A Beginner's Guide To Websites.

This guide to websites is provided as general information and as such should not be relied upon as your sole source of information. We recommend a client contact Hollowpoint to discuss their individual needs. However, if you are looking at having a web site developed for the first time, this guide should provide you with helpful hints.

What is a website?

A website is a collection of web pages, joined by links between the pages, just as a group of pages in a book is joined by a Table of Contents. Websites can have any number of pages, from one page (commonly called a ‘home page’) to literally hundreds of thousands of pages. A website generally has one overall ‘theme’ or ‘template’ that gives the site it’s look and feel, then it usually has pages that contain different pieces of information, with titles that denote what the visitor would expect to find if they visited a particular page. For example, a website might have a page that contains a business's contact details. So, the web designer creates a ‘link’ to that page on all of the other pages, and titles the link ‘contact us’ so that when the visitor sees the link, they know that if they click on that link, they can expect to be taken to a page that contains contact details for the business.

A website has 3 major components – a web address (for example, www.yoursite.com ), so that visitors can access it, a design so that it appeals to whomever the target audience is, and content (which can be text, images, media and so forth). A website may also have other features like a shopping cart where customers can place orders for products, a form so that visitors can send the owner their contact details, and even complex databases that allow visitors to customize the site to the way they like things to appear or to display the information they want to see, or have searched for.

A website can typically be broken down into two main categories – Static and Dynamic. Static websites usually don’t change very often. Content usually stays the same, and the look and feel of the website doesn’t change over time. Occasionally the website owner may want to update the information contained on the website, so he or she usually contacts their designer to make the necessary alterations.

Dynamic websites, on the other hand, can have content which changes based on time of the day, what a visitor chooses to look at, what the site owner decides to put on the website at any given time, and what products the visitor is searching for. The advantages of a dynamic website is that you can keep the visitor interested for longer, and you can display information that is the most sought after by the visitor. The downside is generally cost – Dynamic websites are usually a lot more expensive than what a static site would cost.

next page >>