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Tips for Building Your Web Site

1. Ensure that pages download fast. Users typically don't want to wait to get information. Large graphics can slow down this process. Try timing your home page. It should totally download within 30 seconds.
    
2. Add pictures of your staff to the Web site to give it a human touch.
    
3. Ensure that your Web site is easy to navigate. A confusing site design can turn off users and keep them from finding important information.
    
4. IHR recommends using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to create Web site consistency and to make maintenance easier.  For further information:
   • http://css.nu/pointers/bugs.html - the CSS Pointers Group has a Web page contains lots of tips
   • http://www.mako4css.com/index.htm - CSShark has lots of tips and information   
       
5. Ensure that your site design is optimized for search engines.
    
6. Ensure that you have included the appropriate main pages to use for your Web site.
    
7. Make sure your site is appropriately viewable for your intended audience. The Internet Statistics page lists links to stats that will tell you, for example, what percentage of people have their monitors set at 800x600 screen resolution. You can also review TheCounter.com. Additionally, The Myth of 800x600 explains the various methods of designing for different screen display sizes (e.g., 800x600 screen resolution).
    
8. AnyBrowser.com - provides online tools to allow you to review your site's compatibility with various browsers.
    
9. Review other Web site designs to get ideas:
   • CoolHomePages.com - has lots of examples.
   • USA Today - has excellent navigation bar and color coding of Web site sections
      
10. WebsiteTips Color section - lots of links to pages with color palettes and color tips
     
11. Forget the "What" - Focus on the "How" - write copy that helps you sell
     
12. Which Blog Is Best for You? - article discussing various Blogger software
     
13. Methods for reducing harvesting of your email addresses from your Web site:
    • NetMechanic tips
    • Fantomas' free Mail Shield
       
14. If you need a dictionary for your site developments:
    • OneLook Dictionaries - nearly 4.2 million words in 746 online dictionaries
    • Xlation.com - links and an index to more than 1,600 online dictionaries
       
15. The following sites provides tools and tips for building your Web site: 

• IMS Web Tips - provides hundreds of tips for developing and promoting Web sites.
• theSiteDoctor.com - offers website usability testing and evaluation services for small businesses.
• Net Mechanic 
• Jessett.com - helpful info for developing a clean, user friendly site
• W3C CSS Validation Service - validates your CSS, especially helpful when CSS works in IE but not Netscape
• TidyGui - cleans up your code and also adds the closing tags for the elements.

Additional detailed tips

1. Q: How to set up a table border that does not outline the cells, only the outside of the table. 

A - The easiest way I've found to create a table without the inside lines (rules) is to use the "rules" attribute in the <table> tag. Some useful values are "none" (no rules), "rows" (horizontal rules between each row, and "cols" (vertical rules between each column). So to create a table without any rules: <table rules="none">.

"Frame" is another useful attribute for <table>. It controls which of the four sides of the table have visible borders. Valid values include void, above, below, hsides, vsides, rhs (right hand side), and lhs (left hand side).
 

2. To avoid spambots harvesting your email addresses, where your e-mail address might be someone@mail.com replace the @ sign with &#064; or 

==> EMAIL ADDRESS HARVESTING

From: Sean Phelan <sphelan@sqcn.com>

Here's another tactic that I use. Click on the following link for an example.

http://sqcn.com/mail/sqcn/com/sphelan If you're running your site on Apache, make a "mail" directory and make an .htaccess file there, with the following code.

################################## 
RewriteEngine On 
# Comment out lines by putting a "#" at the beginning 
# Rewriting with a subject - mail/domain/com/user/subject 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/mail/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)$ 
RewriteRule ^.* mailto:%3@%1.%2?subject=%4 [R,L] 
# Rewriting without a subject - mail/domain/com/user 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/mail/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)$ 
RewriteRule ^.* mailto:%3@%1.%2 [R] ##################################

The idea with this trick is that the e-mail address never really shows up on the web page, so a harvester should miss it.

This only works with Apache, if you're hosting on NT, this trick will not work.

3. Steve Krug book: Don't Make Me Think! - quote from a reader - "It's cheap, recent and is very easy to read - it's concise enough to be read in an afternoon."

IHR is the leader in developing and promoting Web sites for infertility organizations.