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So using this as a guideline lets look at our own site example. We know certain that we want a page that lists all PlayStation games. We also want a page that would be for new releases, and we want an individual page for each game that describes
game and maybe has an snapshot image or something.
Our website will already have a root folder that is where your default homepage would be placed. Now you could create a folder called games in
root folder and then you could create a new folder in
games folder for every new game you add to your list. So let’s say you want to add Grand Theft Auto to your site.
www.cheats-playstation2-games.co.uk/games/grand-theft-auto/
Or you could avoid creating a new folder every time and just create a new web page, so for example:
www.cheats-playstation2-games.co.uk/games/grand-theft-auto.html
We would recommend
second option for your game description page. You would also have to create another file for
cheats. Again following
method above you could do
following:
www.cheats-playstation2-games.co.uk/cheats/grand-theft-auto-cheats.html
Notice that I modified
name of
html file by adding “-cheats” to
end of “grand-theft-auto”, that is for two reasons. One, when editing files you will never be confused about which page you are working on. Secondly,
actually file name will help search engines index
page better, hence giving you a higher page rankings.
Usability
A Web site has to be accessible, before it is even usable. Accessibility refers to
ease with which either disabled users, or users with non-standard browsing situations — or even users with typical visual abilities and
usual browsers — can access
information and other features of a site. In a sense then, accessibility is an extension of 'usability', in that a site needs to be accessible by more than just
CEO at his or her PC on your intranet.
Usability refers to
ease with which anyone (disabled or not, or with unusual viewing situations or not) can navigate a site and achieve
objectives which you have set for it, such as learning how to win their PlayStation 2 games. Your Web site may be wonderful, but if users find it to be unusable or perceive it to be so then it's unlikely they'll get far enough to discover just what's so wonderful about it.
A page of beautifully coloured Netscape layer pull-down menus won't be much use to
visually impaired non-English speaking users who favour Lynx, for example. If your target audience profile excludes such people, fine, but very often Web sites exclude valid users by default rather than design.
Content
One of
major problems in a site with a lot of content is how to present it without overwhelming
user. If you bury it down in
navigation structure, many people may never realise it's there. One way to solve
navigation problem would be to put links to all available pages, on
home page. Your visitor could reach every page with a single click. However, this is impractical for sites with hundreds or thousands of pages; there are further requirements such as keeping
home page fast- loading and not too complicated.
In our example, as you build up your site with all of
available PlayStation 2 games, you will need to carefully decide how to organise
home page. Perhaps only having a new releases list and maybe a What’s Hot list and then a search box, which would allow users to immediately search through all of
content of
web site and find information on
game they are looking for.
Putting it all on
home page may make it too cluttered. The most important navigational device for any Web site is
home page. This page alone is most likely to be
one that determines whether your visitors view one page, or many, at your site. If it doesn't offer any clue that this site has valuable information, and how to locate it, then people are unlikely to expend much effort to track it down. If on
other hand,
home page gives clear indications about what's available at
site, and how to get to it, then your user's interest is likely to last longer.
The conventional approach is to provide a few links to
next level down, from
home page, supplemented with a small selection of representative links from
next level down. An important question to answer is "How many clicks will it take my visitors to find anything?". People's patience begins to fade very soon after a few clicks; but you probably don't want a very large number of links on every page.
Domain hosting
Now
final step for getting your first web site live is hosting. This may be one of
more confusing steps as you will know doubt find thousands of companies offering hosting packages and choosing one of those packages might be difficult. But there are a few things to bear in mind:
· Size of your web site – At first your site will be small, but will grow with time.
· Cost of hosting – As your web site will grow, so will
cost.
· Easy upload methods – Since this is your first time you will want to make sure that
hosting company provides a very simple method of uploading your files to your domain, ie FTP client, Web service, etc.
We recommend that you consider some of
following companies to host your domain:
· www.rackspace.com
· www.hostway-uk.com
· www.123-reg.co.uk
For more information please see http://www.unilabplus.com

Director of Unilabplus Ltd, a London-based online business management software house.