While creating a logo if it’s for your site allows for expanding your creativity, many times you’ll feel even more constricted than other aspects of your site’s design. The reason is that it can be difficult to completely come up with a design out of thin air that completely grasps what your site is about. If you have a client that has already given you ideas then you have nothing to worry about. If not, then remember these safe tips for creating an effective and sound design.

- Simplicity makes the concept of your design easier to translate for your visitors. While having an amazing logo is great, if people aren’t translating what it means then you have a useless image taking up space.

- Keep the colors to minimum. While seeing a rainbow after it rains is nice, that doesn’t mean you want every colors of said rainbow showing up in your logo.

- Logos are about taking the concept of site, or business and creating an image that will last with people. So, be sure that a connection between what your site is about and the logo is made.

It’s funny and eye opening to hear some people talk about images, specifically image types. The two major image types you’ll be using online is GIFs and JPEGs, with PNGs being used slightly. It’s vital that you understand the differences in these image types, and knowing their strengths along with their weaknesses.

A good rule to remember is that if it’s an “animation” you want to use a GIF, if it’s a picture use a JPEG. These are very general and have a couple of meanings. If you’re creating an object of your own and creating things like buttons, horizontal spacers then you’ll want to save an image as a GIF. Also, if you’re creating an image that animates and moves you’ll want to use a GIF as well.

When dealing with JPEGs, you’ll want to remember your ‘picture’ rule. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be a photograph, but if you’re dealing with a screenshot or are dealing with something of a picture like quality then JPEG should be your choice. JPEG deals with millions of colors and stores information based on color changes. This means that when dealing with a larger image with larger amounts of shade JPEG is your choice.

Of course there are always hybrid type images that could go either way. Here use the fundamental rules to your best judgement. If there’s any kind of moving animation at all then go gif. If your image is highly color intensive and has a large amount of shade then go JPEG.

Re-direct is a function that I highly recommend against. The only time you really need to provide a re-direct of readers is when you own similar domain names and you want all of them going to a single target page. Barring that I highly recommend against the practice.

If you find yourself using re-direct this is the course of action to do so. It starts with a tag which goes inside your tag. Then type in http-equiv=”refresh” inside your meta tag. This tells the browser to refresh. Next you’ll type content=”(amount of time til refresh);url= (web address). Basically, that tells the browser to refresh and then open the url.

Re-directs are generally used for ads, or if there’s something that needs to be continually updated. Like a football game where the score is always updating. If you keep refreshing it can many times send the wrong signal to a user. Security problems are a main concern if a site refreshes on it’s own.

So be careful out there with your re-directs, and use them sparingly.

Without knowing it, you could possibly be missing out on millions of visitors. That’s potential visitors mind you, not trying to fill your head with impossible scenarios. No, I’m simply trying to convey the important of mobile web. It continues to grow, and with it should be your understanding of how it works and how to optimize for it.

This site has a long list of resources, and tips for how to set your website up for optimal mobile standards. Here are some examples of those tips, and some of them you probably follow already.

- Heading tags are decently supported. However, many devices display some at the same size and weight (e.g. h1 and h2 = identical)

- font-size is almost useless (currently). Consider using headings instead to control font sizing.

- ul and ol are well supported

- Users may browse with images turned off. Always use alt text (which, of course, is recommended practice anyway).

- background-image support is decent at best. However, background-color is somewhat well supported.

For those of you who are just now getting into HTML code, the very basics are where you want to start. Like most experts will tell you, even the simplest parts of HTML code are the most important.

We all have our preferences. Everyone has a certain way of designing that they’re comfortable with, and like to see done when creating a site. Guess what though? It’s not about you, it’s about me or your potential visitors. This can be an aspect of design that is hard for a lot of people. Especially those just entering the field. That’s why I wish teachers would force web design students to make them create things a certain way, instead of letting them open up. This isn’t painting, or drawing, it’s web design.

Designing for the web is all about attracting visitors, so what you enjoy has little to none effect in the grand scheme of things. If you’re designing a website for your personal use, then you can can ignore what I’ve said and am about to say. Tiled backgrounds, or bright and obtrusive colors are fine if you’re the only one that’s going to see it.

