas cannot be copyrighted, but the way they are expressed can.

By: PhoebeMoon Web Design Solutions
The web is a magical place, a place where you can be transported to places you have never before seen. It is growing rapidly, as magical places do, limited only by the imagination of the web site creators. As it continues to grow, users with special needs will increase. 1 in 5 Americans between the ages of 15 and 64 years has a disability. Almost 30 percent of all families in the United States are affected by a member who has some type of disability. (as measured by having an activity limitation - see the italic box at the end of this article.).