How To Build A Better Website?

June 19, 2008 - PRLog -- Here our developers share 10 easy to follow tips to create perfect web pages

1. Scramble your email address
We hate spammers, so were chuffed when we found this free tool that makes it difficult for spam bots to "harvest" email addresses from your website.

2. Use CSS
If you’re limited by time or budget constraints, take advantage of a stylish web template built using XHTML and CSS. Combine your own brand identity with the clean easy to use template interface to produce instant web impact for your company with minimum cost and effort.

3. Add a Google Map
Google have provided this free web mapping service that powers many map-based services including thesmartwaytorent website via the Google Maps API. This cool web application provides street maps, aerial photographs, journey planner and local business finder! Also check out Google Earth which offers more globe-viewing features.

4. Add RSS feeds
RSS feeds enable you to see when websites have added new content. You can get the latest news and headlines in one place, as soon as its published. RSS are also known as News Feed (web pages, designed to be read by computers) . FeedBurner is a leading provider of media distribution and audience engagement services for blogs and RSS feeds. Owned by Google, their web-based tools help bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers promote, deliver and profit from their content on the WWW.

5. Create an imagemap
An image map is an pic or image that has been divided into "hotspots"; when a hotspot is clicked an action occurs, for example a new page opens.

6. Optimise your images
Reducing the size of that 8Mega pixel family snap will increase page load times, reduce disc space and reduce bandwidth at the same time. Web browsers load text first, so your site visitors will not hang around for large pictures to download. Tidy up, crop, sharpen and optimise your images with this Picasa; a free software tool from the good folks at Google.

7. Check your pages for broken links
You've worked hard to drive traffic to your website, so don't lose them at the front door! Spotting broken links are particularly important for e-commerce/ database driven websites with many pages of fresh content that are updated regularly. You can also create a custom 404 page.

8. Use an HTML validator
This free validator checks the markup validity of Web documents in HTML, XHTML, SMIL, MathML, etc.

9. Add a blog
Think of Blogs as an online diary or journal; great for sharing links, opinions, music, photos and video. They're also easy to make, so click here to create your Blog now!

10. Use Google sitemaps
Google says : "The Sitemap Protocol allows you to inform search engines about URLs on your websites that are available for crawling." In simple terms, an XML sitemap can be submitted to Google to help crawl your website better!