Forum Moderators: phranque
I have tons of questions for you folks regarding a website redesign. I am presently working for a company that has a decent page ranking on their current site, however, the overall look and usability are outdated. Therefore, I redesigned the site giving it a warm and want to stick around a while feeling (hopefully). With the internet world constantly changing I have the following questions that have come into my mind at the moment:
There are so many folders and pages on the present site, should I create a folder (naming it new site) and house the new site in this folder until I am ready to go live?
Should I build the site using css, dnn or other coding? I am presently using Dreamweaver - straight HTML. My graphic skills are far better than my coding skills.
I have been researching what makes a good site (at the present) and found that clean pages with minimal content is the suggested way of building the site now a days. Is this true? I thought content was important as well as eye candy.
Any other suggestions that you can provide me with would be fantastic.
Thank you very much.
There are so many folders and pages on the present site, should I create a folder (naming it new site) and house the new site in this folder until I am ready to go live?
Yes, and if you change the name of the pages then you should do a redirect from the old ones to the new ones when you go live. Look up 301 redirect
Should I build the site using css, dnn or other coding? I am presently using Dreamweaver - straight HTML. My graphic skills are far better than my coding skills.
If the site doesn't need to interact with the user then straight HTML is fine. There are some definite advantages to external CSS and using CSS for positioning as it can make your code much cleaner still. But if you're not comfortable with CSS or don't have time to learn the tricks then straight HTML should be fine.
I have been researching what makes a good site (at the present) and found that clean pages with minimal content is the suggested way of building the site now a days. Is this true? I thought content was important as well as eye candy.
Minimal content? OK, you don't want to overdo it on one page but I don't know about minimal. IMHO you should split the content up into themed pieces and have a page for each, but that doesn't mean that each page will have 'minimal' conent.
[edited by: trillianjedi at 3:38 pm (utc) on June 10, 2006]
[edit reason] Fixing formatting error [/edit]
Minimal content? OK, you don't want to overdo it on one page but I don't know about minimal. IMHO you should split the content up into themed pieces and have a page for each, but that doesn't mean that each page will have 'minimal' conent.
What you mean by minimal has to depend on your readership. I believe 500 to 800 words per page, excluding navigation and advertising, is a good balance for adult readers. Halve that for young teenagers, and even less for children under 8.
The more you need to cut down the text, the more you will need to keep images for illustration, and to maintain readability.
Consider how many pages down your visitors will need to scroll to access your content. Certain visitors won't tolerate scrolling at all, whereas others will expect it. You just need to research your audience and find the right balance.
