What is a Website?

A web site is totally different from any other type of publishing, advertising or communications media. When you create a brochure, magazine or book for publication, you determine content, print it and it is finished. If you are advertising a product or service on radio or television, you emphasize the name, how to get the product and do it within 15 to 30 seconds ... then run the ad over and over again. None of the above will work on the Internet.

Designing for the web requires the relevant content of a brochure or magazine, the colorful look of high-quality print, and the attention-grabbing impact of television advertising. Plus it should offer a valuable product and/or information, be updated frequently and stay current with changing technology.

So the bad news is that a web site is never "done". But the good news is that a web site is never done! You can make changes to the design and content any time you want. You can use that new background you just created or add that javascript you recently found ... and you can have as many web pages online as your web host allows and you have time to create.

Types of web sites

There are really only a few types of web sites on the Internet: commercial, intranet (internal to a company or organization), topical (pertaining to a particular area of interest such as golf or travel) and personal. We will be looking at the design of commercial and/or personal sites although the principles would apply to any type of site.

Creating a strictly personal web site allows for much more leeway in design. You can be as unconventional and creative as you want. By this I mean, you can use wild colors, create any type of layout you like, ignore navigation conventions, and post information and/or graphics that are of interest to a very small number of people. A personal web site allows for complete artistic freedom and an opportunity for you to reflect your unique personality.

Do you want to use eight different fonts in four different colors on your site? Go right ahead. Do you want to post a picture of the bathrobe you got for Christmas? That's fine. Do you really like a purple background with bright red text? You can do that. (Believe it or not, depending on the content and type of web site, that color combination could be perfect!) Is this good web page design? Not really. And, since most of us want our web sites viewed by more than a handful of relatives, design considerations are important for anyone creating a web site.

Keep in mind that a web site is your contact with the world and...

"There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it." Dale Carnegie

Revisit a few of your favorite sites and really look at them this time. Notice the colors and layout, the navigation system, the content and how it is presented. What catches your eye first? Where is it located? Is it easy to find what you want? Is it hard to read the text information? Did it take a long time to load? Now, write down what you like and don't like about the site, what keeps you coming back and what, if anything, you'd like to use on your site. Using this information will go a long way in helping you to design your own website.

Gene DeFazzio is the webmaster and author of the Rocketface(R) Workshop
http://www.rocketface.com/ - A informational website for novice webmasters and home of the comprehensive webmasters tutorial "How to Design a Website".