However, if you’re designing for others then learn about the wonders of white space and driving focus to certain parts of a page. Adapt to using soft colors, and ones that are pleasing to the eye and don’t necessarily have a creative use.

One of the most important aspects of design is focusing the user on the content. I also believe it’s one of the least taught functions of design. If you have a client, more than likely they could care less about how artistic you are. They’re concerned about if what you’re creating is bringing traffic to their site.

Always keep that in mind.

There are varying statistics out there, but most credible sources I’ve read say that 126 million Americans wear glasses. That’s pretty close to half of the population. So why should you care about who wears glasses or not?

Well in reality you shouldn’t personally care, but for the success of your website you should. Readability of your website can be a factor that you look over, when it’s really an easy problem to combat.

The first aspect of your text you’ll want to fix, or start out doing is keeping a good contract. It’s recommended that you use black text on white. However, like you can see with this site it isn’t always needed. White on black, or a really light gray look fine as well. Just remember though, keep the contrast of your text at a good level.

What can be a bit harder for some is utilizing an easy to read font. Web safe fonts are of course always your choice, but find a good size. I know many people who shrink their fonts before standard size because they think it looks better. For design purposes it might, but who cares about your design if people can’t read your content. Try and find a balance.

If you want to have people keep visiting your site, you’ll want to make sure it’s continually updated. If people think your website has become stagnant, there’s a good chance they’ll stop visiting. Most people visit sites to see if things have changed, if there is no change they’ll move on.

Conducting a redesign once every year is a good rule to follow. The reason for this is new code, or technology could come along that greatly improves your site. It could either be because of performance or design.

What you really want to keep up with is content. People might appreciate a good redesign, but what they really want to see is new content to read and comment on.

Other tips you can remember is to use new functions and element for your site. Create something interesting using javascript or CGI. You can use some scripts to track visitors and personalize their visit the next time they return.

Whatever the strategy, you want to keep things fresh. It keeps things not only interesting for your visitors, but yourself as well.

When you’ve designed your site and have it working, you’ll then begin the process of shopping around to find a host. There are a wide selection of web servers out there, with many I could recommend. Depending on your situation, certain servers will appeal to your over another.

One aspect, and keyword in the web server business you’ll want to keep an eye on is ‘uptime’. This little term has the potential to be the most important word for your web server. Uptime means the amount of time that a web server is up. Meaning, how often your website will be accessible.

Generally, you’ll see web servers advertise 99% uptime or more. While this seems like a lot, and it is, even 99% can provide a significant amount of downtime. If your server provides 99% uptime in a year, you’ll still have 3.65 days of downtime. If you’re business relies primarily on online sales that can be a big factor.

Even if you’re guranteed a certain amount of uptime, your contract could have certain clauses in it that are tricky. First, many web servers will tell you that their gurantee is for “unscheduled” outages only. So, if your server has many schedule outages then many companies won’t report those. Also, keep and eye out for how outages must be tracked. Many companies will rely on your to track your own outages. This requires software that must always be tracking, and can be quite a hassle.

There are few things that will completely drive traffic away from your site. One is navigation, which we’ve touched upon before. What can turn away visitors before they even begin navigating is when a site doesn’t load. Or has the perception that it won’t.

What causes load problems tends to be associated with media, particularly over-sized media. The funny thing is that keeping things at a decent size is quite an easy feat. Images especially. A rule of thumb to live by when dealing with images is the 30k rule. Meaning that you want to keep any image you post on a website smaller than 30k. There are exceptions to this rule, for example if you’re posting art and resolution is key to demonstrating your work. For the most part though, 30k is a good number to live by.

There are programs out there that can assist you with compression, and keeping your images at a decent size. JPEG Wizard, and GifBot are quality programs for assisting with image compression.

Other multimedia you’ll want to keep an eye on is Flash, and Java. These can be effective tools for design, but unfortunately can really bog down load times. Especially for those who have a slower internet connection. A key here is to not overuse multimedia. Don’t create your entire site in flash, when only a small widget will be effective for what you’re trying to accomplish. As with many aspects of web design, moderation is key.