Shortly after I started this blog I decided to create an article directory. God knows why but, considering that a Keyword Analyzer search reveals there are approximately 350 million sites (indexed pages) competing for around 4500 searches a month for the keyword phrase “article directory”, I figured the world needed another one! So, TotallyAwesomeArticles.com was born.
Now, I realized very early on in my Internet Marketing journey, or at least I realized that it was my opinion, that people with no web site development skills, who wish to become Internet marketers, unless of course they can afford exorbitant programmer fees (and have a lot of patience), are at a distinct disadvantage to those who have, especially if that skill comes combined with a sound understanding of marketing concepts. I also realized, with the definite exception of SiteSell , which is actually a complete online business model, that using prefabricated sites, or site builders, (and I’m generalizing here ok…and not referring to CMS like this one…) is rife with compromise. There is something very empowering about being able to write a site from scratch, and in code, and then see it take on a life of it’s own in terms of traffic, search position, and revenue.
So why an article directory?
It was quite simple really. It occurred to me while I was doing some article marketing to promote my other sites (you do use article marketing don’t you?), here was a perfect opportunity to have legitimate, and value adding, interaction with other Internet marketers and webmasters while at the same time owning a steadily growing site full of highly indexable (if that’s a word) and relevant content, that can be monetized in several different ways. I liked the idea that, ultimately, article authors would provide me with all the content. There were also a number of readily available, and free, article directory scripts to choose from which provide the back end to the site.
So, with any website, or with any site that’s purpose is to generate revenue, there is the design and development aspect, the promotion, and the eventual monetization, to consider. The rest of this post centers around design and development as far as an Internet marketer is concerned.
An experienced web designer is a beginner web designer who kept on designing web sites. More practice grasshopper!
If you’d said to me a year ago that within twelve months I would be able to write reasonably standards compliant sites, in code, I would have laughed. My motivation was simple, I wanted control of my Internet marketing destiny, and that meant freeing myself from those that would use my inexperience, or inability, to pull at my heart strings, to extract my wallet from my pocket to pay for products that were generally disappointing at best.
Now, if you want to wait until you have a complete understanding of web design before launching into your first site you are destined to go into an ever increasing spiral of analysis paralysis until you finally disappear up your proverbial you know what. As somebody famous (Tao Te Ching?) once said “a journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step”. The mere fact that you decide to create a site will start you on a cycle of challenge, problem solving, and learning that, if you persist, will see you become adept in no time. There are plenty of great books and related resources to help you along the way but we’ll save that for another post.
TotallyAwesomeArticles.com represents the latest point in my personal evolution as a web site designer. An evolution that started with the question; “how do I get a site on the Internet?”, and progressed steadily from there. I very quickly formed the opinion that table based layout was to web site design what the model T Ford is to automobiles, and set myself the goal of writing CSS based designs (see this), and that in turn developed into a determination to understand and write standards compliant code, which has as it’s essence the separation of structural code from the presentation.
When you combine this with my preference for minimalistic design (yep, I actually chose this WordPress Template over hundreds of others), fluid and accessible (wont fall apart when the reader changes the font size) layout that uses all the available screen real estate, and achieving the maximum from minimum code, then you can see where my next set of challenges, and consequent development, lies.
I’m pleased to say the code in TotallyAwesomeArticles.com , at least the code that I was responsible for (the PHP behind it generates code that I can’t change) validates to XHTML 1.0 Transitional. I have achieved a reasonably fluid layout, moved most of the presentational code into CSS , and as far as tables are concerned, I don’t agree with the “thou shalt not use tables” brigade, I have relegated them to form layout, which I think they’re quite suited for, taken the mountains of extraneous code out of them, banished spacer gif’s and banned nesting, and I’m happy with that.
Comes a time though when you have to be satisfied with your development, settle for the best you have done so far, take your learnings and challenges into the next project, and get on with promoting and making revenue from the new site. After all, regardless of whether you’ve created a masterpiece of standards compliant design, you’ve just created the equivalent of a grain of sand in the Sahara desert, and now the job, with an equal amount of challenge and learning, is to promote the site to the top of the rankings. I’ll let you know how I go.
Some credit where credit’s due;
During this round of development I really began to appreciate what a better experience using the Firefox browser is. Do yourself a favor, change.
Chris Pederick’s Web Developer extension for Firefox rocks! This is a great help.
Piotr Petrus’ em calculator makes fluid layout a breeze.
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