Web Design Concepts Explained - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

There are so many components that come together to make a good website that it can be totally overwhelming when you first begin contemplating one. This page has been designed to explain the ins and outs to the complete novice, and hopefully should answer a lot of your questions. If you need any more advice, or you think there's a question that should be added to the list, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Click below to jump to a topic, or scroll down the page to read them all.

• What is a Domain?
• What is Hosting?
• I've heard that Bandwidth is expensive, can't I just use my broadband?
• Do you use Templates? I don't want my site to look like anyone else's!
• How do I get more visitors to my website?
• What is Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising?
• What is a Web Browser?
• What is Accessibility, and how does it affect me?
• What is a CMS, and do I need one?
• What do you mean by Storage Space or Hosting?
• What is PHP?
• I've never heard of Ruby On Rails, what is it?
• I know you hand code CSS, but what does it do exactly?
• What does SQL stand for?
• I've heard a lot about Flash, do you use it in your websites?

Accessibility

Accessibility ultimately boils down to how easy it is for as many people as possible to look at your website. People look at websites with a Web Browser, which for the majority of people is the one that comes free with Windows - Internet Explorer. Unfortunately for web designers, every single Browser views the code that makes up a web page in a slightly different way, so something that looks great on Internet Explorer might look completely different on another browser, such as Firefox. To complicate matters even further, newer versions of the same web browser may often look at websites in a completely different way to the old versions too!

So when designers talk about accessibility, they are usually referring to to whether a website can be viewed in multiple browsers. Because 80% of the internet uses one of the many versions of Internet Explorer, some unscrupulous web design companies only design for this browser. This can be terribly negative for the website owner, as potentially 1 in 5 visitors to their website aren't seeing it how it was intended!

Luckily, the World Wide Web Consortium is here to help. They have laid down a set of standards, which, when met, ensure that websites can be viewed correctly by everybody. Every website I design is built to these standards, as signified by these badges:

[ Back to top ]

Bandwidth

Every website on the internet is hosted on a computer somewhere in the world (see ). Just as your computer accesses the internet via a modem or a router, the computer hosting your website has a similar internet connection, which is being accessed every time somebody views your site. The capacity that this connection has to pass data to and from the computer is called bandwidth

Although the connection used by a computer hosting web sites will typically be considerably faster than one a home or small business is likely to use, there is still a limit to the amount of data it can handle. Naturally, the more data sent to and from a website the higher the associated bandwidth costs.

Bandwidth is unlikely to be a consideration for most of my customers - despite the successes of each of the websites I've built, the only ones that come close to the bandwidth limits I've set are the E-commerce sites. I have accurately estimated the typical bandwidth costs for each of my packages, and this is included in the price, and reflected in the yearly hosting & support charge.

[ Back to top ]

Content Management

Updating a web page can be a time consuming process. Manually editing the files that make up a web page to update text can be complicated, and there is real potential for disaster if vital code is accidentally deleted!

To get around this, many companies who have to make regular updates (new product lines or news pages for example) opt for a content management system, or CMS. These systems, often utilising PHP, Ruby On Rails and/or SQL, allow a user to update a page quickly and easily, often simply by putting text in a box and then clicking a button.

[ Back to top ]

CSS

CSS is an important component of all modern web pages. It stands for "Cascading Style Sheets", and is the document where all the information about a web page's presentation is stored. By having all of this data in one place, it makes it quicker and easier to update a website's design. It also allows for flexibility in how and where you want your webpage displayed, CSS greatly simplifies the process of making the same data available to anyone accessing your page from multiple platforms which might view the data very differently, mobile phones and palmtop computers for example.

CSS is a core component in the making of accessible websites, and the World Wide Web Consortium have set out exacting standards for its correct use. The symbol below appears on many websites that are standards compliant.

[ Back to top ]

Domain

In practical terms, a domain is the address for your website.

Each website hosted on the internet is assigned a DNS number, which is its literal address. The internet is huge, and because each address needs to be unique, it is often a large number, such as 132.185.132.21. It would be a lot harder to remember how to access the BBC website if every time you wanted to visit it, you had to type 132.185.132.21 into your browser!

To simplify things, domain addresses point to a websites DNS address, to use the previous example, www.bbc.co.uk points to 132.185.132.21. This way, the human using the computer need only remember the domain address to access a website.

