The Site Subject What type of website do you want?

Marketing / Business - A Business / Marketing Web Page is one sponsored by a commercial enterprise to promote or sell products.

Personal Website or Blog - A Personal Home Page by an individual who may or may not be affiliated with a larger institution. Blog's are more like a daily diary where you may or may not allow people to comment.

News - A News Web to provide up to the moment current information.

Entertainment - An Entertainment Web page is one with the primary purpose of providing enjoyment to its users by means of video clips, humor, games, music, drama or other similar types of activities.

Discussion groups / Forums - Usually specific to one major subject, however not always. This group usually includes discussion groups, chat rooms and list servers. The primary purpose is to provide conversations and individual opinions. You can have the best of both worlds!

Informational - An Informational Web page is one whose purpose is to present factual information. Educational institutions or government agencies. Another example of an informational website would be Wikipedia and and instructional site like Michele's Paint Shop.

Free Items - Sites which offer free services or products. These might offer free software and services, clip arts, and more.

Basic Goals of Web Site:

• tell customers about your business or promote your personal website

• tell customers how to contact you or your business

• sell products or offer free items

• describe services

• provide links to other website's if needed

Approximately your pages would include products - product pages and those typically have sub-pages. You provide the information and images on your website. A standard - typical site is as follows:

Basic Pages of the Web Site:

• 1 for Home

• 1 for About Us

• 1+ for Products

• 1 Policy/shipping/terms

Website Coding Languages The basics

Are you stuck and trying to figure out what type of website you should build? There are so many types, styles, languages and more to consider.

FIRST: When it comes to web design it is a good idea to have some idea of what your site will need. If you will have a very large site I suggest using HTML and PHP. Do not let these words frighten you because there are some great sites that offer PHP, HTML, CSS educational information out there that will take you step by step. I offer links to these helpful sites and you will see them throughout this website. I cannot stress it enough that learning basic HTML and PHP is highly recommended.

Below are a few common languages that you should learn if you want to have your very own website.

HTML - Hypertext Markup Language. What it does is take text based information in a document changing certain text as headings, lists, paragraphs, and more while it then sets that text with embedded images, interactive forms, and other objects. HTML is written in the form of labels known as tags, surrounded by less-than and greater-than signs. HTML is a base to your web page document, and you truly should have some basic knowledge of HTML before you jump into the world wide web pool.

PHP is a Hypertext Preprocessor scripting language that is used within PHP-enabled web pages that are treated just like regular HTML pages. You can create and edit them the same way you normally create regular HTML pages. PHP is especially suited for web development as it will save you time editing your pages in the future. You can build a dynamic web page which means you can load (include) several pages into one page because the server will build the page for you when someone clicks on a link. It runs faster, quicker and neater. You would need to make sure your server has activated support for PHP so that your files ending in .php are read by PHP on the server. Most web hosts offer PHP support so it really shouldn't be a problem. You can find information on all of these languages www.php.net and the basics of HTML at www.pagetutor.com

CSS which is very cool and stands for Cascading Style Sheets which define how to display the HTML elements on your web page. These styles are basically stored in style sheets which tells the web page how you want your elements to be displayed. CSS is a absolutely incredible and a major staple to the in Web design industry because it allows developers to control the style and layout several pages at once. Example would be that you can define a style for your news articles on your site to use a certain font, color, size, weight, and then apply that style to as many pages as you want. To make a side wide change, simply change the style the news articles, and all elements on those pages in the site are updated together. Learn with these CSS tutorials at the W3Schools.com site.

Getting Started Tools Needed

There are several types of site subjects you can have out there on the world wide web. You read the above list of the types of sites you can have, and the list is there to give you some ideas on the different subject sites you can have. No matter what type of site you choose to have you still have you will have to know how to design, market, and run it.

What is your coding experience? Do you know HTML, CSS, or PHP? Will you purchase a template and enter you own information? Do you want a Flash animated site or a standard HTML site? If you have no experience with HTML coding you might not want to be messing around with Flash or PHP without first learning the basics.

If you answered "very little or none" to the questions above then stop right here. This is what you need to do. Head on over to www.pagetutor.com , php.net, and w3school.com, and bookmark each of them. They will help you learn the basics and more.

Once you learn the basics and you truly want to do make a website then you need to pick up a HTML editor, and a Graphic Design program. Those that choose to do it themselves I highly suggest you choose from the program lists links above. The choices you have is to do it yourself or pay someone else to do it for you. Weigh out the costs of the software and time vs. a professional designer. Usually people that do not have the time to learn or honestly have no interest in building their own website will hire a designer. Do you know all of the things a web designer does? There is a lot involved so if you are in this then start with the best design software. Then we have to go beyond the basics, and that is website optimization, marketing, and analytics. If you are new to web design, and want to try to make your website on your own you will eventually have a few small investments to make. No matter how you look at it to make money it costs money. I am basically telling you right now what you need to do without beating around the bush and wasting your time with junk. The choice is your's and what you choose to do in the end is on you, and only you.

Rules, patterns, and a certain order certainly apply to web design and the search engines. "Do you want to invite problems to your domain, and would you like to also get lost in the search engines along the way? Would you head out to the open sea with a hole in your ship, no compass, maps, or radio? No, of course not so lets not enter out into the web design and search engine world without making sure we have what we need to survive out there." quote by Michele M, 4-15-06

Consider your level of knowledge!
Level of knowledge in a subject can market for you

Whichever you choose you still need to have a good chunk of knowledge in the subject. You will need to market your website, and how much you know about a certain subject can push you into the top five listings for your keyword terms. You will need to update your website weekly with articles, tutorials, images, and more. The important part is that you keep your site active which means you must update it often. How can you keep a website active if you are not an expert in the subject? Well, years ago that was true, but today we have social networking such as blog communities that help us. What that means is we depend on others to write our articles "posts" for us. We use other peoples data to promote our web sites. Our sites progression though the search engines depends on quality content, and that is why you truly should have a good grip on the subject because you will have to write about the subject often. Each subject has a some soft of a niche which you can expand out with. Example of this would be a main subject on animals, and the subset "dogs" then we have "dog food" and the list goes on. You do not have to be an expert with a degree to express life experience. Choose a subject that you enjoy and you will have a website subject that will entertain you and your visitors for years to come.

Search Engine Submission:
Present your website to the world

Once your web pages are complete and you're ready to show them off to the world you will want to submit your website to Google, Yahoo, and more. We have put together a list that includes some of the top search engines in the world. Visit each and read their terms to see which search engine is right for you and your website. I highly suggest Google, Yahoo, and DMOZ.

You also need to learn about the below subjects to have a well rounded website.

What Does SEO Mean? Search Engine Optimization

What Does SEM Mean? Search Engine Marketing

What Does SERP Mean? Search Engine Result Page

If you need someone to create a professional website for your personal website or business/services feel free to contact us.

Michele's Paint Shop SEO Newbie 101 is dedicated to providing you with the information you need to have a profitable web site. If you succeed then I succeed PERIOD!