Website Search
Find information on spaces, staff, and services.
Catalog Search
Books
Building DIY Websites for Dummies
- Author / Creator
- Available as
- Online
- Summary
-
There’s more to building a website than just picking a theme and dropping in text and images. Creating a site that attracts visitors and turns those visitors into customers requires some profession...
There’s more to building a website than just picking a theme and dropping in text and images. Creating a site that attracts visitors and turns those visitors into customers requires some professional insight and a few tips and tricks. Building DIY Websites For Dummies guides non-designers through the steps of creating an attractive and effective website using today’s top web-based tools. This book helps you launch or improve your website designed to boost your entrepreneurial endeavors, small business, or personal passion. With this easy-to-follow Dummies guide, you can skip learning the complicated coding that runs a site and focus on the parts that attract visitors (and search engines). Grab this book and get expert insight on how to craft a usable design, create site content, improve site findability, and convert browsers into buyers.
Details
- Format
- Books
- Language
- English
- Publication
-
- 1st ed
- Newark : John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2024
- ©2024
- Series
- Physical Details
-
- 1 online resource (387 pages)
- ISBNs
- 9781394233007, 9781394232987, 9781394232987
- OCLC
- on1439999854
- Includes index.
- Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Introduction -- About This Book -- Conventions Used in This Book -- Foolish Assumptions -- How This Book Is Organized -- Icons Used in This Book -- Beyond the Book -- Where to Go from Here -- Part 1 Getting Started with DIY Websites -- Chapter 1 From Groundbreaking to Grand Opening: Constructing Your Website Step by Step -- Setting Up Your Site for Success: Foundation, Messaging, and Search Engines -- Picking a platform -- Building the foundation -- Understanding your potential customers -- A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place -- Developing a Look and Feel that Works -- Getting and Analyzing Results -- Chapter 2 Laying Your Website's Foundation -- Choosing a Domain Name Registrar -- Registering Your Domain Name -- Avoid the offered extras -- Opt for domain privacy (or not) -- Choose a domain name -- Use a premium domain name -- Consider the extension -- Understanding How Authoritative Nameservers Work -- Choosing a Platform and a Host -- Considerations for choosing a platform -- Website hosting -- What is a website host? -- When do you need to find separate hosting? -- Considerations when choosing a web host -- Types of hosting -- Deciding Where to Build Your Website -- Build on a temporary URL -- Build on a live URL -- Build on a staging site -- Going Live with Your Staging Site -- Setting Up Your Business Email -- How many email addresses should you have? -- Where should you host your email? -- How do you access your business email accounts? -- Part 2 Creating a Site That People Will Visit -- Chapter 3 Resonating with Visitors -- Defining Buyer Personas -- The importance of buyer personas -- Create a buyer persona -- Triggering Emotional Responses -- Evoke emotional responses -- Evoke positive responses -- Be consistent -- Be simple -- Be exciting or inspirational
- Incorporating Modern Design Techniques -- Add vivid imagery and graphics -- Collages with illustrations and shapes -- Handmade graphics -- Videos -- Other modern typographic tips -- Selling the Why -- Create a problem-solution spreadsheet -- Utilize this information -- Chapter 4 Nailing SEO Basics: Search Engine Optimization 101 -- Grasping Search Engine Basics -- Unraveling the Essentials of Search Engine Optimization -- Think like a search engine -- Understand search intent -- Provide complete content -- Eating the Acronym Soup: HCU, YMYL, and E-E-A-T -- Helpful content update -- The YMYL concept -- The E-E-A-T concept -- Experience -- Expertise -- Authoritativeness -- Trustworthiness -- Wearing the Right Hat: Black Hat versus White Hat SEO -- Black hat SEO techniques -- White hat SEO techniques -- Realizing the Importance of Backlinks -- Types of backlinks: follow and nofollow -- Black hat vs white hat backlinks -- Discovering your backlinks -- Ridding your site of toxic backlinks -- Obtain white hat backlinks -- Recognizing Structured Data Opportunities -- Organize your content with structured data -- Rich results are the best results -- Schema markup is the "magic" behind it all -- Add schema markup to your website to get rich results -- Local business websites need local, structured data -- Add local structured data to your website -- Setting Up a Primary Google Account for SEO -- Chapter 5 Killing It with Keywords -- Understanding Keyword Types -- Short-tail keywords -- Long-tail keywords -- Fresh and evergreen keywords -- Choosing Keywords Based on Metrics -- Search volume -- Domain authority -- Competition -- Competitive keyword strategy -- Researching Keywords -- Find seed keywords -- Use keyword tools -- Use your giant keyword list -- Part 3 Architecting Plans for Your Website -- Chapter 6 A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place
