The minimum you need to know to
Make sure your website is found by the people you made it for
Do's and don't's
This article is mainly a list of the things amateurs do when making a website that will prevent the website from being found.
TEXT
DO Use text as links and titles. This will make sure a search-engine knows what the page is about.
Don't use images in the menu. This will prevent a search-engine from knowing what your next page is about.
Tables
I would advise anybody making their first website, to start with a simple table with two columns. One column for the menu (or navigation), the other for the content.
DO NOT put tables in tables merely to make something look good. This will complicate the code of your website to such an extent that a search-engine will have a hard time finding out what the page is about.
DO use tables to publish a schedule, or a table with prices of products and that sort of thing.
Links
Links to your site are what will make your site found. This is a fairly well-known fact.
DON'T ask for links to your website, when the website isn't useful to people yet.
DO ask for links to your website when you have added relevant material. There will usually be a local website devoted to links to other local websites. E-mail them or use their form to add your link to their directory.
Letting people know
DO send an e-mail to everybody who might be interested in your website, when the website is finished.
DON'T let people know about your website BEFORE it is online. You get only one chance with people to make a first impression. So when you are still in your building stage only ask a few people feedback. When that group gives you the OK and all necessary information is online, DO mail everybody else who might be interested, especially webmasters who might want to link to your website.
HTML and CSS
HTML and CSS are the most important languages the internet is built on, for the practical purpose of building a website.
HTML is the language used to show roughly what text means what. The title text should get a different coding than paragraph text.
CSS is the language used to change the look of things.
For your first website you should not worry too much about this. Do buy an HTML book, so you can look at the codes and learn a bit about which to use for what. As you grow as a webdesigner though, you should learn more and more about CSS. As you learn more about that, you can move the codes that change the look of things to a seperate CSS-file. This will make your code more compact and that in turn will make it easier for a search-engine like google to know what your page is about.
DO try to learn something new about CSS and HTML with each website you make. CSS is a great tool to make your website look good. CSS also makes it easy to change the look of all your pages in one go.
When you've made a few websites, DO try to use CSS to make the letters on your pages look the same and cool.
If you know how to do that, move on to getting rid of the tables for putting the menu in the right place.
DON'T keep using tables for layout purposes.
DO learn to use CSS for positioning.
- Also read: The minimum you need to know to be able to Make your own website in 3 small steps
- And: meta tags: do use them
This article assumes you know next to nothing about webdesign and need to merely make a small website for your club or local organisation.