This is a simple page that links to some example pages to help you get some ideas of techniques to use on your site. The better you have your site "designed" in your mind (and on paper), the less time a developer will have to spend on your site. Less time by the developer means less cost to you. MuSystems will work with you to design your site, but you can assist us by knowing some of the options early in the process.

Colors

One thing you can do is to decide what colors you want on your site. There are background colors, font colors, etc. Use this chart to help you pick some choices for your site. Consider whether the font color you pick will look ok with the background color you pick. Also consider whether the colors will overwhelm visitors to your site. If you're really adventurous, check out this Dynamic Color page.    (top)

Frames

A style you may want to consider is using "frames" to construct your site. Go to the Frame demo page for an example. There are good and bad points to using frames. This discussion will soon be a separate discussion page. For now, just be aware that some folks don't like to look at sites with frames, and there are some issues with "publicizing" your site. Frames are very useful for controlling the layout of you site. It's a very powerful technique for web design, but it has pros and cons.    (top)

Counters

Consider whether you want to include counters on your page. Sometimes it's kind of rewarding to watch the counter increase. On the other hand, new sites don't get a lot of traffic at first. Do you want your customers (or prospective customers) to see the lack of traffic? If you plan to sell advertising on your site, you will most likely want to "brag" about your traffic. If you're not going to sell ads, you might want a traffic log instead of a visible counter.    (top)

Traffic Logs

Logging the traffic on your site is a different approach than using counters. With traffic logging, you can not only keep track of the number of "hits" your site gets, but also keep track of some information about the visitor. One of the more important facts you might want to track is the type of browser your visitors are using. This might guide your development of your site. If you discover, for example, that a large percentage of your visitors are using fairly old browsers, you might want to avoid using some of the newer design features available. On the other hand, you might discover that virtually everyone can view all the new and fancy stuff. This is very useful information. You might also track the "referring page." This would let you know how a visitor got to your site. Did they come directly from one of the search engines? Did they come from one of your friend's site? This too, could be very useful information.    (top)

There are lots of links on the web to help you make informed decisions about how to design your site. This page will be "under construction for quite some time. Check back from time to time for other tips.