- Organizing Your Sitemap -- Determine all the pages you need -- Organize your service pages -- Create the About pages -- Consider e-commerce pages -- Writing Your Sitemap -- Organize your pages into separate menus -- Your main menu -- Your top menu -- Your footer menu -- Assign keywords to your pages -- Plan your titles, meta descriptions, and URLs -- Writing your titles -- Assigning your meta descriptions -- Planning your URLs -- Chapter 7 Content Scaffold: Supporting Your Website's Information -- Setting Up Your Service Pages -- Building Support Pages for Nonprofits -- What to include on your support pages -- A header row -- Forms -- Mission/impact statement -- A story -- Visuals -- Dedications -- Corporate giving and matching -- FAQs -- Social channels -- Sharing links -- Other ways to support -- Three things that every nonprofit should do -- Creating Pages that Every Website Needs -- The About page -- What you do -- Your differentiators -- Videos -- Your history -- A mission statement -- Bios and headshots -- A story -- Education, certifications, achievements, distinctions, and awards -- Statistics and data -- Contact information -- Social feeds and links -- Testimonials -- Volunteer work -- Mentions on other websites or the press -- CTAs -- The Contact page -- Privacy policy and Terms of Service pages -- Privacy policies page -- Terms of Service (ToS) page -- Crafting a privacy policy or Terms of Service -- Populating Your Showcase Pages -- Portfolio pages -- Product pages -- Product titles -- Brief and long descriptions -- Prices -- Main photo -- Additional gallery photos -- SKU -- Box weight, length, width, height -- Product type -- Categories -- Tags -- Laying out your product pages -- Event pages -- Displaying events -- Where to place events -- What to include -- Using structured data with your events -- Adding Blog Posts -- Single blog posts
- Blog post titles -- Blog content -- Excerpts -- A featured image -- Author -- Comments -- Categories and tags -- Blog archive pages -- Strategies for creating a helpful and amazing blog -- The purpose of your blog -- The tone of your blog -- The subject of your blog articles -- A posting schedule -- A content calendar -- How to get visitors to your blog -- Content to include on your blog articles -- Building Your Homepage Last -- Row 1: A strong message -- Links to other pages and content -- Videos -- Social proof -- Awards and accolades -- Specific numbers and data -- Galleries and portfolios -- Features and benefits -- Lead magnets -- News articles and blog posts -- Upcoming events -- Chapter 8 Preparing Your Site's Content -- Generating and Preparing Excellent Copy -- Create an outline and brainstorm topics -- Outline your copy -- Generate your copy -- Use AI to write content -- Steer clear of duplicate content -- Creating and Sourcing Your Images -- Stock photography vs your own photos -- Find an illustrator -- Choose a photographer -- Take great photos -- Find good stock photography -- Understanding Image Formats and Naming Conventions -- JPG images -- PNG images -- GIF images -- WebP images -- SVG images -- HEIC images -- Name your images -- Optimize your images -- Proper resolution -- Color mode -- Dimensions -- Compress your images -- Use alt tags -- Producing Video for Your Website -- Where to purchase videos -- Where to host videos -- Choose a video hosting service -- Vimeo -- YouTube -- Wistia -- Part 4 Designing and Laying Out Your Website -- Chapter 9 Deconstructing the Anatomy of Web Pages -- Determining Your Website Theme -- Choose a good theme -- Features and functionality -- The visual design of your website -- How customizable the theme is -- How performant the theme is -- Is the theme supported by the developer?
- Does the theme have good documentation? -- Change your theme -- Types of themes -- Using WordPress Page Builders -- WPBakery -- Divi -- Elementor -- Beaver Builder -- Organizing Your Web Page Structure: Rows, Columns, and Modules -- Rows -- Columns -- Modules and content -- Decide how to lay out your content in rows, columns, and modules -- Laying Out Your Header Row -- The logo -- The main menu -- The top bar -- Creating Hero Rows for Home and Interior Pages -- Building a Helpful Footer -- Chapter 10 Unfurling the Canvas of Design Options -- Designing Your Logo -- How much does a logo cost? -- Horizontal or vertical layout? -- Where will your logo appear? -- Should you include a tag line on your logo? -- How I Approach Design -- Determining the General Settings -- Choosing Fonts for a Cohesive Feel -- Font properties -- Oversized typography -- Choose fonts for your website -- Choosing Colors Effectively -- Pick a color palette -- Rules for using color -- Color no-nos -- HEX and RGBA colors -- Your brand's HEX colors -- HEX colors explained -- Shorthand HEX colors -- Semi-transparency with RGBA -- Styling Rows, Columns, and Modules -- Style your rows -- Padding rows with whitespace -- Fixed content and full-width content considerations -- Style your columns -- Style your modules -- Using Whitespace -- Whitespace helps readability -- Whitespace exudes professionalism and clean design -- Whitespace leads to increased comprehension -- Whitespace helps reduce bounce rate and increase engagement rate -- Add the right amount of whitespace -- Chapter 11 Generating Leads from Your Website -- Understanding and Using Forms -- How many forms should you include? -- Types of form fields -- Required fields -- Tab order -- Conditional fields -- Set up notifications -- Configure confirmations -- Test your forms -- Combatting Submission Spam
- Integrating Forms with Other Platforms