ficara n.v. - TIps and Tricks

Tips & Tricks

Some tips and tricks on how to improve your website

So you want to know what the tricks are to designing a good website? Or maybe you need some tips on how to design a good website? Well, without giving away too much secrets, we will give you some tips on good webpage design, good website desgn, and relational database design. There are also some tricks on how to get some simple but tricky things done efficiently.

Tips

We have tips on the following:

• Relational Database Design
• Webpage and Website Design

Tips on Relational Database Design

One of the cornerstones of relational database design is the Entity-Relationship Model (E-R Model). This model of data in the user's domain is usually translated into a Relational Model, which is then implemented on a relational database such as MySQL.

The paper Deriving Entity-Relationship and Relational Model Diagrams (pdf) by Fidel A. Captain, outlines the steps necessary to create sound relational database designs. An XHTML version that can be read from this site comming soon.

Tips on Webpage and Website Design

Before looking at the first template or before typing the first XHTML tag you need to do is decide what the purpose or goal of the web site will be, and who the audience will be. Your website and webpages should be designed around your audience and have a specific goal.

Here are three important things to remember when designing web pages:

• They should be simple
• They should be consistent
• They should be focused
  

While web site design deals with the structure and content of your entire site, web page design deals with the content and layout of the individual pages within your site. Web page design is concerned with what goes on the individual pages, how it is placed on the page, and where it is placed on the page.

There is an old saying: Content is King. An excellently designed website is absolutely useless and defeats its purpose if the content is poorly delivered or ineffective.

Consider the following when deciding how to deliver content to your users:

• Your content should be usable - You should create content that is appropriate for your audience.
• Your content should have a goal - There must a purpose to your content.
• Your content should be readable - Your audience should be able to read the content without trouble.
• Your content should be skimmable - Your audience should be able to skim through the content without trouble, picking up key facts with little effort.
• Your content should be delivered properly - Your pages should load in a reasonable amount of time and delivered using the appropriate medium.

Page layout is concerned with how you layout the contents of a web page on that web page. Apart from having the appropriate content on a web page, where this content is placed is just as important as the content itself.

Consider the following when deciding how to layout the content of your web page:

• Your layout should be simple - Your layout should not contain more elements than necessary.
• Your layout should be consistent - Users should always know that they are your site because of its look and feel.
• Your layout should be logical - The various elements of your page should be sensibly positioned.
• Your layout should be clutter free - The main purpose of a web page is to deliver content, and this content should be the most prominent item on your page.

Tricks

Coming Soon!