INTRODUCTION TO WEB

1.1 HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF WEB

1.1.1 Introduction to WWW

The World Wide Web allows computer users to locate and view multimedia-based
documents (i.e., documents with text, graphics, animations, audios or videos) on almost any
subject. Even though the Internet was developed more than three decades ago, the introduction of
the World Wide Web is a relatively recent event. In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee of CERN (the
European Laboratory for Particle Physics) developed the World Wide Web and several
communication protocols that form the backbone of the Web.
The Internet and the World Wide Web surely will be listed among the most important
and profound creations of humankind. In the past, most computer applications executed on
“stand-alone” computers (i.e., computers that were not connected to one another). Today’s
applications can be written to communicate with hundreds of millions of computers. The Internet
mixes computing and communications technologies.
 It makes our work easier.
 It makes information instantly and conveniently accessible worldwide.
 Individuals and small businesses can receive worldwide exposure on the Internet.
 It is changing the nature of the way business is done.
 People can search for the best prices on virtually any product or service.
 Special-interest communities can stay in touch with one another and researchers can learn
of scientific and academic breakthroughs worldwide.

In the late 1960s, ARPA (the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of
Defense) sponsored a conference at which several dozen ARPA-funded graduate students were
brought together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to meet and share ideas.
During this conference, ARPA rolled out the blueprints for networking the main computer
systems of about a dozen ARPA-funded universities and Research institutions. They were to be
connected with communications lines operating at a then-stunning 56Kbps (i.e., 56,000 bits per
second)—this at a time when most people (of the few who could) were connecting over
telephone lines to computers at a rate of 110 bits per second. Many other intriguing possibilities
were raised. Academic research was on the verge of taking a giant leap forward. Shortly after

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this conference, ARPA proceeded to implement the ARPAnet, the grandparent of today’s
Internet.

Things worked out differently from what was originally planned. Rather than the primary benefit
of researchers sharing each other’s computers, it rapidly became clear that enabling the
researchers to communicate quickly and easily among themselves via what became known as
electronic mail (e-mail, for short) was the key benefit of the ARPAnet. This is true even today on
the Internet, as e-mail facilitates communications of all kinds among millions of people
worldwide.

One of the primary goals for ARPAnet was to allow multiple users to send and receive
information simultaneously over the same communications paths (such as phone lines). The
network operated with a technique called packet-switching, in which digital data was sent in
small packages called packets. The packets contained data address, error control and sequencing
information. The address information allowed packets to be routed to their destinations.

The sequencing information helped reassemble the packets (which, because of complex routing
mechanisms, could actually arrive out of order) into their original order for presentation to the
recipient. Packets from different senders were intermixed on the same lines. This packet-
switching technique greatly reduced transmission costs compared with the cost of dedicated
communications lines. The network was designed to operate without centralized control. If a
portion of the network should fail, the remaining working portions would still route packets from
senders to receivers over alternate paths.

The protocols for communicating over the ARPAnet became known as TCP—the Transmission
Control Protocol. TCP ensured that messages were properly routed from sender to receiver and
that those messages arrived intact.

As the Internet evolved, organizations worldwide were implementing their own networks for
both intra-organization (within the organization) and inter-organization (i.e., between
organizations) communications. A wide variety of networking hardware and software appeared.
One challenge was to get these different networks to communicate. ARPA accomplished this
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with the development of IP—the Internetworking Protocol, truly creating a “network of
networks,” the current architecture of the Internet. The combined set of protocols is now
commonly called TCP/IP.

Initially, Internet use was limited to universities and research institutions; then the military began
using the Internet. Eventually, the government decided to allow access to the Internet for
commercial purposes. Initially, there was resentment among the research and military
communities—these groups were concerned that response times would become poor as “the Net”
became saturated with users. In fact, the exact opposite has occurred. Businesses rapidly realized
that they could tune their operations and offer new and better services to their clients, so they
started spending vast amounts of money to develop and enhance the Internet. This generated
fierce competition among the communications carriers and hardware and software suppliers to
meet this demand.
The result is that bandwidth (i.e., the information carrying capacity) on the Internet has increased
tremendously and costs have decreased significantly. It is widely believed that the Internet has
played a significant role in the economic prosperity that the United States and many other
industrialized nations have enjoyed recently and are likely to enjoy for many years.

The formation of the W3C

In October 1994, Tim Berners-Lee founded an organization—called the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C)—devoted to developing nonproprietary, interoperable technologies for the
World Wide Web. One of the W3C’s primary goals is to make the Web universally accessible—
regardless of disability, language or culture. The W3C is also a standardization organization.
Web technologies standardized by the W3C are called Recommendations. W3C
Recommendations include the Extensible Hyper-Text Markup Language (XHTML), Cascading
Style Sheets (CSS), Hypertext Markup Language (HTML; now considered a
“Legacy” technology) and the Extensible Markup Language (XML). A recommendation is not
an actual software product, but a document that specifies a technology’s role, syntax, rules, etc.

The W3C is comprised of three hosts—the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),

Institute National de Recherché en Informatique ET Automatique (INRIA) and Keio University

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of Japan—and over 400 members, including Deitel & Associates, Inc. Members provide the
primary financing for the W3C and help provide the strategic direction of the Consortium.

