Caveat Scriptor: Use the Advice of Those Who Know Before You Build a Site

~A man [woman] is a success if he [she] gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he [she] does what he [she] wants to do. Bob Dylan~

I'm smart. Wicked smart. Too smart for my own good. At the same time (as they said when I was as kid and as it still applies), I'm too big for my own britches.

So I put those prissy pantalones to some good effort and I teach others how to write. I win a few awards, send a few hopefuls off to higher learning institution where they in turn win their own awards and accolades. I do this till my seat gets burned one too many times by the politics of academia, and I go into freelance writing.

I research for 1000s of hours, submit to literary contests and magazines, start working writing gigs, and keep researching. I build a web site. With what it costs to maintain an ISP and web hosting account and little else, I create this ambitious masterpiece, believing I am now a self-taught web host, writer, teacher, and confidant for academic writers, mental disability writers, and elder memoir writers.

But as your confidant, I have to confess: as much as I'd like to think those 300 hours of study and application for usability, keyword-rich, to-the-letter-of-the-law of interstate/inter-country/internet navigation design and creation make me a self-taught smartass, I did little but the legwork by myself. Actually, five virtuosos of the web world made making a website possible:

Jakob Nielsen After creating a really bad mess of a site overloaded with spinning, flashing, color blobs of coolness, I discovered www.useit.com/alertbox and Dr. Jakob Nielsen. His stellar advice, delivered in a no-nonense tone, is backed by his many years of theoretical and practical work. After reading and studying articles such as the following, I completely recontructed my site:

Current Issues in Web Usability

Misconception about Usability

Ten Most Violated Homepage design Guidelines

Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2003

Usability for Senior Citizens

Writing for the Web

Ed Zivkovic As I was catching on to using the experts to build a user-friendly, usable site, I was catching on to the language that indicates the writer knows what he's talking about. This is the redeeming value of Ed Zivkovic's site, Tips for Work at Home Webmasters, at www.ezau.com. He uses candor and directness. He provides technical content in understandable terms. And defying the popular and trendy, he tells you directly and honestly what is crap, what is not crap, what is effective website technique and what is a waste of dough. Try some of these instrumental articles for starters:

Domain Name and Web Hosting Hell
Exit Traffic Exchange-Traffic multiplier Alternative

R.I.G.H.T.S., www.rightsforartists.com As any artist/writer will attest, the work that goes into creation is an interminable challenge. But we do it because we like it, because we are good at it, and because we have to do it. We are compelled to create. But we do our own work, not the work (or art) of others. This site contains all of the legal and ethical guidelines for copyright; R.I.G.H.T.S., a coalition of contributing artists (rather than a corporation or organization, that is) thoroughly, relentlessly provides information, definition, answers, and direction for copyrighting and protecting creative work.

Firelily Designs Just as much about the science of such vital concerns as color design for web users with color vision deficiency as about aesthetics of web design, this site practices what it preaches-as it preaches, well, teaches, graphic design. I don't create my own web graphics. That would take me a year or two to master, when I have enough to do with getting words crafted into readable forms. But I found the advice on color at www.firelily.com fascinating and functionally useful.

Angela Hoy, Writers Weekly There are writers newsletters aplenty. And then there's Writers Weekly. What does the site and the owner have to do with web design, specifically? They are proactive protectors of writers and creative people, in general. Hoy stands up for the rights of freelancers by refusing the requests of tightwads who solicit her to recommend writers to work for 3 bucks an hour on copy for them so they can make million while the writers starve. Hoy encourages the ethics of hard work by way of informative how-tos. And Angela Hoy, with husband and co-owner, Richard Hoy, pours an acid tongue on the plague that is the scamming POD publisher or the conniving money-charging agent-in a section of her [their] site called "Whispers and Warnings." For the newbie, novice, wannabe freelancer, or even for the work at home woman or man creating a website she or he wants safe from scummy scammers, www.writersweekly.com is an advisory imperative.

Robert Woodhead of Self Promotion.com Finding www.selfpromotion.com shaved centuries off of not only my design and development but my publishing and promoting the site. With uncluttered pages and cutting-edge (constantly updated) information, Woodhead (who even makes self-effacing jokes about his name) walks a web wannabe through every stage of the process, and then provides [shareware] support by helping you submit your site to hundreds of search engines and indexes that you need to have crawl your site for rankings-the latest (2004) must-have for any online business.

Of course, if you were to look at my Favorite Files, at the 900+ categories, subcategories, and links, you would find that many others pulled my smart ass up by the seat of the pants. I name a few of these helpful gurus here, too:

Andrew Starling's Top Ten Sites Compared, in the Web Developer's Virtual Library at www.wdvl.internet.com

Jill Whalen's www.highrankings.com

Jim Heath at www.viacorp.com

Keith Instone's www.usableweb.com, 970 Links about Web Usability

Kevin Lee's Free Keyword research Tools and Keywords revisited at Click Z Network, www.clickz.com

The PSP Interactive Zone, www.pspiz.net

www.smallbusiness.sbc.yahoo.com

Assistant Professor Stan Ketterer's Design Fundamentals News Writing/ Newsletter coursework at www.cas.okstate.edu

Stephanie Hetu at www.stephaniehetu.com

Sumantra Roy's SEO course, Choosing the Correct Keywords for a Site, at www.thejunglemarketer.com

Karen Zoldan of www.bridgemarketing.com

As you might have figured out, I write this not to share any of my own personal technological truths-which are wanting. I write this not to embellish the careers of any affiliates. I don't have an affiliation with nor do I know the people in the Top Five-who do not need my small time embellishment or exposure. I write this not to create an entity I had no previous knowledge of creating-though how I do like to brag.

