Written by me  |  under Web Design

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You have always admired WebPages and, though you have your own online business, you really do not know how web pages are actually created or what the essentials are in web creation.

The most basic thing that you have to understand about web pages is how they are created. Web pages, before they become these visual and graphic representations, are actually texts that when combined be represented by certain functional structures. There are different languages that can be used as the texts and each language has its own advantages and disadvantages.

These are some specific things that you need to know when making a webpage.

Graphics and Images. People are visual, that is why it has become a must that web pages should contain graphics. There are a lot of ways how you can obtain graphics and images for your site. You can draw them yourselves using a specific program that would serve such purpose, taking pictures and scanning these pictures to have a soft copy of these pictures, getting still captures from videos, or copy pasting from the web. As for the last option, you have to be careful with the pictures that you get from the net. Make sure you are not infringing copyright laws by using royalty free images and graphics. If you intend to use your own pictures, you would need to have your own digital camera, a graphics editor program and a scanner.

Music and Video. Adding music and video files in your website is also an advantage in making people want to visit your site again and again. Reading usually takes a lot of time and sometimes, people are just too tired to read. Videos and sounds are very good alternatives of reading. In fact, you can place more ideas and can explain complicated structures more effectively in sounds and videos.

Testing. No matter what you prefer, whether you do it when the entire website is finished or you do it every time you finish a part of the website, always do a test of how your website runs or if it runs at all. Sometimes, when testing, better ideas come out and this always leads to further developments for the website.

Hosting Service. You need to choose a hosting service that would guarantee you maximum exposure in the Web. Scrutinize how often the uptime is and what are the terms and conditions regarding downtimes. You have to be very particular about these two thing among others because these will be your gauge as to how exposed your website is in the Internet along with other online businesses.

Using Flash in web pages is very tempting. It may look good for your site but in terms of usefulness, Flash really does not do much in helping your website in any means possible. If you are still not convinced, here are the top reasons as to why you should avoid using Flash for your online business.

It does not help in increasing the page rank of your online store. Search engine can’t syndicate any Flash content in your website. Thus, it would be a waste to use Flash files in your site if you could use other formats that could be useful not just in providing for your sit but also help in your search engine optimization.

It makes some website functions lose their usability. There are some web page basic functions that become problematic to use with Flash. An example would be the back button becoming disabled, the highlighting of certain text in the site becomes impossible, increasing font size becomes unworkable and even the bookmarking becomes disabled.

It makes the webpage less accessible. Flash has a lot of versions and not all computers have the necessary Flash version installed. This is the reason why there are a lot of Flash content in a website that are left unopened. Also, it makes the website difficult to access.

It is often disabled by some people. Thus, it only defeats the purpose of using Flash in the first place. not all people are very keen in allowing or seeing Flash based advertisements. Thus, I most users just disable Flash, what’s the need of using it in the first place?

It requires more tools to incorporate updates. Fresh content is a necessity in any ecommerce business. however, if a website uses pure Flash and Flash navigation, a Flash designer is need in order to incorporate updates. This can be very tedious especially if the one who knows how to operate the Flash designer is not around. Urgent fresh content could not be uploaded just because updating it in a Flash designer is impossible. If these updates can be uploaded in a much easier way, then it could have been much better.

It breaks search engine previews. There are search engines that give a short preview of what a certain site is all about in the list of search results. The preview is a helpful way in making viewers understand more the sites that come out in the results without having to open and close one site and then another. But if a site runs on Flash or it has some Flash content, it may not show any short information to serve as its preview since search engines do not include Flash as part of the preview.

These are but some of the many reasons as to why using Flash is discouraged. If you think the risks are worth taking, then it is your call.