Tips and Tricks

The Ideal Web Site

The major mistakes in web development

By Catalin Bocanu, Web News Editor

15th of October 2007, 15:40 GMT

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XHTML/CSS Template Web Standards Compliant

The most important support for the content accessibility is represented by the features offered to your visitors by your web site structure. To achieve an "ideal" web site structure, you should avoid some common mistakes which often exist in web development.

The best practice would be the site redesign following web standards. If you redesign an existing website by the rules existing in web standards, then you will rapidly discover many advantages, the main ones being: easy code maintenance and portability, increased accessibility and cross browser compatibility. Beginners will often neglect the existence of web standards

and could introduce errors in web site design, which will also determine a poor content presentation.

First, your visitors must understand only from a few clicks the purpose of your website and the type of information they will obtain as a result of web site navigation. A few statements well formulated on the index page or about page should be enough to explain the purpose of your web site content. Contact details must also exist at least on one page.

The content archiving is a practice performed by many web sites in order to increase the content quantity. But if you change the old links, you will have many chances of losing valuable one way links, in case others have implemented links on their web sites to certain web pages from your website. There is a solution for this problem: use dynamic links by archiving the old content in a database.

It is unnecessary to link a webpage to itself, so try to design a clear and simple navigation system by providing only the minimal number of necessary internal links on a single web page. The visitor must be able to change the text size from its own web browser and as a consequence, try not to impose a fixed text font size through CSS (cascading style sheets). A common mistake found in many web sites is the implementation of unneeded registration forms. It is recommended to avoid registration forms in order to provide access to certain information on your web site, because people usually look to find information and not to process some boring forms.

The excessive ads display will not represent a point of attraction for your visitors. Even certain site design elements that could suggest the presence of ads could confuse your audience. Other mistakes often made when it comes to the development of web sites are: the presence of an audio background which cannot be controlled by visitors, the use of HTML tables, incompatibility of page title with the content, complex search forms, blinking text and banners, excessive usage of pop-up windows, windows resize and more.
If you want to be able to manage your website in the best conditions, without the need of a future redesign, it is recommended to avoid any web site development mistakes in order to easily maintain an error-free web site.

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web design | web site design | web development | development practices | web standards

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User opinions:

Comment #1 by: DrCristian on 16 Oct 2007, 15:42 GMT	reply to this comment
Looking forward to a Softpedia.com redesign (according to the tips on this article)...

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