I compose this guide to humble myself to the fact that I was flying by the seat of my pants in most cases-except where I was lucky enough to intuit some strategies (which are still in the making, so don't get an attitude when you visit my site and find it still needs work: I know it does).

I compose this guide to honor those who put in way more than 300 piddly hours of research, study, and practice to find out what works to make it work even better.

And I compose this guide to help you avoid even 300 (not so piddling when you are doing it yourself) hours of stitching and tearing out the stitches of the britches of a tailoring project. Smarty pants just had to do it the hard way. May your way be easier.

N.H.-born prize-winning poet, creative nonfiction writer, memoirist, and award-winning Assoc. Prof. of English, Roxanne is also web content and freelance writer/founder of http://www.roxannewrites.com, a support site for academic, memoir, mental disability, and creative writers who need a nudge, a nod, or just ideas?of which Roxanne has 1,000s, so do stop in for a visit, as this sentence can't possibly get any longer??.

MORE RESOURCES

People Locator find anyone in the USA

RELATED WEB SITE DESIGN ARTICLES: Affordable Web Design In Birmingham If you have a business, big or small you may be thinking of getting yourself a website.The world wide web is another way of spreading your message or selling your product. Long Copy Sales Letters on the Web: Hype or Not? I have written before about long sales copy on the web. But I have more to say on the subject. Transforming A Site From Good To Excellent One of the challenges of moving a web site up from good to excellent is transforming it from just a bunch of web pages and graphics to an interactive experience. Another term for this is community - a place where people can come to communicate with others. Developing Your Winning Web Site Strategy Your web site is the key to your success on the Internet. You can use your web site to build your brand, increase sales, generate more leads, slash costs, and much more. Creating a Basic Web Design Template A "template" is simply a design format which you can apply to all (or most) of the pages in your web site. The first advantage of using a "template" system is that it allows you to make your most important design decision at the beginning, and then just focus on content. Web Site Turn On When you develop a sales brochure, you have a mental checklist of what needs to be in it. You probably look at brochures from other vendors. Web Design - 7 Key Things to Avoid A search for "web design" on Google returns more than 325 million results. So how do we start eliminating all these so called designers? Here are a few of the most common shortcomings. Website Checklist 10 Basic Things Your Website Should Have .. Excellently Contructed Websites Want to see an excellently contructed website? As a writer I found one of my favorite writers: (Paulo Coelho) has a site that could inspire anyone who wants to create a more humanistic presence on the Web.Being a writer, when I was asked to do some research into what makes a good website, of course I straightaway went to check out all of my favorite authors. Graphic Design Using Color Color is everywhere and conveys a message even if we don't realize it. While this message can vary by culture it pays to know what colors "say" in your own corner of the universe, and even what color means to your target market. How to Build Your Own Website - More Steps To build a website, there are four methods to choose from:First method: Get a professional designer to build the site for you:It is expensive in creation process, site maintenance and development.Second method: Designing the site with free website hosting:In this case, just sign in the website that offers this service, and start building your own website. Get Rid of Your Frames A few years ago a lot of websites utilized frame technology.A website that uses this frame technology is apparent when the left hand or top of the screen stays the same and the inner part changes when links are clicked on. Put Up A Website And Start Promoting In About An Hour I can't figure out people who have products or information to sell who do not have a website. With some people, it's fear of technology; others just haven't realized that we've entered the electronic age. Creating A Quality Web Site Design! In this article, I will attempt to cover the basics of creating a great quality web design template for your site. Now it's a known fact that the layout or "eye candy" as I put it will determine whether your visitors will stay more than 15 seconds or they will just become another statistic. Custom Icon For Your Specific Brand Developing a software application is not easy at all; apart from the effective creation of the application you'll have to think of other things as well, like: making the software easy to work with, giving it a unique and appealing look, making it better than other software, etc. Apart from the qualities of the application, these little things are the ones that promote your software application among the end users. Basic Web Design Principles Home PageHome page should clearly indicate what the site is about. Provide top level navigation on the first page, your logo, and tell to the visitor what he can found on your web site. Content is Crucial! Content is undoubtedly the most important element of a website. It is the defining factor for a website, that which catches the interest of your visitors and keeps them hooked to your site. How to Make Effective Use of Web Fonts Writing for your web site is not the same as offline writing. The fonts used for print media are different than web fonts. So You're Hiring a Web Designer-You Have the Right to Demand these 7 Perks Whether you're hiring a designer who has created 10 sites or 1000 sites for other businesses, there are 10 things every website should do for you.1. Create A Web Site That Builds Trust If someone doesn't know you personally, will they trust you enough to do business with you just by visiting your web site?Most people view organization - and web sites - they don't know with great skepticism. Given all the identity theft and viruses running around, people are understandably cautious and somewhat skeptical when they go to a new web site.