Building DIY Websites for Dummies.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

DeRosa, Jennifer.

Series:

--For dummies.

For dummies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Web sites.

Web sites--Design--Handbooks, manuals, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (387 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Newark : John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2024.

Summary:

There’s more to building a website than just picking a theme and dropping in text and images. Creating a site that attracts visitors and turns those visitors into customers requires some professional insight and a few tips and tricks. Building DIY Websites For Dummies guides non-designers through the steps of creating an attractive and effective website using today’s top web-based tools. This book helps you launch or improve your website designed to boost your entrepreneurial endeavors, small business, or personal passion. With this easy-to-follow Dummies guide, you can skip learning the complicated coding that runs a site and focus on the parts that attract visitors (and search engines). Grab this book and get expert insight on how to craft a usable design, create site content, improve site findability, and convert browsers into buyers.

Contents:

Intro

Title Page

Copyright Page

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Conventions Used in This Book

Foolish Assumptions

How This Book Is Organized

Icons Used in This Book

Beyond the Book

Where to Go from Here

Part 1 Getting Started with DIY Websites

Chapter 1 From Groundbreaking to Grand Opening: Constructing Your Website Step by Step

Setting Up Your Site for Success: Foundation, Messaging, and Search Engines

Picking a platform

Building the foundation

Understanding your potential customers

A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place

Developing a Look and Feel that Works

Getting and Analyzing Results

Chapter 2 Laying Your Website's Foundation

Choosing a Domain Name Registrar

Registering Your Domain Name

Avoid the offered extras

Opt for domain privacy (or not)

Choose a domain name

Use a premium domain name

Consider the extension

Understanding How Authoritative Nameservers Work

Choosing a Platform and a Host

Considerations for choosing a platform

Website hosting

What is a website host?

When do you need to find separate hosting?

Considerations when choosing a web host

Types of hosting

Deciding Where to Build Your Website

Build on a temporary URL

Build on a live URL

Build on a staging site

Going Live with Your Staging Site

Setting Up Your Business Email

How many email addresses should you have?

Where should you host your email?

How do you access your business email accounts?

Part 2 Creating a Site That People Will Visit

Chapter 3 Resonating with Visitors

Defining Buyer Personas

The importance of buyer personas

Create a buyer persona

Triggering Emotional Responses

Evoke emotional responses

Evoke positive responses

Be consistent

Be simple

Be exciting or inspirational.

Incorporating Modern Design Techniques

Add vivid imagery and graphics

Collages with illustrations and shapes

Handmade graphics

Videos

Other modern typographic tips

Selling the Why

Create a problem-solution spreadsheet

Utilize this information

Chapter 4 Nailing SEO Basics: Search Engine Optimization 101

Grasping Search Engine Basics

Unraveling the Essentials of Search Engine Optimization

Think like a search engine

Understand search intent

Provide complete content

Eating the Acronym Soup: HCU, YMYL, and E-E-A-T

Helpful content update

The YMYL concept

The E-E-A-T concept

Experience

Expertise

Authoritativeness

Trustworthiness

Wearing the Right Hat: Black Hat versus White Hat SEO

Black hat SEO techniques

White hat SEO techniques

Realizing the Importance of Backlinks

Types of backlinks: follow and nofollow

Black hat vs white hat backlinks

Discovering your backlinks

Ridding your site of toxic backlinks

Obtain white hat backlinks

Recognizing Structured Data Opportunities

Organize your content with structured data

Rich results are the best results

Schema markup is the "magic" behind it all

Add schema markup to your website to get rich results

Local business websites need local, structured data

Add local structured data to your website

Setting Up a Primary Google Account for SEO

Chapter 5 Killing It with Keywords

Understanding Keyword Types

Short-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords

Fresh and evergreen keywords

Choosing Keywords Based on Metrics

Search volume

Domain authority

Competition

Competitive keyword strategy

Researching Keywords

Find seed keywords

Use keyword tools

Use your giant keyword list

Part 3 Architecting Plans for Your Website

Chapter 6 A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place.

