Website Development
As my intention is to establish myself as a good web
master/website designer to be professionally connected with this
trade industry I have chosen rather comprehensive structure of my
website "to show that I can do it all" and that I am flexible
enough to satisfy demands of different kinds of customers for websites
ranging from personal individualised hobby
driven sites to advanced commercial
sites (small businesses).
I have received in April 2002 from Barnfield
Technology Centre (Centre of Vocational Excellence) an Award
For Outstanding Achievement sponsored by OCR
(Oxford Cambridge and RSA Examinations). It is based on commercial
website design dealing with jewellery (included in the Projects).
The opportunity was given to me by The Phelans - Goldsmiths and
Jewellers despite of the fact that they themselves had no intention
to go online. I would like to thank to them for all the support,
also accessibility to advanced equipment (JVC cameras, scanners
etc).
Purpose and objectives
The main purpose of commercial sites is naturally marketing products
and services to the customers. Marketing generally includes wide
range of means and ways to achieve its main purpose: sale of top
quality products not just for profit itself but also to the highest
satisfaction of the customers. There is quite a large scale of media
how to achieve this aim: e.g. commercials on TV, videos, billboards
and the sides of cars and buses, shopping windows, direct mail catalogues.
Web offers businesses a new marketing medium by means
of adequately and purposefully designed websites with accent on
the suitability and carefully chosen content and information. Such
a way target the audience very specifically to attract their attention
and increase the desire and interest "to buy" product
and services. That's why the ultimate sense of a good business site
should be automated
sales medium.
It can be implemented by basic concept overtaken from
the mail order business model: The proprietor (owner) "creates"
a website which contains an online catalogue and shopping cart system,
where the visitors check-in and check-out, whether set-up simply
or sophisticated navigational design linking to secure commerce
systems. The most advanced sites are generating database-driven
web pages.
A justification of domain
name
"Domain name" is defined by InterNic
as a familiar string of letters (svatava.co.uk) to be used for Internet
address (IP) instead of 32-bit numbers, normally written as 4 octets
(in decimal) e.g. 128.6.4.7. It is a "mnemonic device"
that makes Internet addresses easier to remember. Converting (translating)
domain name into the unique IP number is called "resolving
the domain name".
Important aspect is so called "universal resolvability".
There are 13 special computers - name servers called root
servers. They are coordinated by ICANN
and distributed around the world. The root servers contain IP addreses
(databases) of all the top level domains (.com, .org, etc.). Nevertheless
distributed all over the Internet there are "Domain Name Resolvers"
that download the information from the root servers and are mostly
located with ISPs or institutional networks. They are used to respond
to a user's request and issue the corresponding IP address.
Software (Programs) used
for HTML coding and Graphics Design
Macromedia Dreamweaver MX - top
rated visual program for extensibility to write own scripts
While using Dreamweaver I have appreciated mainly the fact that
it is possible to use text editor and insert HTML codes, especially
full java scripts and applets manually. It is the best of "both
worlds" solution for developers, who still like to work with
raw HTML code (latest 4.01 HTML).
Cascading Style Sheets - CSS1 and partially CSS2 are attached to
the structured documents.
Adobe Photoshop
for scanning and initial graphics design
Macromedia Flash MX
as the latest standard for delivering animation, video and sounds
(multimedia), also action scripts for forms and connection to databases.
Importing still images, video clips and e-mail shots
from JVC cameras
Publishing
Choosing an ISP (Internet Services Provider) for Hosting your website
on their server
Uploading your website with ftp (File Transfer Protocol) using WS-ftp
program, maintaining your site if required.
Creating and promoting your
RSS feed (code file, syndicated content), which is your channel
for publishing the information contained in articles, notes, news.
Weblog displays your RSS feed in HTML format.
Find more here!
Registering your site
"Registering your site" can mean two different things.
If you want your own domain name, it must be registered with ICANN
(see above) through one of the registration services, often your
ISP will do it for you.
Often it refers to registration with search
engines and directories.
A directory (e.g. Yahoo!) is a listing of category headings with
Websites listed under the given category. Search engines are looking
for an index Websites on the Internet according to keywords. A search
engine scans its database and returns a list of successful matches.
Search engine use software robots
to survey the Web and build their databases. Web documents are retrieved
and indexed. It is similar to a library query service. There are
many search engines on the Internet; some are better than others.
Some are better for specialised services, some hold different information.
A comprehensive list of at least 800 search engines and directories
can be found at
www.beaucoup.com
Within the top 25 belongs: Yahoo!, Google, Lycos, Excite, Go.com,
InfoSpace and Ask Jeeves.
Search engines are of great importance
to Webmasters and Internet marketers. When knowledgeable Webmasters
build their Websites, they use the meta
tag keywords on each page and insert the relevant keywords
for that page. When search engine indexes sites, it automatically
grabs the keywords from meta tags ("spider" engines).