Create Your Website and Make it Flow

Study these tips for better website flow

Arrange your website and stop wasting time

Your Website will get out of hand fast if you don't design a natural flow for your pages. I know because I've tried to design Websites without putting it in order. It was all fun until I had to find a page to make changes later. Quickly, I realized that a site without flow control can become very cluttered and discouraging.

Your website will be more operable and pleasing to work with in the future if you'll take a couple of extra minutes when saving your pages to incorporate a system for your web files.

Filing method for Web Page Design

Think of your "Open" box or "Save File" box as a file system. It contains all the files that you yourself save to your hard drive. When you first start designing your Website, it will seem easy to keep up with all your pages.

You may only have 3-5 pages to begin with, but as you add pages, it will become more and more difficult to remember the location of all your pages.

It is extremely important to organize your Web page files from the very beginning -- so start now. ..

First and foremost, your Homepage or main page of your website should be named "index". You will find that most Internet sites have an "index" page, which is normally their starting page.

The index page outlines your site and gives direction and description to your visitors.

Once you have an index page, you'll start designing other pages for your website. The examples below demonstrate my own site's layout of categories. The bigger your website, the more categories will play a role in your "file system".

Web Pages Located in the First Level of My "Open" or "Save" Box:

(Asterisks represent yellow file folders seen on your hard drive.)

*Articles

*Fun

*Learn

*Resources

*Subscribe

*index.htm

Notice that the "Articles" folder is an opening for many different article files.

Instead of saving all web articles that I write onto the same index page or home page, I place them all in the "articles" folder. This helps me to identify my articles right away when I want to change them or transfer them to the Net.

Web Pages Located in the Articles section of My "Open" or "Save" Box:

*101

*7-marketing-methods

*competition

*folders

*headlines

*internet

*introduction

*referrals

*search-engines

*table-dangers

*top-10-tips

*index.htm

Okay. Each Internet page in this section contains an article except the index.htm page. You're probably wondering why I have an index page in this section also. The index page in this section is the "main" page for my articles.

This page outlines the article section by having each article categorized and a link to each article page on the website similar to a table of contents.

NOTE: You do not have to name other web page files "index" if you feel it will be confusing to you later. Just name it "articlesdir.html" or whatever you want.

I usually build an index page for each section that will have multiple Web pages. Another way to illustrate this is to think of a store catalog being suddenly transferred to the Internet. You'll have a homepage, categories, and probably sub categories.

From the home page, you'll have a link to a catalog page with categories such as "Computer Software". Under the "Computer Software" section, you'll have a link to "Programming Software," "Web Design Software," "Graphic Design Software," etc.

Get the idea?

Here's what the basic "Open" or "Save" box on three different levels may look like for an Internet catalog...

First Level:

*Web Catalog

*Contact Information

*Order Information

*Special Orders

*What's New?

*index.htm (this could be named whatever you want)

Second Level (Under Web Catalog Heading):

*Software

*IT Training

*Webmaster Resources

*Web Design Courses

*Graphic Design Courses

*Web Promotion Tools

*Mailing List Resources

*index.htm (this could be named whatever you want)

Third Level (Under Web Design Courses Heading):

*HTML Beginners Course

*Advance Webmaster Training Course

*Webmaster Certification Course

*Web Design Programming 101

*FTP Tutorial for Beginners

*index.htm (this could be named whatever you want)

You can see how arranging this Web catalog on the Internet offers simplicity and sensibility. Taking the time to arrange your web pages in this manner will do the same for your Internet pages.

Just remember, each time you make a new Web page and save the page to your hard drive, stop for a moment and ask yourself, "Where will I remember to search for this page later if changes are necessary." Then you can save each page sensibly and make your Web design life much easier in the future!

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Article written by Candice Pardue, Online Success for Internet Business. Go here to learn web design from start to finish. This one's for beginners...

Beginning Webmaster

This article about web design and web flow may be reprinted for use as content at any website or in any publication as long as the article is kept in-tact with included links, text, etc.. and the resource at the conclusion of the article must remain with the article. The articles may not be sold for profit or included with a consumer product without written permission from the author. Thank you, and enjoy!

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