Technical and Miscellaneous Matters

Navigating Your Site

Graphic Navigation buttons that have up, over, and down states can add interactivity and fun to a page. Because graphics do not always load properly, be sure to add Alt text to your navigation graphics.

Links

1. Text links should be a different color than the rest of the text on your page. Many people remove the underline link feature from their browser and would have a hard time seeing text links within paragraphs if they look exactly like the rest of the text.

2. Links to other pages on your site generally should open in the same browser window. Links to outside sites should open in a new browser window so that people will return to your site when they close the other browser window.

3. You control all internal pages, so make sure that you have no broken internal links. If you link to an outside site that is constantly down or that takes too long to load, consider removing the link.

Tags

Remember to add unique page titles and relevant meta tags for every page (or section) of your site. It is also a good idea to add alt tags to most graphics. This will help viewers with older browsers navigate your site, and it will increase your position with many search engines.

Copyright Statement

Although United States copyright law protects your content from unauthorized copying even if your site does not display a copyright statement, you should add a copyright statement for two reasons. First, many people believe that they have the right to use your content if a copyright statement does not appear. A copyright statement may act as a deterrent. Also, you may need to add a copyright statement to protect your work under the laws of different countries. Some countries equire the phrase "all rights reserved."

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1) Entry Page Design Considerations
2) Designing Inside Pages
3) Content Development
4) Technical and Other Matters
5) Web Design 101+ Homepage