Typically, most Domain names are registered for 12 months at a time, although many companies offer registration for up to 10 years for when you are certain you want to hold on to a name. I register sites for 12 months as standard, and include renewal of the address in my yearly hosting & support charge.

[ Back to top ]

Flash

Flash is a graphics program often used to create animations and interactive sections for websites. Many adverts that you will have seen on the internet, pop-up or otherwise, are created with flash.

The scrolling images at the top of this website were made using Adobe Flash CS4.

[ Back to top ]

Hosting

A web host is where your website is stored online. Web hosting companies typically own or rent computers (called servers) in a data centre, upon which all of the files that you want to be made available online are stored. This data centre will have a fast internet connection, allowing many more people to view or download the files than would be possible if you tried to host them yourself.

[ Back to top ]

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

Pay per click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites, such as blogs, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an advertisement to visit the advertisers' website. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. When a user types a keyword query matching an advertiser's keyword list, or views a webpage with relevant content, the advertisements may be displayed. Such advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and often appear ahead of normal links.

Although many PPC providers exist, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the largest network operators. Minimum prices per click, often referred to as costs per click (CPC), vary depending on the search engine and the level of competition for a particular phrase or keyword list—with some CPCs as low as £0.01. Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular search engines.

[ Back to top ]

PHP

PHP is a "scripting" or "programming" language, primarily used to create dynamic content on web pages, ie text or images that change without having to reload a page. It is also used in conjunction with other languages such as SQL to administer databases.

[ Back to top ]

Ruby On Rails

Ruby on Rails is a powerful and flexible web technology, that streamlines the process of making dynamic web content. Websites that would take a team of php programmers to construct can be created in the same time by a single Ruby On Rails developer.

[ Back to top ]

Search Engine Optimisation

Having a well designed and informative website is one thing, having people actually visit it is another thing entirely. Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO is the process of propagating your web page over the internet, so that whenever somebody is searching for something related to your business, they are directed to your domain.

There are many different things involved in optimising a website, but content is king - the information on your website needs to be laid out in such a way that it is easily accessed both by the end user, and by the search engines.

In order to defeat spammers, the search engines regularly modify the formula they use to rank web pages, so as to prevent irrelevant websites appearing in searches they shouldn't. Because of this, it is important to have your website optimised regularly.

For a more detailed explanation of how sites such as google rank websites, click here.

[ Back to top ]

Storage Space & Hosting

Storage space (sometimes referred to as Hosting) is simply the amount of hard disk space that your web host allocates you. Simple websites, consisting of text and a few pictures, take up very little hard disk space. Storage space only really becomes important if you want to put up a lot of high quality photographs/videos/songs for people to view or download.

Hosting is a more general term, that really applies to the package of services that someone receives when they purchase storage space online.

[ Back to top ]

SQL

SQL, pronounced "Sequel" and commonly expanded to "Structured Query Language", is the most popular language for the storage and manipulation of data online. If you used a registry office as a metaphor, PHP or Ruby on Rails would be a person performing administrative duties, and SQL would be a clerk fetching or depositing files for them.

If you need a website to take, store and process data from consumers in any sort of quantity, then SQL is the most popular, and probably the most effective way of doing it.

[ Back to top ]

Template/Design

When most people think of web design, the first thing they think of is how it is presented. Typically, the design is created in an art program before any coding takes place. This design, often without any images or text attached, is called a template.

This template then functions as the scaffolding around which your website is constructed, rather than as a blue print or a mould as the name might seem to suggest.

[ Back to top ]

Web Browsers

As described in Accessibility, a web browser is the program that you use to view the internet. While they all do pretty much the same job, they all read the code that makes up a website in a slightly different way, which complicates things for a web designer or developer.

The most widely used web browser is Microsoft Internet Explorer, which comes free with Windows operating systems. Because of its dominance, it is often the focus of hackers looking to exploit holes in system security to access peoples computers, so it is important for Internet Explorer users to update it often

Safari is the browser included on Apple computers, and is popular with users of Mac's and iPhones. Firefox is probably the best known competitor to Internet Explorer, and is widely considered by tech aficionado's to be the fastest and most stable browser.

Internet search giant Google recently released their own browser, called Chrome. It is proving popular in tech circles, as it appears to be more stable than its competitors, but it has a long way to go before it becomes as widespread as Internet Explorer and Firefox

[ Back to top ]