Web Design: The Areas That Intrigue My Psyche

Posted by Shell on Feb 23, 2019 in Inspiration and Development

Since I began learning web design with the coding and the requirements of making a working website I have been intrigued with the many working components that make the successful website.

SEO Importance

One of the most important components is SEO, search engine optimization, of course because why create a website and the expense of having one if the site isn’t being found by users in the search engines. Many of the other things with web design that intrigue me play into the ranking of the website like if a site is responsive and mobile-friendly it will increase its ranking. The faster speed and load time of a site improves its ranking which brings optimization of the websites image and graphic assets into focus of importance because it will determine how fast your site loads and the disk space it takes on your server. The right use of titles, filenames, image naming, headings, and content with keywords that users would search for but would also be relevant and interesting to the reader affects the site’s ranking. There are by far many more elements and topics that play into SEO that I am still actively enjoying discovering and learning.

Responsiveness is a Requirement

The direction technology and the average user are flowing is the smaller devices of mobile phones and tablets which makes having a responsive mobile-friendly site a must. I started creating websites and learning HTML5 and CSS3 along with responsiveness during my time in the web programming and development program. I created sites using just notepad ++, HTML5, CSS3, and media queries. This allowed me to have a good start with the building foundation of a website. I also have a basic knowledge of MySQL, PHP, and JavaScript to aid me as well. I’ve also worked with Adobe Dreamweaver and WordPress while in the graphic communications program to create websites with their software and features while being able to manipulate the code to make the changes or responsive outcome I desired.

Until last semester I’d have said the art of website responsiveness was in media queries usage, then I learned of flexbox. Flexbox code had been in my textbooks a couple of years before but hadn’t really been a reliable option at the time because most of the browsers didn’t support it in the way that they now do. While working with flexbox in creating my custom-built site with Dreamweaver I discovered its usage made less media queries necessary with it moving the content within it’s coding to accommodate smaller screens mostly automatic without a bunch of extra media queries to accomplish this. I look forward to learning more about flexbox and utilizing it in the future.

Validation a Must

Another requirement of successful sites is having your site coded to meet the W3C validation for multiple reasons. It insures your site is constructed accurately and will work with browsers and devices, it helps improve rankings in search engines and helps for easier code and maintenance of the website.

Accessibility is Good Business

Then there’s the topic I have not dived very deep in yet but intrigues me which is the accessibility of a website and how to code to ensure the website meets accessibility requirements of those with disabilities. From the colors and contrast of items to ensure color blind and hard of seeing individuals will have the best user experience. Then there are the readers that the blind and hard of seeing use to access online sources. These readers utilize the code of the site to depict what the site offers. Items have to be coded in a certain order with the order of heading tags being important, as well as the use of alt tags. Alt tags are what the readers provide the user with in place of the image they can’t see. Alt tags have multiple purposes between what the readers present to the disabled, when an image fails to load this is what seeing users see and it is used by search engines too.

Updating Regularly and Often

I could continue on and on but will wrap up this post with the Blog and why it is probably the best way to fulfill the advice “update your website often and regularly with new content. Regular updates done often will help improve a sites ranking and make it relevant to user’s to have them return often for more new content. A surefire way to insure a stagnant website is to not update it for months or years. The blog makes this possible for many websites bringing in the online traffic.

Life Time Learner Here.

I will be actively learning and keeping up with the new developments and improvements of creating websites and the best user experience for a life time.