WebMaster Guide Make your own site now

Ultimate WebMaster Guide

Hello there Cashle members have you always wanted to make your own site well if the answer is "yes" then keep reading


List of Contents

Ultimate Web Master Guide

• What a website Needs

• WebMaster Tools

• Programming Language Resources

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What a Website needs

¤ Concept / Idea
When making a website, you usually do it because you have an idea or you see another website
with the same idea and just make your site alike. This however, is not the correct way of making
a site. You should start by thinking about your website and how much possible visitors it can attract.

You need to do research before you start a website or forum. Ask yourself some questions; Are there
other sites doing this? Are they successful? Does this mean there needs to be another one of those sites?

After you've answered these questions and come up with a "No" at the last one, then you must find
another topic for your website and do more research on your possible idea. It's usually best to start
off with more than one idea, incase one fails.

Another important thing to think about when you start a website is your knowledge about the subject.
Do you have sufficient knowledge about the subject your website is about? Let's say you want to start
a forum about monetizing. Are there enough of those forums yet? Are they successful? Does this mean
there needs to be another one of those sites? No? Yes? In fact, you'll now learn that what i've stated
above is not always true. If you make a monetizing site and hope for "pro" members to come along and
start posting things, you are wrong. But if you make a monetizing site and you actually are a "pro" yourself,
THEN you can seriously start researching your competition. So if you make a site, know stuff about the subject.

¤ System / Set-Up
Now, i want to begin with the system. Why? Because it usually comes first. You need to decide what you are going to
use to set-up your website. Is there a Content Management System i can use? Any other Software? Compare products
and check out demo versions of them to see how everything works and then pick your favourite one. When in doubt,
always follow your gut (it's usually the right choice). Popular CMSs are Joomla and Drupal, or if you want to start a forum
Invision Power Board or vBulletin.

Check whether they cost money or not. Sometimes Premium software will do your job better than open source software,
but sometimes it's not like that at all. Mostly open source software has more users, thus more people to aid you when in need of help.

Or are you going to do it all yourself? Especially when you're a beginner you'd probably want to use a piece of software
instead of using raw HTML and learn from there. If you have enough money, though, you can also choose to hire a team
to develop the system you need, but that's (once again) all up to you.

Visitors want functionality, they want a stable system, they want to be able to easily sign up when they need to.

¤ Design / Appeal
The design of a website is a very important factor. A LOT of visitors these days will check the site's looks and rate it
based on that. Don't get an overused theme, instead pick a decent theme and modify it around a little bit after you've
followed a few CSS/HTML lessons. This way, people will still see some reference to a basic theme, but also complement
you on your uniqueness and great looks. (I'm talking about CMS/Forums here, if you want to start a raw site but can't
design it, you should hire a design team to do this for you and you'd get the PSD aka PhotoShop Document, which you
can code yourself or let a developer team do that too. If you know your way around photoshop that is a bonus).

¤ Content
Every website needs good content. Almost nobody will join a site which just started and has zero posts. Instead,
lock the site and put up some basic stuff like tutorials, reports, etcetera. After you've made like 10-20 basic "posts"
if we're talking about forums/blogs then open up your site to the public and advertise it around.

You must be sure that your content is good though, this means you're the one that typed it, not somebody else.

If it's just a static website for yourself or a company or whatever, then make sure that the content is grammatically
correct

¤ Uniqueness
The uniqueness of a site, as described in the last 4 topics is the most important factor and will decide whether
visitors will join your site or not. Your content must be unique and it must be a place where people can visit and
discover new unique content every day (in the end). So make sure you are prepared for that.

¤ Tip List

• Think about the possible visitors | Research your competition and ask yourself questions
• Knowledge about the subject | You must know plenty about your site's subject
• Subject Focus | "General" forums will mostly fail, because they are too.. umm well.. general. Focus on a specific thing!
• Your site's sytem | Research about possible site set-ups, are there CMSes / Software that i can use to aid me?
• Hosting for a Month | First off, don't overrate yourself and buy hosting for a month. This way, you can always upgrade later.
• Check your budget | Do you want premium stuff, hosting, etc. ? Check how much stuff costs and make a "Shopping List"

* Compare Systems | Are you going to use a system? Compare some of the popular ones!

• Easy To Use | Visitors want to be where they want to be and they want to be there as fast as possible.
• User Friendly | Visitors want a user friendly system, don't want error messages or vague messages
• Developer Team | If you can't use or want a unique system, hire a Developers Team to do the hard work.

* Physical Appeal | Many people will rate your site based on it's looks.

• Theme Choice | Don't get an overused theme, instead customize a less used one yourself.
• Designers Team | If you can't do anything yourself, let a GFX team do it for you.

* Get Unique Content | People want to read new stuff, not old stuff. Write content yourself.

• Don't open a blank site | Open a site with content that is already there, nobody wants to join a blank site.
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WebMaster Tools

Adobe DreamWeaver CS5 - Trial Version
Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS5.5 is the industry-leading web authoring and editing software that provides both
visual and code-level capabilities for creating standards-based websites and designs for the desktop, smartphones,
tablets, and other devices.

