• Even though you may be working for yourself you still need a brief
• The purpose of a website, essentially, is promotion - to make money and generate business
• Websites are cheaper than adverts on TV and you reach more people, much less people watch TV than use the Internet, a TV advert will be seen by a few people at a specific time on a specific day, it's easy to miss a TV advert
• A website is intended for collaborators, potential and existing clients competitors and potential employers
• On your website you need a brand identity - first impression, impact
• Spend time on your website's navigation
• Indexhibit is a used by many designers (who aren't web designers but want to make a website for themselves) to make websites, it's easy but they all look the same.
• However Indexhibit is content driven, this is how a website should work and Indexhibit wesbites are effective (though can be boring)
• Work out what will be done as part of a design job otherwise it could go on forever e.g. you will get 3 mock-ups before the final website is made, any more will cost more, always write a contract
• 8 pages is recommended as the maximum number of pages for a website
• 
  

Internet standards and good practice

• URL's allow you to see files on someone else's computer, this is the basis of how the Internet works
• You always want your website to look the same across all devices e.g. iPhone, Mac, PC etc
• Manage your files! - very important for web like with After Effects
• Have a root folder which contains everything relevant to the website in it
• Always work in lowercase letters and never use spaces when naming files
• Keep file names 8 characters maximum - less chance of corruption
• Have an images folder inside the root folder, this will contain any media (music, movies, pics etc)
• Another folder PSD files and mock ups is a good idea but this wouldn't go live

Size

• everything for web is measured in pixels, these are what make up screens
• you should make something universal
• the lowest common denominator size is 800 pixels by 600 pixels
• designing to this lowest common denominator will mean you make something universal
• Scrolling horizontally is not commonly accepted so should be avoided but if it fits your design and makes sense then there is no reason not to use it
• If a website is designed to 800 x 600 but viewed on a larger ratio screen then the extra space will appear white. 

Fonts

• websites are restricted to standard fonts like Arial, Trebuchet and Georgia (the fonts available on Blogger actually)  which are installed on computers,
• Using a special font will cause problems if the computer someone is viewing the website on doesn't also have that font installed.
• You have to specify what fonts will be used and alternatives otherwise Times New Roman will be used as the default.
• To get round the font problem you could use images instead however the problem is you can't highlight, copy and paste, it makes a page slow to load and search engines can't find text as an image.
• Meta tags can be used to embed text into a web page e.g. write, as a meta tag, what text as an  image says. This meta tag will be searchable in Google but won't be visible on the web page as it is embedded.
• Make a web page's body copy a standard font, titles and headers could be images with meta tags

Colour

• As with all screen graphics websites use RGB
• In Photoshop in the RGB colour picker you can tick a box so that you can only choose web safe colours. The hexadecimal code for the colour will be displayed e.g. ff0066 (like with the customisation settings in Blogger) 
• Web safe colours accommodate older Internet browsers and different RGB modes which may vary from screen to screen - this all comes back to making something universal   

 

Images 

• Unless images are optimised for the web they can take a long time to load - you can buy more space but it costs
• 5MB or less is a good guide to the size of a website
• If images aren't optimised for web then the bandwidth is taken up by the large data size and less people can view the website each month e.g. if you have a 2GB bandwidth but a 1GB website then only two people can view your website each month (it's like a phone contract or home Internet contract)
• All images should be 72 dpi and you can save images in Photoshops specifically for web; File - Save For Web And Devices
• This option brings up a comparison window where you can try different compressions to see how the image will look e.g. 40 quality might be 27kb and it take 1 sec to load 512kb so this image will appear almost instantaneously.