Web Site Design Guide.

General:

• Plan your site carefully. Use sub-directories to divide your site on a logical basis. Avoid renaming pages or directories (folders) as bookmarks referring to that area will no longer work.
• Add a meaningful title to each page. If a user sets a bookmark for that page then the title of the page is used as the Bookmark's title. Avoid calling pages: 'Welcome to Roger Tethis Ltd.'. Instead use: 'Roger Tethis Ltd. - Welcome'. Be aware that most so-called design packages never prompt you for a name, look for "untitled page" on Google for evidence.
• Some users may choose not to download your graphics, your site must still be useable.
• Pictures: Use 'jpg' format for photographs, 'png' or 'gif' format for graphics. Save them on disk at the appropriate size for your site, re-sample them if required. A 640x480 image from a digital camera might be around 80k, re-sampling this to 176x132 produces a file size of about 8k. This is more than adequate for the web. The majority of users have a monitior resolution of 1024x768 (<1 megapixel), it's pointless serving them with an image which is bigger as it won't fit their screen. Please Note: Dragging to reduce a picture's size in FrontPage™ (or similar) does not alter the size of a file on disk. Large (on disk) pictures make for slow pages and web users going elsewhere.
• Test your site with the popular browsers. As of November 2006, Internet Explorer™ had only around 60% of the browser market. In particular test your site using the Firefox browser (market share about 30%, November 2006).
• Validate your pages using the W3 validator. It's frightening how many software design packages fail this elementary standards compliance test.
• UK law states that your website must comply with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. See also: Website accessibility guidance from the DRC.

Filenames:

• Never use spaces in filenames. They must be translated into "%20" for the web, resulting in confusion.
• Use lowercase whenever possible in filenames, directory names and e-mail addresses¹.
• Use no more than 3 letters in filename extensions.
• Call your index page: index.htm
Remember: index.htm Index.htm index.Htm and index.html are all different files. Linux™ servers have CaSe SensiTiVe file-names and directory names, i.e: http://www.case-insensitive.com/CASe/SentitiVe/From/hERe/

Internationalisation:

• Your pages can be seen by the whole world:
  • Quote your office hours as 'UK Time'.
  • Give the international dialling codes for all phone numbers. For the UK number: 01234 567890, the standard international format is: '+44 1234 567890'.

Search Engines.

• Submit your site!
• Search engines use textual information to rank sites. To achieve a high rating for your site you need relevant text on your pages. Few words equals low search engine ranking. It's as simple as that!

 Telephone Support:

• Further help is available during office hours, see our services page for rates. Call: +44 1672 222 924.

Notes:

¹In fact domain names and e-mail addresses are case insensitive.

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