CoffeeCup HTML Editor - Freeware
CoffeeCup is one of the most popular free HTML editor software. CoffeeCup HTML Editor is a full-featured
Web design system. With built-in FTP uploading, wizards for tables, frames, fonts, and more.

Amaya - Freeware
Amaya is a Web editor, i.e. a tool used to create and update documents directly on the Web. Browsing features
are seamlessly integrated with the editing and remote access features in a uniform environment. This follows the
original vision of the Web as a space for collaboration and not just a one-way publishing medium.

BlueGriffon - Freeware
BlueGriffon is a new WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) content editor for the World Wide Web. Powered by
Gecko, the rendering engine of Firefox 4, it's a modern and robust solution to edit Web pages in conformance to the
latest Web Standards.

NotePad++ - Freeware
Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement
that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.

XAMPP - Freeware
XAMPP Allows you to run everything locally, including PHP and MySQL so you won't have to buy hosting before
you're sure everything works correctly. XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP
and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use - just download, extract and start.

FileZilla - Freeware
FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and
an intuitive graphical user interface. For every webmaster starting and wanting to upload his files through FTP,
i want to recommend FileZilla as i have been using it for quite some time myself and i still am.

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Programming Language Resources

(HTML) HyperText Markup Language
http://www.w3schools.com/html/ - At w3schools.com you will learn all about HTML.
http://www.htmltutorials.ca/ - 21 free HTML lessons designed to teach you all you need to know.
http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/ - If you're just beginning, start learning HTML here.
http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/ - Offers a wealth of information and tips on each topic.
http://www.tizag.com/ - Tizag was designed to teach beginner web programmers how to use HTML and CSS.
http://www.html.net/tutorials/html/ - Big list of very useful HTML tutorials.
http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/ - You can learn the HyperText Markup Language for free here.

(CSS) Cascading Style Sheets
http://www.w3schools.com/css/ - w3schools.com also has lessons for CSS !
http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/css/ - HTMLCodeTutorial also features a lesson about CSS.
http://csseasy.com/ - Site that acutally tells you to C&P; their page and then study it's code and make changes to it.
http://www.cssbasics.com/ - Covers all the basics of CSS design.
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/ - Contains information on how to learn and use CSS.
http://www.quackit.com/css/tutorial/ - Teaches you CSS from the ground up.
http://www.html.net/tutorials/css/ - Big list of very useful CSS tutorials.
http://www.csstutorial.net/ - Very handy and easy-to-use site for a good CSS tutorial.

(JS) JavaScript
http://w3schools.com/js/ - Ofcourse, w3schools has lessons about JavaScript too.
http://www.quackit.com/javascript/tutorial/ - Teaches you JavaScript from the ground up.
http://www.pageresource.com/jscript/index4.htm - Whole bunch of tutorials about JavaScript.

(PHP) Hypertext Preprocessor
http://w3schools.com/php/ - W3Schools has about everything, also PHP.
http://www.php.net/manual/en/tutorial.php - Learn PHP right from it's source, at PHP.net !
http://php.resourceindex.com/Documentati...on_to_PHP/ - Lots of pages about how to start with PHP.
http://www.learnphp-tutorial.com/ - Basics of PHP, how and where to start.
http://www.youtube.com/phpacademy - PHPAcademy has lots of VIDEO walkthroughs about PHP.
http://phpacademy.org/ - PHPAcademy's main site, with a forum if you have any questions.
http://bit.ly/qOnyeU - Good and well explained PHP Introduction Tutorial.
http://www.phptutorialonline.com/ - Created to help web developers who don't know PHP.
http://www.tutorialspoint.com/php/index.htm - Tutorial helps you to build your base with PHP.
http://php.atoztutorial.com/ - Designed to teach you PHP in a step by step manner.

(SQL) Structured Query Language
http://www.w3schools.com/sql/ - And again, w3Schools also has a tutorial on SQL.
http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/tutorials/sql/ - Helps you build a strong foundation in the SQL language.
http://sql.atoztutorial.com/ - Designed to teach you SQL in a step by step manner.
http://www.sqlcourse.com/ - The basics of each SQL command will be covered in this introductory tutorial.
http://www.sqlcourse2.com/ - Sequel to the successful above SQL tutorial series.
http://www.1keydata.com/sql/sql.html - Full guide explaining a lot of SQL queries.
http://www.sql-statements.com/ - Learn about the various SQL statements on this website.

(XML) eXtensible Markup Language
http://www.w3schools.com/xml/ - w3schools covers everything, so they cover XML too.
http://www.w3.org/XML/ - Introduction to XML and various links to resources.
http://www.xmlfiles.com/xml/ - After you have studied this chapter you will know what XML is.
http://www.learn-xml-tutorial.com/ - Great site if you want to know what XML is and how to use it.
http://www.roseindia.net/xml/ - Learn XML from scratch without having any prior knowledge.
http://www.uwplatt.edu/web/wtc/xml/index.html - Introduction to XML and XML training.
http://www.xmlmaster.org/en/article/d01/ - Suited to engineers who may be studying XML for the first time.