A polished website requires forethought and organization,
but don’t let that scare you off. Take
time to consider the other three W’s of the World Wide Web-why, who, and
what. Answer these questions now and
save yourself time later.
Why?
There are two parts to this question. First, ask why you want a website and what’s
your mission? The reason can be as
varied as advertising your business, sharing photos with family and friends, or
creating a site just because it’s fun.
Then ask why you are building the site? Do you want to become a webmaster
extraordinaire, or did Aunt Irene insist you build one for the family? The answer to this question helps guide how
simple, grand, or ambitious your site is.
Think about how much time you are willing to spend on building and
maintaining the site. Perhaps you want
to start small and leave room for growth or maybe you want to launch a
full-scale site with all bells and whistles ringing at once.
Who?
Who is your audience? A site targeted for family and friends differs greatly from a site geared toward users worldwide. This especially true for a niche audience such as gardeners or baseball fans.
Finally ask if your audience will check your site to
accommodate them. Think about how your
sites goals mesh with your viewer’s habits.
What?
What kind of contents are you going to have on your
site? If you know who your audience is,
you know what content to provide.
For example, if the “who” is Maine Biologists and the what
is my research on the shrinking habitats of seahorses and include photos, text,
and links about seahorse conservation programs.
The needs and wants of your audience will help drive the
content and presentation on our site.
Remember that a website with a purpose is never boring.
If you’ve taken the plunge and created a website, tracking
who visits your site can provide valuable information for both the webmaster
and visitor. Most Web-based site
tracking solutions require that you add a small graphic or code to the
particular pages you wish to have monitored.
One service that does a fine job at making the setup easy is Site
Meter.
Site Meter offers a free counter and statistics tracker that integrates easily into your website. The setup has easy-to-follow instructions. Site Meter offers custom support for adding the tracker to sites created with most popular WYSIWYGHTML editors, including FrontPage, Claris Home Page, and Adobe PageMill.
Sites Meters free service includes a hit-counter that lets
you know how many people have visited the site. Information collected and
tracked by Site Meter includes users’ browser type, operating system, domain
location, and language. Site Meters ease of use and well laid-out statistical
information make it a great tool for any website.
Q: What is the
difference between a website and a web page?
A: A
website is a location on the World Wide Web.
Websites contain homepage, the first accessed documents, and additional
documents and files. These other
documents are referred to as webpages.
A site is basically a grouping of pages.