Should I Use a Mac or PC? Great Question. You can use either for PC or a Mac re for designing. I started out designing web site’s on a PC back in the late 90’s. When I talk about design I am talking about designing graphics using a program like Adobe Photoshop not writing content.

I was introduced to a Mac as I was studying Multimedia during my course in web site design. The difference is obvious between both. Macs are designed more for designing Multimedia and Macs as a computer that can do so many things for you. If you plugged in a Camera into your PC via a USB cable you will need to install software and drivers. With a Mac all you need to do is plug in your cable and start downloading your images. Your camera is detected automatically and no drivers are needed for a Mac.

Windows XP is more easier to use today but sometimes tinkering is still required with the requirement of drivers etc to connect your hardware with your operating system. There is 1 major difference between both.

With a Mac your screen does not need to be calibrated so what you print looks the same as your screen. Windows requires your screen to be calibrated so what you see gets printed.. The screen on a Mac tends to be a little lighter and if you are erasing areas on an image make sure you do this correctly.

Tip - If you’re using the eraser or a paint brush to make parts of your image disappear make sure you do this correctly because I have found that looking at it from a PC it looks fine (which might have to do with my monitor settings) but viewing the image on a Mac re I could see small faint areas I have missed with the eraser or paint brush.

The other advantages you have with a Mac re are:

• No hunting for Drivers. Mac is plug and play
• No Viruses. Yes download as many PC viruses as
  you like they wont harm your Mac.
• What you see on your screen is what gets printed

The good news is you don’t need to spend a fortune on a Mac. I purchased my e-Mac back in 2002 for about $3000 Aus today you can buy the same machine for around $600 Aus on ebay which includes a dvd burner and the OSX operating system.

Remember what was good for us a few years ago can still be used today at the fraction of  the price. I haven’t updated my machine and don’t intend to.

Web Page Template - When you create one you will be able to implement an identical look and feel throughout your website. Shortly it will be time to build your web site We will start this off by building a web page template that includes:

* Designing the template only
* Finding positions for your images
* Selecting the right colors
* Adding your navigation links to this template
(just use links to pages you will create and name in the future)
* Double checking your template and make sure you don’t need to change anything
* Double check your navigation links. Did you forget to add any?
* Once you’re convinced that this is going to be your template page save it over and over again as the link names on your navigation links. Your look and feel will now be identical throughout your web site.
* Change the content only on each page you created using the web page template and save them as you make changes.
* Your web site should now be complete

Tips - On your computer create a folder where you will save your web page template and html files and then create a folder titled images inside this folder.

Example - c:/foldername/web page1.html

Now save all of your web page’s into this folder and your images into the images folder.

Example - c:/foldername/images

The links from your web page to your images should be:

Example - c:/foldername/myweb page.htm/images

So when you upload your web page’s the images will be linked from the images directory on your server.

Now login to your hosting account and in your main directory upload the complete images folder. The folder should be created for you as you do this. In the main directory upload all of your html files.

Visit the web page and your job is now complete.

Tips - Your web page’s can be saved with an extension such as .htm or .html. As long as they are all linked properly this will not matter. The only thing you need to investigate with your webhosting company is what extension your main web page needs to be so that when visitors visit your web site.

Example - www.mywebsite.com it auto defaults to www.mywebsite.com/index.html.

Traditionally its index.html but please check this with your web host. What I tend to do with my image is to upload them first into the images folder then link to them directly

Example - www.mywebsite.com/images/image1.jpg

How you do this is your choice. Before you delve in too deep have a practice putting up a web page first then a web page with images onto a remote server using your web page making software.

You might be wondering how to create a website and upload it if its your first time. Building a website which includes the
whole concept of designing and uploading can be a daunting experience.

Building a website consists of designing and creating your web page’s and uploading your website webpage’s and images
to your webhosting account using a FTP software program.

You will then need to make sure all of your links to your web page’s and images work.

Lets take a quick look at the process.

1. First thing you need to do is design your website template.  My suggestion is to prepare your images first and website ftp your images  to your web hosting account then build your webpage’s.

You will need to work out your image links and have these ready for your webpage’s. Example - If you have add a folder
and you name it images on your main web hosting directory your image path will be www.yourdomainname.com/images.

Many website designers like using the image link “images/image1.jpg” I prefer to use the complete path to my images.

2. The next step is to insert your images into your webpage editing software program.

Once you have completed your webpage’s its time to upload these to your server.

Below is a brief overview how this complete process works.

Step 1 – Create your images and upload your images to your image directory on your server using a FTP Software program.

Step 2 – Create your webpage and insert the image path that points from your image path from your server in your webpage using either html code or a WYSIWYG editor.

