Developing An Internet Presence Part 6

Developing An Internet Presence Part 1
Developing An Internet Presence Part 2
Developing An Internet Presence Part 3
Developing An Internet Presence Part 4
Developing An Internet Presence Part 5
Developing An Internet Presence Part 6
Developing An Internet Presence Part 7

Where do we go from here?

At this stage we should have a basic file occupying our web space showing a brief statement. Now we could just throw lots of random pages up there all linked from the index page but in reality it all wants a little thought before you do this.

Adding structure

The easiest way I have found to teach somebody how to put together a website is quite fundamental and involves a few sheets of A4 paper, how many you need at this stage is down to you but each one will represent a new web page.

What pages do I need?

For the purposes of this exercise we are going to create a 5 page website on paper and I would suggest you take your 5 pieces of paper in landscape position and draw a ruler width margin down the left side of each piece. This will be our navigation area or menu.

Here is a list of some basic pages and bear in mind we must have the main page as index.htm:

index.html
aboutmydisco.html
parties.html
weddings.html
contactmydisco.html

Why am I doing this?

There are a number of reasons with the main one being, it will save you time and help you understand how all this works. You may have noticed that the wording of each page has a meaning and the contact page is good example. We could have just written contact but you could be contacting anything so adding a relevant phrase on the end helps promote your site with the search engines.

Now take each of your 5 pieces of paper and at the top of each page write down what each page is called purely for reference. Also on each page, in the section on the left which you have ruled off, write the following, one under each other.

My Disco Home
About My Disco
Parties
Weddings
Contact My Disco

This is our menu structure.

Why am I doing the same on each page?

Other than what the pages are called each page should look the same and all we do to make each page unique is to decide what content we add to the right of our ruled line.

By keeping the menu structure the same on each page it makes the site easy to navigate and users become familiar with it very quickly. Now place the “My Disco Home” (the index.html page) on a table with the other pages at each of its four corners. We are now ready to start planning our site in a story board fashion.

On each page to the right of the ruled line start deciding what content you want on each page and write in bullet points. When we are ready to turn this into a real website never be tempted to steal content from a competitors site as duplicate content is a big no with search engines and it is theft of intellectual property.