My life is boring so I can’t really write about what I’ve been up to. It would go something like this: “Work, school, cleaning, laundry, home work, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, reading”. And there it is. My week. So let’s just leave that sad subject and move on. I’ve been thinking about what to blog about for days and just a minute ago I finally got an idea. I’ve been webdesigning for nine years and blogging for eight so I know some stuff about that. So here’s a tip blog.
The wonderful world of websites and blogs. Not a expert guide but still some kind of guide.
The Making
1. I know a lot of people use dreamweaver and similar programs but I don’t reccomend it. If you want to understand your code you should try to code it by hand. It’s not that hard to learn. I promise!
2. Validate your site. Take the time to check if your code is correct with a validator. There are several different browsers to choose from today. Some of them display uncorrectly coded sites correctly but others are more picky. Explorer tend to show the most terribly coded site correctly while Firefox and Opera wants you to actually use correct code. Why? Well why would you want to use correct spelling and grammar? Becuase a language has rules and so does HTML.
You can validate your HTML here and your CSS here.
3. Identify your target group and adjust your site according to it. If I for example were to write a really serious blog about art history I wouldn’t use this layout. I’d make a more toned down and “serious” layout. Not one featuring Emilie Atumn, crows and lots of hearts.
4. Make your site user-friendly. If you have a menu with links to other parts of your site make sure that menu is clearly visible. My site could definitely be more user-friendly. For example I have way too much stuff in my left menu making it look cluttered and I use a way too small font. I think it looks pretty. But it’s not user-friendly.
5. No background music! Of course you think your taste in music is just greeeat but not everyone will agree with you. It’s annoying visiting a site playing some nasty music you hate. Espescially if you’re listening to your own music in Winamp.
Getting your site online
Got no money? Try getting hosted. There are lots of people offering hosting for free. What I did was getting hosted for free and then buying a domain name. I “lived” at iskall.nu/~carnelian but I had my domain name www.whirlwind.nu which worked as a redirecting adress.
Getting visitors
Make yourself known to the world! You can’t just sit around and wait for people to discover your blog. Visit other peoples sites and leave comments, do link exchanges, join rotations, join site rankings, join commenting communities. Let people know you’re out there!
Choosing a blog tool
If you have a personal site with a blog you might want people to be able to comment you. I’ve tried three different blog/commenting tools.
1. Haloscan. If you prefer to code your blog by yourself I reccomend Haloscan which is a commenting tool. With one line of code you place a link which opens a small pop-up window where people can leave you comments. My personal opinion on Haloscan is that it’s great if you want to do as much of your coding as possible by yourself. The pop-up is annoying though.
2. CuteNews. If you want more than a commenting tool you could try CuteNews. With cutenews you log into the cutenews site and blog from there. No manual blog coding and FTP:ing needed. And it has a categories feature. Cutenews is kind of a light version of WordPress. Less advanced but also with less functions. What’s great about it is that’s it easy to understand.
3. WordPress is a complete blog management tool. With it you can create archives, categories, tags, comments and lots more. You log into your WP control panel and blog from there. No manual blog coding or FTP:ing needed. The downside of WordPress is that it’s quite hard to grasp at first. You need quite good coding skills to use it. Or LOTS of time. Once it’s up and running it’s smooth and fast though. I have to admit that I hated it to begin with and still don’t really love it but I’m used to it now. I think it’s too automatized but if you like things easy (once it’s up and running) WordPress is the thing for you.
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Hey, cute site.
Thanks for the tips! And I hate background music on sites. Ugh. It annoys me SOO much. Especially when I’m listening to my own music, which I always am.
these are really good tips actually, the music part is probably my worst offence, im always putting up background music lol but i figure that if there’s a choice to stop,pause the music its ok i guess
ur right this was a good blog choice, its pretty helpful!
I understand how boring life can be. My life’s that way as well. i think you described the beginnings of a website very well. Good job!
Your blog entry’s really helpful especially to those who are just starting out. As for me, it’s my first time to use WP and thankfully my host was kind of enough to teach me. But it is essential that you should have a bit of a background though in terms of coding so if you’re saying that CuteNews is less complicated, people should go for that. I’ve never tried CuteNews before though but i’ve heard of it
I should really validate my site one day ):
I honestly think that wordpress is one of the best blogging tools but it’s not easy to understand and it can be quite annoying sometimes.. but yeah. I had started with cutenews before and I loved it!
LMAO at your explanation on cybersex. I just found out that people actually had it and I was curious to find out what others thought of it. My life is boring too. Work. School. School. Work.
Hey there,
I hope you still know who I am?
Just wanted to drop in and say that I am back from my hiatus now and my blog has started over with an all new URL (the above one ^^)
It would be very nice if you changed your link :-)
Hello,
I wil…go insane! Makes my brain hurt teehee xD
sorry I didn’t read your blog, I admit, since it is (let me look at the time) 04:43 am YES IN THE MORNING
I really can not stare too long at a bunch of words before it makes me feel dizzy, I shall come back and read it when I have the time and am more…Awake xD
Thanks for the comment
Maths…ah, even thinking about math makes me shudder, I hate it!! I don’t know how you can cope doing maths so much
Katie x
Great tips!!! I used to be such a stickler for HTML and CSS validation but right now I just can’t seem to sit and go through my code – I *will* get my site validated again before the year is out. It will keep nagging at me until I do. haha.
I’m learning to love WordPress’s intricacies. After I got over my frustration of not being able to make my own theme (my current theme is the first I’ve ever made from scratch), I’m ready to take on new WP challenges!
Wonderful tips. I can’t validate my site for the life of me – it doesn’t help that I use Iframes either though. I know that’s a big no-no in the webdesign world but I can’t get away from them!
I totally agree about the background music — If you have music put an actual player up so you can either start it or stop it. I don’t know how many sites I’ve left because of this reason.
hey!!!! wow, thanks for the comment… and yeah, i just got a little upset about it, and decided to write a blog about it… and since then a few have wrote back.. but not all. psh, they suck. im not wasting my time anymore! how have you been!!
Background music sites drive me bonkers. I never find music that I really encounter or I am surfing late at night at home it’s distracting. I’m big into WordPress now since I tried both Haloscan & Cutenews. They bugged me to no end and I couldn’t get anything to work. Awesome tips totally ^_^!
These are really great tips. I also wanted to put a little note. If you use firefox as a browser there is a great add-on for validiation. It’s HTML Validator. I would recommend anyone who isn’t sure where to begin validating by using this add-on. If you’re using html it will even help fix alot of your errors for you!
Yeah it makes me sad to know that people are using programs to code. I’m sure it’s a lot faster but as someone who codes freehand I feel like they are cheating. It’s like I spent all those years teaching myself when these people can make a website just as nice in half the time.
I completely agree with the music comment. I love my music and think everyone in the world should listen to it, but when I go to someone else’s site I usually have my own music playing and don’t want to listen to theirs haha.
I have read that list, while it is a good list, there is nothing new there, since I have been blogging and web designing for a long time too. Well on and off I have.
Oh; I like this blog a lot. Gives great insight and I totally agree about validating your site — I finally got mine that way, lol. Yeah, healthcare in the US really sucks — so many people don’t hav medical insurance(including me) and we suffer all the time. It’s really hard when you have prescriptions you depend on, and then when you’re broke, you can get them. Damn economy and everything else!