While browsing through all the family sites the other day I decided that perhaps a few tips were in order for building a great homepage. So this article is going to cover some tips, tools, and techniques for you to your information up on the net and create an awesome little Irish family site for people to visit that will keep them coming back. If you've not built a site before you shouldn't be afraid. Putting a Website up these days is a snap. In fact building one here at Suite101 is so easily done that you should give it a good try.
First Step:
Look at other family pages. See how they are organized. Take note of what you like on them and what you hate. Jot down everything you like for reference later.
Planning:
The first thing you need to do is sit down and plan how you are going to do your site. How do you want it to look. What kind of a "feel" do you want the site to have? What do you want it to include?
Tips:
- Make certain your text is large enough and your background doesn't compete with the text. Just because you can read it doesn't mean the rest of us can. Remember some folks are color blind and you need to have a lot of contrast between the text and background.
- Try not to use sound files. They can be very annoying and they take a long time to load. We want to get to the nitty gritty not listen to "Irish Eyes are Smiling" or "Danny Boy".
- Don't put too much on one page. Endlessly scrolling down is annoying. Break your pages up into sections. Think of it like your family tree. Break your sections up into pages from there.
- Avoid adding too many graphics on one page. It makes it very slow to load. If you are going to put up a photo page make certain that you save the photos and JPG files to speed the load time. You can also put up thumbnail pictures and link these to larger photos that people can download or print. If you are looking for Celtic Graphics for your site I can recommend these sites for some really beautiful and free Graphics.
Argotique Graphics http://argo.gate2sun.com/graphiccg.htm
Celtic Backgrounds http://www.fortunecity.com/bally/dublin/...
Celtic or Knot http://www.celtic-clipart.co.uk/
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Put up lots of data pages and share your information. We all want to look through it. Make sure it's complete and referenced well with your sources. Share everything with us.
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