Tutorials & Articles - Website Design Tutorials & Articles

Complete Listing of ALL tutorials from ALL of my sites in a table that can be sorted.

Website Design Articles

Tutorials on Website Design

  • HTML Document Structure - The structure of an HTML document and how to code it.
  • 301 redirect tutorial - How to create a 301 permanent redirect to handle page name changes and domain moves so your viewer does not receive a 404 Page Not Found message.
  • Google Canonical problems - www versus non.www - How is your page indexed - www.my-domain.com OR my-domain.com? This tutorial will guide you in setting up whichever one you want to use.
  • Creating Layered Backgrounds - A background is an image that is placed on a web page to add color or design to the page. A layered background adds one or more images. The majority of these layouts are created with nested tables. You can also create the same effect using CSS.
  • Website Navigation Structure - Adding navigation to your website is a MUST! After visiting many genealogy sites over the last few months, one thing I have noticed is that a number of them include only a Home button and Back button.
  • Creating a Navigation menu
  • Add a Search Box - If you have a large site, you want to consider adding a search box to your site. There are a number of free ones available or if you are using paid hosting, there may be one available through the host. The free ones I have used are listed below. Each is customizable to reflect the "look" of your site.
  • Framed Web Site - A step-by-step tutorial on moving from a framed site to a css based layout.
  • Publishing With FTP - Using File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to publish your website.
  • Accessible Forms (off-site link)
  • Setting Up A Domain or Subdomain - This is a step-by-step tutorial for setting up a domain or subdomain using 1and1 hosting on a Linux server.
  •  Transferring a 1and1 Included Domain - The steps to follow if you want to transfer one of the FREE or included domains that come with your 1and1 package.
  • Creating Custom Error Pages - This is a step-by-step tutorial for setting up a custom error page using 1and1 hosting on a Linux server.
  • Heading Tags - <h1> to <h6> tags - Are you using the heading tags to structure your document or to format it? Learn how to properly use these tags. A tutorial by James Huggins.
  • Using a Gradient Image for your background - Gradient images can be used almost anywhere on your webpages. I use them as backgrounds for the page itself, as well as the background for forms and heading tags.
  • Website Design and Search Engines - Before I can even visit a website I have to FIND it. How? Usually by searching for a keyword that I am looking for - surname genealogy? surname history? a county? an individual name? and so on. If you don't turn up in Google Search, how will I know where to look for your information? Yes, there are other search engines but right now Google is the top one and probably the one most of us use. You can conduct this same type search on any of them.
  • Using Bordered Backgrounds - How to use a left bordered image as the background for your page and what to avoid so that it will display in a large resolution monitor without repeating across the page.

Website Design and RootsWeb

  • Rootsweb WorldConnect Project
  • WorldConnect and CSS - Would you like to add some style to your WorldConnect Database results. Would you like those pages to look more like your genealogy web site? Learn how with this tutorial.
  • WorldConnect and HTML - A how to for adding photographs and hyperlinks to WorldConnect GEDCOM Files.
  • Server Side Includes - If you have content that shows on every page of your website OR on many pages of your site, you might want to consider using Server Side Includes (SSI.) SSI's allow you to make a change in one page and have it update on all the pages where it is included.
  • RootsWeb Banners and Hyperlinks - A How-to on keeping your hyperlink styles from interfering with the RootsWeb banners.

FrontPage Tutorials

Expression Web Tutorials

All Expression Web Tutorials are being moved to Expression Web Tutorials and Templates