Example – www.yourdomainname.com/images/image1.jpg

Step 3 – Your image now appears in your webpage editing program.

Step 4– Upload your webpage to your server using FTP software.

Step 5 – How to create a website and upload it concept is now complete.

Visit your webpage via your browser and your webpage should come up with your content and images linking properly.

Writing Website Content is a fun and at times a challenging process depending if you know about the topic your writing about. Writing for some people is easy while for others this can a little difficult.

The first step is to always write about what you’re passionate about. You will find that words, sentences and ideas flow naturally and within no time you have built a webpage or two. Also be polite in your content and use your voice. Pretend you working talking to your visitors directly and use this voice in your webpages. If you have a good sense of humour let people see it when they read it and so on.

The second step is to make sure you presell your content when you’re writing website content. Be honest and truthful with what you write about and don’t exaggerate or lie because people can see this and without you realising this will be visible throughout your website and people will go somewhere else. Deliver what people seek and that is information and make your web pages have lots and lots of useful information.

Don’t write about a topic and attempt to convince people to click here for this product. Talk about the product you believe
in give examples of using this product promote it through your content by your experiences and naturally you are pre-selling his product. Remember instead of forcing your vistors to click on a link to buy a product make them do this without any push and you do this by providing content and pre-selling.

Lets take a look at an example of Pre selling when Writing Website Content.

The Wrong Way of Pre-selling a Product

I am a webmaster and have tried many software programs to drive traffic to my website and I found a product called Traffic Grabber. It works well and if your interested in the product Click here to buy it now.

How many of these websites have you visited and you walked not convinced?

The Correct Way of Pre-selling a Product

After spending some time working out ways on how to build my traffic on my website I came across Traffic Grabber. At first I was a little suspicious about the claims of this product but after using it for month my website traffic has increased. One great thing about Traffic Grabber is it allows you to find websites that will be happy to provide you with free traffic. I now use Traffic Grabber for all of my websites and I am really happy about the traffic I am getting from
this program.

What makes you want to go out there and purchase the product?

The Wrong Way of Pre-selling Content

I am an expert woodworker and I know what I am talking about and I think building a cabinet in mahogany is the best way.

The Correct Way of Pre-selling a Content

Working with woodwork for 20 years I have found that the best timber to use to build a cabinet is Mahogany because of its hardness and red grained color features. I have used Pine to build a few cabinets but I found the timber to be soft and easy to dent so I stopped using Pine. I have built 12 Cabinets in Mahogany to date and 7 Cabinets in Pine.

Which approach makes you belive this person is an experienced Cabinet Maker?

Use the same correct approach to convince people you’re an expert by the way you describe things in your content that only experience knows the answer and you will win over your website visitors.

Its all about being truthful and once you do this people will start to believe you’re an expert.

Don’t build a website with a few web pages that uses the wrong approach to pre-selling content. There are thousands of these websites already and this method does not work as well as pre-selling your content.

Remember to build a website with lots of webpage’s when you’re writing website content and make sure your focus is building a website about quality information you have a passion about and use the correct way of pre-selling your content.

Basic Rules for Writing Website Content

1. Focus on writing great information based content first. 2. Presell your content and make people see you’re an expert
3. When your traffic starts to build then and only then start to focus on making money from your website.

People online want one thing and that is information. Build your website around this and your website will head towards success. Search Engines are also using this method as a foundation to rank websites in Search Engine result pages.

Mind Map - these are very useful technique that is used by many website designers. This technique is used to get a look and feel for what your website will look like and its best to create a mind map before you get started in building your website. You can fully plan your website using a mind-map which is a process to layout your site on paper.

Some people use mind-mapping software to do this process but I enjoy making mine drawing it on paper. Once you have finished doing this process my suggestion is to leave it alone for a day or so then go back to it and review and updated it if it’s required.

With a few reviews this will let you plan and organise your website.

The best approach to getting your website structure correctly is to draw up a mindmap. I use an A3 Visual Diary to draw mine on and I might need to make a few attempts but I do this until I get it right. My suggestion is to review it a few times before you start building your template.

Above is an example of what a mindmap would look like.

For this example I have the:

• Homepage
• Products Main Page (Tier 2) (4 pages linked - Tier 3)
• Software Demo Page (Tier 2) (3 pages linked - Tier 3)
• Support Page (Tier 2) (2 pages linked - Tier 3)

Once this process is complete you will need to think about the size of your webpage. Will you be catering to meet the needs of visitors that have a screen resolution of 800×600 pixels?

The advice I can give you is to set out your website with a table no more between 720-800 pixels wide. This way whatever setting your visitor has they will be able to view your website.