Creating Your Website Content

Of course, you will need to create your web site's content -- the words and pictures that convey your information. Content is king! Interesting and entertaining information will attract visitors and it will keep them coming back.

You could create an entire web site using a simple text editor, like Notepad, if you know a little bit about HTML (the HyperText Markup Language). However, you’ll probably much prefer using website editing software, like Microsoft Expression Web (it's replacing Frontpage) or Adobe Dreamweaver, to create and edit your pages.

Creating pages with these "visual" tools is like working with an advanced word processor that "writes" the HTML code for you in the background AND gives you the ability to easily import pictures and to create links to other pages and sites.

You will want to add graphics to your site. Think of your web presence as an interactive magazine. You need a good balance of text and visual imagery.

Your graphics should be saved as GIF or JPG files. These kinds of files are designed to be compressed (reduced in size) without losing much visual information. Look at it this way -- smaller is faster and faster is better for publishing (uploading) and retrieving (downloading) files.

At CTDS, we use Adobe Photoshop and Fireworks to edit the photos and create the majority of the images we use on our websites. We use Dreamweaver CS3 for most of our sites and Frontpage (it's not dead yet) for the rest.

Next: Uploading Your Web Site