8. Web page background - a colorful or busy background can make your text hard to read and may give impression of an inexperienced webmaster. If you do use a background image make sure it complements your site's theme, fits with your visitors experience and will increase your credibility.

9. Use correct fonts - offline world primarily uses "Times New Roman". This works well in print but not online. Sans Serif fonts, such as Arial, Verdana and Helvetica are best fonts for easy online scanning.

10. Font colors - best colors for reading online are black text on a white or off-white background. If you want to use multiple colors only use a maximum of 3. Too many text colors on a web page make it hard on eyes and spell inexperience. To emphasize text you can use bold tag (this text will appear bold) or italic tag (this text will appear in italics).

11. Check spelling and grammar - run your page through spell check in your word processor. It won't pick up all mistakes, so make sure you read it through yourself to find other errors. Spelling and grammar mistakes convey an unprofessional impression.

12. Simple navigation - main purpose of navigation bar is to make it easy for your visitor to find his way around your site. Place your navigation bar on left side or top of your page (or both). Repeat bar at bottom of page so your visitor does not have to scroll back up to move on to another section. ( Read my article "How to Create an Effective Web Site Navigation Structure" http://www.isitebuild.com/navigation).

13. Get a critique - don't fall in love with your writing and leave it there. Yes, it's hard to listen to someone criticizing your beautiful piece of work, but swallow your pride and get your friends or family members to do a review of your web page. This will help you to refine what you have written and make it appeal to a wider audience.

14. Use specific keywords - weave targeted keywords into your web page as you write your web page content. I'll cover "How to Write for Search Engines" in Part II of this article.

What are we including on server side?

Perhaps it would be better to think of includes as "modules" that we can insert into our web pages. These modules (or "includes") are usually just text files that contain HTML code (although they can be other file formats). The code inside these files can be inserted anywhere in a page simply by using an include command. For example, imagine for a moment that our freelancer had foresight to realize that navigation menu would change at some point in future. Instead of putting code for navigation menu into each individual page, freelancer placed this code into a separate file. For sake of example, we can call this file nav-menu.html Our freelancer can now simply place an "include" command that refers to nav-menu.html anywhere he/she wants to place this menu. The advantage of this is becomes apparent when our freelancer needs to modify navigation menu. Just one file needs to be edited, nav-menu.html, and all pages containing "include" refering to this file will automatically update themselves. This time savings is primary advantage of using includes.

OK, I get it, but what does an include look like?

Even though this is not a "technical" article, many of you are probably wondering what an "include" looks like. Therefore, one example for PHP is included below. Please note PHP is just one type of scripting language that can be used, depending on what your server is running. In this example, code contained in file "nav-menu.html" will be inserted into any web page where following code is placed:

Keep in mind that, for technical reasons, server side includes will never be visible when you view source code for a page in your browser. This is because include happens on server (before presenting resulting code to browser). This makes use of SSIs invisible to browsers, bots, spiders (which is why they are search engine friendly)

Summary

The catch-22 of server side includes is that need for them only becomes apparent when faced with task of updating tens or hundreds of pages of code. There are many resources on web that will instruct you how use virtual includes, and procedures will vary depending on type of scripting language supported by your server (e.g., ASP, PHP). Hopefully you now understand Server Side Includes and how they can benefit webmaster.

About authors:

This article was written by editors of Kabooli Internet Directory. This article may be used freely in opt-in publications and websites as long as article not changed in any way and all links in Authors section are active . A courtesy link to any online posting would be greatly appreciated and can be sent to editors of Kabooli Directory by using the Kabooli Internet Directory Contact Form