Do It Yourself Web Design
Web design is an extremely complex business. There are a host of issues around browser compatibility that can literally have you tearing hair out. But despite the complexity there are ways to minimize the frustration and build a very successful website. Here are some great do it yourself website design tools and options that make it easy...
SiteBuildIt! Do It Yourself Web Design System
SiteBuildIt! is a combined web authoring, management and web hosting tool in the one comprehensive package. Basically, if you can cut and paste, type out your material and follow instructions you could design and build your own website with relative ease.
The software and system has been in development for years now and it quite simply makes the technical stuff invisible to the user! The system actually walks you through the process. But there's much more to SiteBuildIt! than meets the eye. It isn't just a do it yourself web design tool...
SiteBuildIt! goes way beyond just do it yourself web design and page authoring. It contains modules that check your site's search engine ranking, report where improvements can be made and dovetails in with a number of tools that make promotion and monetization of your website a breeze.
To put it simply people with no technical ability can design and build serious money-making websites just by following the system. It does require time and effort but doesn't everything worthwhile? See the SiteBuildIt! video tour here or for slow connection the quicktour.
WordPress As A Do It Yourself Web Site
Wordpress is a free blogging platform that comes ready built-in with good hosting plans but it can also be downloaded free from the Wordpress site and uploaded to a web host of your choice.
It's designed for keeping a weblog (online journal or diary) but has a function for building web pages. The software will then act as a content management solution. The look and feel of websites built with Wordpress can be changed by the selection of different themes and the addition of your graphics. The basic configurations present well and are search engine friendly.
Custom wordpress themes can be added to create websites which are easily updated by their owners with no knowledge of web design. The actual blog posting facility then becomes a great way to add news or specials for a search ranking boost.
For an example of a custom wordpress installation acting as a small business website see this Lismore kids party venue site.
Do It Yourself Website Design Traps
Do it "yourselfers" often take things to the extreme and shoot themselves in the foot!
Here's a few common do it yourself website design traps
Free Websites
Free websites are often seen as an easy, cheap way to build a web site but there are problems..
Many
free website providers have a simple visual authoring program.
These WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors often
produce poor code that will not be indexed effectively by search
engines.
Free
websites are a poor reflection on the business. The web address
is an ugly, obviously free page like
www.freewebspace.com/~username/
Note: Search engine friendly free web space can be used with domain forwarding to mask the actual free space url. It's not the best approach but for a simple web presence like an online business card that does not need to be search engine friendly
Buying Web Page Authoring Software
There
are some very good web design and authoring programs like DreamWeaver, FrontPage
and CoffeeCup. Do it yourselfers are tempted to buy the software
and build their own web site. The problem is the huge learning
curve. To become halfway proficient the do it yourself web designer
would need to spend 100 hours or so just to get a feel for it
let alone produce a good clean effective site. The result is a
lot of wasted time.
Using Word Processors
Microsoft?
and other notable software companies have word processors that claim the
ability and provide for "save as webpage". The code they produce
is bloated and useless as a web page in the real world.