Get everything you need to plan and launch a web site, including detailed instructions and clear-headed advice on ready-to-use building blocks, powerful tools like CSS and JavaScript, and Google's Blogger. The thoroughly revised, completely updated new edition of Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual explains how to get your site up and running quickly and correctly.

5 Tips for Budding Web Site Creators
By Matthew MacDonald

These days, aspiring Web site creators like you pick up a lot of Web-design theory before you start working on your pages. But as deadlines loom and the value of “do it right” falls victim to the imperative to “do it right now,” even the best of us sometimes toss good practice out the window. That’s perfectly understandable and no cause for panic—after all, if Web weavers waited until their pages were perfect before uploading them, the Internet would be a very lonely place indeed. However, sometimes innocent-seeming shortcuts can cause headaches later on. Here are a few pieces of Web advice that site creators ignore at their own risk:

1. Always include a doctype. Web browsers can translate two languages into Web pages: old-school HTML and today’s XHTML. You have to tell the browser which language (called markup) you use, and you do that with a document type definition, better known as a doctype. Doctype is arcane code that looks like this: < !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN” "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> If you forget to include a doctype, your pages will appear annoyingly inconsistent. That’s because some browsers, including Internet Explorer, switch into a backward-compatibility state known as quirks mode when they encounter unidentified markup; in essence, they attempt to act like an outdated browser from the 1990s. Common problems that result include text that appears at different sizes in different browsers and layouts that wind up in different configurations depending on your browser.

2. Keep formatting instructions out of your markup. In a rush, it’s easy to get lazy and apply inline styles (or even worse, formatting tags like < font > ) to a page’s XHTML or HTML. But it’s rare for a web site creator to use a particular format just once. Most often, you’ll use a design--say for a column, heading, or note box--elsewhere on the same page or on another of your site pages. To ensure consistency across your site and to make it easier to fine-tune the look and feel of your pages, move all your formatting instructions to a central location: an external style sheet. That way, when a browser processes a page, it grabs this central set of instructions and applies them to the page (see the illustration for the sequence of events).

3. Be under renovation, not under construction. Think of your favorite store. Now imagine shopping there if you had to wander around half-lit floors while dodging ladders, pylons, and heavy-duty construction equipment to find the aisles that still have products on the shelf. It’s a similar story on the Web, where a site with empty pages, “under construction” messages, and vague promises of upcoming content will send visitors away in droves. Yes, it’s true that your Web site won’t be complete when you first upload it. But make sure that what’s there is genuinely useful on its own, and don’t draw attention to gaps and shortcomings. Instead, keep improving what you’ve got.

4. Think twice before you adopt copy-and-paste design. Typically, Web sites use the same page design across all their pages. For example, noodle around Amazon and you’ll always see a menu header at the top of the page and a sidebar on the left. There’s a very special circle in Dante’s Inferno reserved for Web developers who try to achieve consistent design by copying and pasting their XHTML from one page to another. It’s almost impossible to manage or modify this mess across all your pages without making a mistake, even if you have a small Web site. If you need a repeating page design, pick a suitable solution from the available options, each of which comes with its own caveat. Your can use server-side includes (which require Web host support), page templates (provided you have a Web design tool like Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web), frames (which can exhibit quirks), or a Web development platform (if you’re willing to take a crash course in programming).

5. Keep an eye on your visitors. Is anyone here? There’s no point in having a Web site if you’re not willing to pay attention to what content draws and keeps visitors and what falls flat on its face. Remarkably, the best way to do that is with a free yet industrial-strength service called Google Analytics. You simply copy a small bit of tracking code to each of your pages and within hours you’ll be able to answer questions like “Where do my visitors live?”, “How long is a typical visit?”, and “What pages are their favorites?”

Customer Reviews & Comments
If you spend much time on the Internet at all, at some point you've said to yourself, "Maybe I should have a web site." It can be a bit intimidating, and many people don't get beyond that "Maybe I should ..." phase. If you want to progress further, this book is for you. The book is laid out in a logical progression from concept to interaction to making money with your site. Each stage of web "development" has its own section in the book -- which is a huge plus: you don't have to wade through a lot of basic information to get to what you want. The first section covers the planning stage of website design. There's a discussion about choosing a hosting service (including the problems with using the free space that many ISPs give to their subscribers) and an overview of HTML editing software. There's also a brief introduction to HTML -- just enough to get you started. Section two takes it from there. You've found a hosting service, you've got the software, and you have the skeleton of a site. NOW you want to make the site look good. This section covers pictures, links, and tables, and even goes into some basic CSS. You learn to turn a bunch of separate web pages into a web site, add content so people want to visit your site, and make the site look good so people want to come back. Section three goes where the average HTML tutorial doesn't go and talks about driving traffic. Getting search engine hits, creating your own message boards, and even (once you get the traffic) making money on your site. This is the part of the book that will have broader appeal -- the information will be valuable to novices as well as more experienced webmasters. The only disappointment in this section was that the subject of hit counters and stat tracking services wasn't covered in much depth. I would have liked to have seen more information on the various tracking services, rather than a one-page mention. Part four starts to enhance the site. Javascript menus and buttons, and audio and video. This is a dangerous section, and the book does preach caution in adding many of these features (I noticed that there was little mention of animated GIFs, which I was very thankful for). The section on creative menus using Javascript and DHTML was very useful, and I plan on implementing some of what I have learned on my own site after the first of the year. The section covering audio and video was brief, but contained enough information for the novice designer to completely annoy visitors with embedded audio. Thankfully, the council in this section was moderation in all things -- they make sure that novices realize how annoying embedded audio can be. Part five covers blogging, specifically working with Blogger. This is a good idea, though most new bloggers will eventually want something more powerful. Syndication is also briefly explained (though they don't tell you how to create your own RSS feeds). Blogger-specific tweaks are covered briefly, and budding bloggers are encouraged to use the skills they've gained by reading the rest of the books to customize their basic Blogger templates. This book is a valuable asset for novice website builders, and contains many useful tips for more advanced users (though most power users will find little in it that they don't know already). It's up to date with the latest standards, though they spent more time talking about using table tags for layout than I would have liked, and not nearly enough time on div tags. I understand CSS a lot better now than I did before, and I've got some great ideas for improving my own sites. I think that the most valuable part of this book -- and, really, one of the reasons I love O'Reilly books so much -- is the fact that you can do everything in this book with free software. You can use Dreamweaver or Frontpage, but you can make a great site using free software that's readily available on the Web. Highly recommended.

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