Organizing Your Sitemap

Determine all the pages you need

Organize your service pages

Create the About pages

Consider e-commerce pages

Writing Your Sitemap

Organize your pages into separate menus

Your main menu

Your top menu

Your footer menu

Assign keywords to your pages

Plan your titles, meta descriptions, and URLs

Writing your titles

Assigning your meta descriptions

Planning your URLs

Chapter 7 Content Scaffold: Supporting Your Website's Information

Setting Up Your Service Pages

Building Support Pages for Nonprofits

What to include on your support pages

A header row

Forms

Mission/impact statement

A story

Visuals

Dedications

Corporate giving and matching

FAQs

Social channels

Sharing links

Other ways to support

Three things that every nonprofit should do

Creating Pages that Every Website Needs

The About page

What you do

Your differentiators

Your history

A mission statement

Bios and headshots

Education, certifications, achievements, distinctions, and awards

Statistics and data

Contact information

Social feeds and links

Testimonials

Volunteer work

Mentions on other websites or the press

CTAs

The Contact page

Privacy policy and Terms of Service pages

Privacy policies page

Terms of Service (ToS) page

Crafting a privacy policy or Terms of Service

Populating Your Showcase Pages

Portfolio pages

Product pages

Product titles

Brief and long descriptions

Prices

Main photo

Additional gallery photos

SKU

Box weight, length, width, height

Product type

Categories

Tags

Laying out your product pages

Event pages

Displaying events

Where to place events

What to include

Using structured data with your events

Adding Blog Posts

Single blog posts.

Blog post titles

Blog content

Excerpts

A featured image

Author

Comments

Categories and tags

Blog archive pages

Strategies for creating a helpful and amazing blog

The purpose of your blog

The tone of your blog

The subject of your blog articles

A posting schedule

A content calendar

How to get visitors to your blog

Content to include on your blog articles

Building Your Homepage Last

Row 1: A strong message

Links to other pages and content

Social proof

Awards and accolades

Specific numbers and data

Galleries and portfolios

Features and benefits

Lead magnets

News articles and blog posts

Upcoming events

Chapter 8 Preparing Your Site's Content

Generating and Preparing Excellent Copy

Create an outline and brainstorm topics

Outline your copy

Generate your copy

Use AI to write content

Steer clear of duplicate content

Creating and Sourcing Your Images

Stock photography vs your own photos

Find an illustrator

Choose a photographer

Take great photos

Find good stock photography

Understanding Image Formats and Naming Conventions

JPG images

PNG images

GIF images

WebP images

SVG images

HEIC images

Name your images

Optimize your images

Proper resolution

Color mode

Dimensions

Compress your images

Use alt tags

Producing Video for Your Website

Where to purchase videos

Where to host videos

Choose a video hosting service

Vimeo

YouTube

Wistia

Part 4 Designing and Laying Out Your Website

Chapter 9 Deconstructing the Anatomy of Web Pages

Determining Your Website Theme

Choose a good theme

Features and functionality

The visual design of your website

How customizable the theme is

How performant the theme is

Is the theme supported by the developer?.

Does the theme have good documentation?

Change your theme

Types of themes

Using WordPress Page Builders

WPBakery

Divi

Elementor

Beaver Builder

Organizing Your Web Page Structure: Rows, Columns, and Modules

Rows

Columns

Modules and content

Decide how to lay out your content in rows, columns, and modules

Laying Out Your Header Row

The logo

The main menu

The top bar

Creating Hero Rows for Home and Interior Pages

Building a Helpful Footer

Chapter 10 Unfurling the Canvas of Design Options

Designing Your Logo

How much does a logo cost?

Horizontal or vertical layout?

Where will your logo appear?

Should you include a tag line on your logo?

How I Approach Design

Determining the General Settings

Choosing Fonts for a Cohesive Feel

Font properties

Oversized typography

Choose fonts for your website

Choosing Colors Effectively

Pick a color palette

Rules for using color

Color no-nos

HEX and RGBA colors

Your brand's HEX colors

HEX colors explained

Shorthand HEX colors

Semi-transparency with RGBA

Styling Rows, Columns, and Modules

Style your rows

Padding rows with whitespace

Fixed content and full-width content considerations

Style your columns

Style your modules

Using Whitespace

Whitespace helps readability

Whitespace exudes professionalism and clean design

Whitespace leads to increased comprehension

Whitespace helps reduce bounce rate and increase engagement rate

Add the right amount of whitespace

Chapter 11 Generating Leads from Your Website

Understanding and Using Forms

How many forms should you include?

Types of form fields

Required fields

Tab order

Conditional fields

Set up notifications

Configure confirmations

Test your forms

Combatting Submission Spam.

Integrating Forms with Other Platforms.

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-394-23300-0

OCLC:

1439999854