Many people want to design a website, but don’t know how. Are you wanting to profit from your site or just design a nice site? Either way, the tips below will help you out.

When you design a web page, always choose the graphics that are appropriate for your purposes. Bitmap images require a lot of disk space and are unwieldy. PNG should be used for buttons with text and screenshots that have 256 colors or more. When using photos, make them JPEGs.

Fixed navigation panels are a good way to allow your visitors to easily navigate your site. This means locking the navigation panel when a person scrolls down a single page. This is not only convenient for the visitor, but can also be useful for internet marketers, as this makes it easier for visitors to take some desired action (e.g. buy a product, sign up for a newsletter).

Testing your website in every browser available is a great way to ensure it works as you wish it to for every visitor. Even though your website may display perfectly on Internet Explorer, this doesn’t mean that it will look the same on Chrome, Safari, or Firefox. Check how each page displays in the major browsers before your site goes live.

Be aware of the background you choose. Backgrounds that include animations or intricate patterns often make it very difficult to read important text content. Choose a background that accentuates what your site already has to offer, rather than works against it. This will help get your message across to your visitors.

Understand what you want your site to do. If you’re planning to use your website for blogging or something similar, make sure to thoroughly research the subject prior to posting. You will lose your readers if your provide them with incorrect information. Blogging requires knowing your intended audience.

Good websites are optimized for older IE browsers, like 7 and 8. Everyone loves to hate Internet Explorer, but the sad fact is that a large minority of internet users still use these old versions of IE. Many elements are not in compliance with web standards, so finding a workaround will be required. An example would be the vexing “box model bug” which troubled IE for quite some time.

A great “About Us” page will help your readers understand who you are and what you do. Many websites that you see will have boring pages for this area. Make yours exciting! Let people know about your background and experience, tell them how you started designing websites and show them examples of your achievements.

The more you keep at it, web design gets easier and easier. So once you have the basics, start a simple web page using HTML and C+. See if you’ve got what it takes. Remember that practice makes perfect and that you have to start somewhere.

A visitor counter does not add to the appearance of your website. You might think they are a valuable addition to your site, but nothing could be further from the truth. Avoid adding a counter and use other ways to watch your traffic levels.

Even if you have decided to invest a lot of money into your website, hosting a site yourself isn’t the best idea. Design your website as much as you can by yourself, but have someone else host it, so that you do not have to worry about its security and safety.

Figure out your site’s target audience and ask them what they’re interested in with a website. This will help you design the pages and create the features of your site. Getting advice from your audience is important to your site design.

If you are planning on using FileZilla, then you need to program all your quick menu settings to include your domain, username and port. This way, when you log back on to the server, all you need to do is select your personalized settings from the menu. This will help you save time.

Use time management skills. Website building involves a lot of smaller tasks, and you might find yourself putting those off until later. If you push those tasks to the side, then they can quickly accumulate and interfere with your future success. Handle each job as it appears, however large or small it may be.

If you keep educating yourself as you go along, your website design process will benefit. After getting the hang of a design concept, find another one to learn. While this may lengthen the process of building your first site or two, you will soon have the knowledge you need to crank out websites much faster.

Remember that some users will have more bandwidth than others when you are posting video files on your site. A video that is converted to 5,000 kb/s will load faster on some computers, but it might be faster than some Internet connections allow for. Which translates into a slow video, buffering every few seconds.

If you are making multiple pages within a subcategory of a website, use the copy/paste feature on your PC, it will help a lot! Rather than making a fresh HTML code for each page that you have, simply copy the most important part of the code, change it in certain places, and save it under a new file name. You can use the master copy of that main section of code as many times as you need to.

Use a site map on your website. A web site does two things. First, it helps visitors understand your website better. It is a one-stop shop for them to find all you have to share with them in one convenient place. Site maps are also key when you are focusing on proper search engine optimization. Search engines are sure to have an easier time finding your website.

Hopefully, you know understand more about website design. Make sure that you are using everything learned here and find more information to build your knowledge and achieve your design goals.