4. Give credit where credit is due, or some night you'll be murdered in your sleep.
5. Legibility counts - pick colors that don't clash.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
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Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
posted
6. Substance over form.
Registered: Nov 1999
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Also, getting the word out about your site is important. But by no means am I at all endorsing or encouraging useless spam on message boards. The only advertising I've done on message boards is to have a link to my website included in my signatures. That's all. Otherwise, I've listed my site at a couple of Trek search engines, and Bernd was kind enough to give my site a mention or two on Ex Astris Scientia, from which a large number of my visitors came in the first few months.
Getting my site listed on Google was the biggest boost, though. I went from 6,000 visitors in February 2001 to 12,000 visitors in March 2001. Google doubled my hit count in only one month.
However, you can't expect to maintain the kind of steady visitors that you'd hope for unless you have fairly regular updates. Bernd (this may sound silly, but he's my role model ) hasn't missed a single week that I can recall (maybe one or two at most) -- he's always got something new to add, even if it's just a page or two.
A website is more than just a one-off project. It should be a long-term hobby. If you want to be "successful," you've got to give it constant attention and updates.
If you want to stand out, I strongly suggest some decent graphics editing of some kind. Take a look at these three versions of my site:
July 2000 with images created exclusively in AppleWorks, which was never intended for web design.
July 2001 with some improved graphics that I got using Photoshop 5.0 LE.
July 2002 (current), which was released only a few days ago and designed using Macromedia Studio MX.
Interactivity (like rollover buttons) aren't a necessity, or even desirable if you've got a simple page. I only decided to add the rollovers in order to enhance the effects a little bit (and I only used it in a few places). In fact, on simple pages like what you're probably going to start with, I'd say that rollovers and other advanced stuff like that would be pointless and make things look worse. (Unless done perfectly, I mean.) Start out simple, and then build on the foundation later. Once you've got the hang of the basic web site down, I'd also strongly recommend that you ensure that your HTML (or XHTML) code is validated. There's a free validator service provided by the World Wide Web Consortium that allows you to link to or upload web pages and it will tell you whether the code is correct, and what needs to be fixed. Perfect coding is not always essential (I lasted for two years with some horribly non-standard code created by my original editor, Claris Home Page), but it shows the extra effort that you put into your site, and also pretty much ensures that your site is going to be viewed properly in any recent browser.
There's all sorts of other stuff I could tell you, but I won't ramble on. I will, however, point you to the Web Page Design for Designers site, that's got some pretty useful articles about how to develop and publish your site. Check it out!
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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Red BWC
Ex-Member
posted
Bump 1:
I am trying to get all my graphics together, such as my starships, and I want them to be quality images, and all I have is Paint. I dont have a vector program, much less want to learn to use one. Dern. Oh well, let the visitor beware.
(You would like to retrace them for me, wouldn't you? Please? Ah dern...)
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posted
The LCARS format is overdone. Unless you know how to do something really fancy (but not to the point of non-useability), don't use it.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Red BWC
Ex-Member
posted
Joy, only 37 ship to draw up.
TSN, I am just going to have it basic, nothin fancy. Like a title logo, the a little thing with updates and a welcome message (help with that, please?) and then the links.
The links will go to a page, with the class name in really big letters, then links to specifications, schematics, and stuff. Which goes to ask what should I put besides the schematics and specs...
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posted
I don't know what is wrong, but whenever I click on your site, MinutiaeMan, all I get is code.
-------------------- "Lotta people go through life doing things badly. Racing's important to men who do it well. When you're racing, it's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting."
-Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney, LeMans
Registered: Mar 1999
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Gotcha Aban, I have already designed the graphic, the logo. Now I need to find a server, finifh the ships, write up the stufff for them, and then code it. Is that right?
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posted
If it were me, I'd do all the ships first... or at least while you're working on the design of the site. No point in having a bunch of "coming soon" pages.
And please tell me that graphic you linked to is just a layout sketch. If you're planning on doing all your type and borders as one big graphic, you need to do some more reading.
There's all kinds of relatively simple things you could do to spruce that design up. You could use a background color (as opposed to an image). You could use a font other than helvetica, or whatever it was, for that title block. You could use an image as part of your header graphic.
This is where the thinking and designing stage comes in before you actually start coding anything. The point is to figure out how it's all going to work and what all information you're going to need before you go and start making your tables and such.
I have no idea how "pure coders" do it... but that's how I, as a WYSIWYG coder, do it.
posted
That's exactly the way pure coders would do it. Think about what you want, especially how your tables/frames will work, and then start the fun bit: coding! In my case, though, the endresults hardly look like the initial plans, since I make new stuff up as I code.
posted
BWC, it's not always necessary, but generally some careful use of "Star Trek"-style fonts in your graphics can give your site a "Trekkian" theme without going overboard into something as crazy as a full-out LCARS layout. There are plenty of fonts out there if you take a few minutes to look. (I've got a collection of them myself, but they're not up on my new server yet.)
If you take a look at the front page (and then at a couple of inside pages) to see what I mean -- I've got Trek fonts for the title and a couple of other header images, and only a bit more for the home page interface. But other than that, I rely on simple, plain text.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709
btw, my site is an example of a subtle Trek look. there isnt much star trek stuff on the front page, but i use the Fleet font and a slightly movie era lcars look, but without any overt trek references until you get down to the content links
Registered: Sep 2001
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![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
) hasn't missed a single week that I can recall (maybe one or two at most) -- he's always got something new to add, even if it's just a page or two.
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