In age we are today, things change fast in Internet and so if you are to keep up with your customers and to make maximise profits as a webmaster, you must be able to design and re-design your website to reflect message you pass to your customers.

Sometimes waiting for your website designers take ages to effect this changes which you could have been able to do quietly from your home or office without having to pay lots of money to web designers and wait on queue to get to your turn before change can be effect. These delays result in loss of sales most of time.

There is no way I will ever buy anything from a web site that has missing images or broken links. I mean, if this webmaster doesn't care about his web site, he probably could care less about his customers.

Getting your web site to look good can sometimes be a hair-pulling experience. Even for me, and I have been making web sites for over 5 years. I can only imagine how frustrated many newbies can get.

Let me share with you some of common problems in designing a well-functioning web site. If you haven't made these mistakes yet - trust me: you will! Keep this troubleshooting guide handy for when you need it (and save some of your hair, too!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1. MISSING IMAGES ON THE PAGE 2. IMAGE LOADS VERY SLOWLY 3. IMAGE LOOKS DISTORTED 4. BROKEN LINKS 5. TEXT IS MISSING ON THE PAGE 6. VISITORS CAN'T SEE YOUR FANCY FONTS 7. TOO MUCH HORIZONTAL SCROLLING REQUIRED 8. THE TABLE IS WIDER THAN SPECIFIED 9. WEB PAGE DISPLAYS OLD LINKS AND IMAGES 10. BACKGROUND DOESN'T SHOW 11. CAN'T ACCESS YOUR HOME PAGE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PROBLEM 1: MISSING IMAGES ON THE PAGE

SOLUTION: There are three things that might cause this problem. You have either forgotten to upload image to your web server, didn't link to it correctly, or graphic is in invalid format.

1) Remember, you need to upload all graphics that you are using on your web page, just like any other file. So if you have a "services.html" page that contains "staff.jpg" graphic, you need to upload both "services.html" and "staff.jpg" to your web server.

2) You also need to reference that image correctly. For this, you need to understand a little bit about files, folders, and directories. Basically, a file is a document. A folder (or a directory) is a collection of files.

You might have a directory on your web site called "images". Inside it you might have "staff.jpg", "logo.jpg", and other files. Now, here is trick: if your HTML file is located in same folder with graphic it contains, then here is how you refer to that image:

So far, simple, right? But let's say that your HTML file is located in main directory, while graphic file is located in sub-directory. For example, "services.html" is located in root directory of your web site so that if you type www.yoursite.com/services.html in your browser location bar, you will see it.

And let's say that you placed a graphic used on that page into a sub-directory called "images", so that when you type www.yoursite.com/images/graphic.jpg into your browser location bar, you will see that image. So how do you refer to that graphic from your "services.html" page? Here is how:

All I did was put sub-directory (or folder) name followed by a forward slash before graphic name.

Finally, what if you put an HTML page into a sub- directory, but leave image in main (root) directory? For example, your "services.html" is located in a sub-directory called "pages". And graphic used on it, "staff.jpg", is placed in main directory, so that when you type this address into your browser location bar, you will see it: www.yoursite.com/staff.jpg How do you refer to this graphic on your "services.html" page? You use "previous directory" notation like this: The browser will then know, that in order to find that graphic it needs to look in one directory below. If you are having trouble understanding above notation, use absolute image references. For example:

Make sure you know where you placed your graphic (which folder) and refer to it as if you were accessing it from your web browser. That's it!

3) And finally, if you are not using graphics with "JPG" or "GIF" extension, they will not appear on your web page. Use PaintShop Pro or any other graphic editor download.com) to convert your graphic from any format to "JPG" or "GIF". Broken images may also happen even if they don't have right extension. That's because they have been created in a not-for-web format. When a graphic artist designs your logo, remind her to save it as "RGB" (which stands for "red-green-blue") or "Indexed Color" and not any other color mode (such as "CMYK"). For more information, see "Choosing right format for your images" at http:/ ech.irt.org/articles/js206/index.htm PROBLEM 2: IMAGE LOADS VERY SLOWLY

The good news is that I am not going to charge you for this information. I am just going to give it to you.

Granted, it may require some work on your part to implement this little jewel, but you already spend untold hours searching for new business, right? While implementing this suggestion might require a few hours work on your part, it will continue to pay its dividends through long-term future.

If instead of building your own site, you employ a web designer to do your HTML work for you, this suggestion will cost you a few dollars to get additional website work done.

Let me reiterate. This step will result in a 25% increase in your sales. As far as I am concerned, your web designer should do as you desire him/her to do, or he/she should be replaced with someone who will. If I am paying someone to do a certain type of work for me, then they should do it as I require it to be done.

As you begin to undertake this task, you may discover that you may need to find another web designer. Even when you are paying money for web design work, many of you will find your web designer fighting with you as to whether this step is important to your success or not.

Let's put this into perspective. Your web designer knows how to build websites. Knowing how to build websites does not necessarily lead to knowing how to market a website or how to sell products.

You will shortly understand why web designers fight this suggestion with assertions that it will not make a difference for your online sales. No matter how strongly they may argue their point of view, 25% is a big chunk of business to give up to let them have their way.

Nearly every web designer I have ever talked to uses software to build websites they build. If you are building your own website, you likely use software as well.

There are many packages these folks use including: FrontPage, Dream Weaver, Home Page or dozens of other variations of this software.

While software may be efficient for building What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) web pages, quickly and easily, these software packages have many disadvantages as well.

One disadvantage is that software creates dirty HTML, which in effect is act of placing too many HTML tags in code. Often times, dirty HTML is best understood by looking at code with an educated eye and seeing sets of HTML tags where they are unnecessary.

Though this is ugly for editing and can take additional seconds for your viewer to download, that is not real source of problem we seek to repair. But, do remember this point as we move on. Dirty HTML is "ugly for editing."

It is now time for some Bill Gates' bashing.

Back in 1996, Bill Gates finally pulled his head out of sand and realized future for software market was on Internet. In a mad dash to catch up, Microsoft created Internet Explorer to compete with Netscape Navigator. Until this point, Netscape dominated Internet browser market.