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How to change your web design
Monday, October 01, 2007
If you have an existing website and want to change the design, or perhaps hire a different web designer, it's not quite as straightforward a process as you might think.
If you are just changing the content of each page, then it is a simple job and you don't need to take this post as seriously as someone who is having a complete site overhaul.
This isn't an exhaustive list, but just a few ideas that spring to mind:
1) Your new site should comply with both W3C and Disability guidelines (Disability Discrimination Act in the UK).
2) If the domain and hosting are moving, ensure that they are registered in your name (see
Importance of renewing your domain name) and their costs are still reasonable...you can get domain names for less than £5/$10 and hosting for less than £25/$50 per year. Don't be fooled into thinking that paying more will get you 100% uptime on your website - this doesn't exist unless you've got a massive IT infrastructure in your large company.
3) If you are moving from one designer to another, have you got a copy of all passwords and access details?
4) If your page is going to use Flash animation, will it still be indexable by the search engines? You don't want to lose your hard-earned rankings because the search engines can no longer see what your site is about?
5) If you create new pages, will you map the old pages to the new ones if they have different names? If you use Linux hosting, you will need to do a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file - scary sounding but not that difficult if you search for .htaccess tutorials.
Labels: searchengines, webdesign
