Web Design Tools

Designing A Website

A good website must have an architecture at its core that builds the pages and links that hold the pages together as a cohesive site.  The cohesiveness of a site is dependent upon its "hierarchy."  A hierarchy is the structure that connects links together.  A website shouldn't use links to randomly jump from page to page.  Instead, the hierarchy allows links to be arranged so that they connect in a way that makes sense.

When designing a website, it's important that the layout of all pages is consistent.  This not only helps users recognize your site, it also helps them navigate it more easily.  Any time you change the page layout or navigation tools, a user must spend time figuring out how to use them again.  And most viewers would rather be focusing on the site's content!

Color and type should also be used consistently throughout a website, as should editorial voice.  These elements will help a site develop a strong brand identity.

Since there are many different browsers available, it's important to design a website that's flexible.  This means it will work well regardless of the type of browser being used, or user preference.  There are also several things that can be done during the building stage to ensure that the site can be used by both older browsers and newer browsers.  One thing that must be taken into consideration is screen resolution, which varies from visitor to visitor.  Because of this, an important part of website design is ensuring that page layout widths are compatible with commonly used monitor resolutions.  Page widths may be fixed or they may be designed to shrink and grow according to the browser window's width.  Fixed-width layouts offer precise control over placement of images, text, and other page elements.  However, flexible-width layouts are sometimes a good alternative to fixed-width layouts, which will appear surrounded by many pixels of white space on larger, wide-format monitors.

Finally, when designing a website it's important to maintain the current conventions — particularly those related to links, structure, and navigation — that are being used elsewhere on the web.  This ensures that viewers don't have to learn anything new when using the site.  While the web is constantly changing and new innovations are always being introduced, it's best to avoid these until they are widely accepted and understood.

Website design is both an art and a science, and these web design tools can help provide interest and repeat visits to your site.  Our free HTMLcolors tool lets you easily test web page color schemes and layouts.  EZpolls enables visitors to vote and check poll results in surveys which you design; GuestBook lets visitors enter comments and answer your customized questions; BoardServer lets visitors interact with each other or with a moderator; SiteMiner lets visitors quickly search your site (and optionally, the entire web).

Once your web site is active, it is important to monitor its visitors, its links to other sites, and its accessibility.  Counter can track the number of page hits or unique visitors to your site, while the SuperStats traffic reporter can answer many more questions concerning your visitors.  Finally, WatchDog can monitor your web site's performance and notify you if it becomes inaccessible.

To learn more about individual web site tools, use the links shown above.

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Web Site Design Tools