1.2 WEB DEVELOPMENT CYCLE

There are numerous steps in the web site design and development process. From
gathering initial information, to the creation of your web site, and finally to maintenance to keep
your web site up to date and current. The exact process will vary slightly from designer to
designer, but the basics are generally the same.
1. Information Gathering
2. Planning
3. Design
4. Development
5. Testing and Delivery
6. Maintenance Phase

Phase One: Information Gathering

The first step in designing a successful web site is to gather information. Many things need to be
taken into consideration when the look and feel of your site is created. This first step is actually
the most important one, as it involves a solid understanding of the company it is created for. It
involves a good understanding of you – what your business goals and dreams are, and how the
web can be utilized to help you achieve those goals. It is important that your web designer start
off by asking a lot of questions to help them understand your business and your needs in a web
site.

Certain things to consider are:

Purpose
What is the purpose of the site? Do you want to provide information, promote a service, and sell
a product?
Goals
What do you hope to accomplish by building this web site? Two of the more common goals are
either to make money or share information.
Target Audience
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Is there a specific group of people that will help you reach your goals? It is helpful to picture the
“ideal” person you want to visit your web site. Consider their age, sex or interests – this will later
help determine the best design style for your site.
Content
What kind of information will the target audience be looking for on your site? Are they looking
for specific information, a particular product or service, online ordering.

Phase Two: Planning

Using the information gathered from phase one, it is time to put together a plan for your web site.
This is the point where a site map is developed. The site map is a list of all main topic areas of
the site, as well as sub-topics, if applicable. This serves as a guide as to what content will be on
the site, and is essential to developing a consistent, easy to understand navigational system. The
end-user of the web site – aka your customer – must be kept in mind when designing your site.
These are, after all, the people who will be learning about your service or buying your product. A
good user interface creates an easy to navigate web site, and is the basis for this.
During the planning phase, your web designer will also help you decide what technologies
should be implemented. Elements such as interactive forms, ecommerce, flash, etc. are discussed
when planning your web site.

Phase Three: Design

Drawing from the information gathered up to this point, it’s time to determine the look and feel
of your site. Target audience is one of the key factors taken into consideration. A site aimed at
teenagers, for example, will look much different than one meant for a financial institution. As
part of the design phase, it is also important to incorporate elements such as the company logo or
colors to help strengthen the identity of your company on the web site.
Your web designer will create one or more prototype designs for your web site. This is typically
a .jpg image of what the final design will look like. Often times you will be sent an email with
the mock-ups for your web site, while other designers take it a step further by giving you access
to a secure area of their web site meant for customers to view work in progress. Either way, your
designer should allow you to view your project throughout the design and development stages.
The most important reason for this is that it gives you the opportunity to express your likes and
dislikes on the site design. In this phase, communication between both you and your designer is
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crucial to ensure that the final web site will match your needs and taste. It is important that you
work closely with your designer, exchanging ideas, until you arrive at the final design for your
web site. Then development can begin…

Phase Four: Development

The developmental stage is the point where the web site itself is created. At this time, your web
designer will take all of the individual graphic elements from the prototype and use them to
create the actual, functional site. This is typically done by first developing the home page,
followed by a “shell” for the interior pages. The shell serves as a template for the content pages
of your site, as it contains the main navigational structure for the web site. Once the shell has
been created, your designer will take your content and distribute it throughout the site, in the
appropriate areas. Elements such as interactive contact forms, flash animations or ecommerce
shopping carts are implemented and made functional during this phase, as well. This entire time,
your designer should continue to make your in-progress web site available to you for viewing, so
that you can suggest any additional changes or corrections you would like to have done. On the
technical front, a successful web site requires an understanding of front-end web development.
This involves writing valid XHTML / CSS code that complies to current web standards,
maximizing functionality, as well as accessibility for as large an audience as possible. This is
tested in the next phase…and Deliver At this point, your web designer will attend to the final
details and test your web site. They will test things such as the complete functionality of forms or
other scripts, as well last testing for last minute compatibility issues (viewing differences
between different web browsers), ensuring that your web site is optimized to be viewed properly
in the most recent browser versions. A good web designer is one who is well versed in current
standards for web site design and development. The basic technologies currently used are
XHTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). As part of testing, your designer should check to be
sure that all of the code written for your web site validates. Valid code means that your site
meets the current web development standards

Once you give your web designer final approval, it is time to deliver the site. An FTP (File
Transfer Protocol) program is used to upload the web site files to your server. Most web
designers offer domain name registration and web hosting services as well. Once these accounts
have been setup, and your web site uploaded to the server, the site should be put through one last
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run-through. This is just precautionary, to confirm that all files have been uploaded correctly,
and that the site continues to be fully functional. This marks the official launch of your site, as it
is now viewable to the public. The development of your web site is not necessarily over, though.
One way to bring repeat visitors to your site is to offer new content or products on a regular
basis. Most web designers will be more than happy to continue working together with you, to
update the information on your web site. Many designers offer maintenance packages at reduced
rates, based on how often you anticipate making changes or additions to your web site. If you
prefer to be more hands on, and update your own content, there is something called a CMS
(Content Management System) that can be implemented to your web site. This is something that
would be decided upon during the Planning stage. With a CMS, your designer will utilize online
software to develop a database driven site for you. A web site driven by a CMS gives you the
ability to edit the content areas of the web site yourself. You are given access to a back-end
administrative area, where you can use an online text editor (similar to a mini version of
Microsoft Word). You’ll be able to edit existing content this way, or if you are feeling more
adventurous, you can even add new pages and content yourself. The possibilities are endless! It’s
really up to you as far as how comfortable you feel as far as updating your own web site. Some
people prefer to have all the control so that they can make updates to their own web site the
minute they decide to do so. Others prefer to hand off the web site entirely, as they have enough
tasks on-hand that are more important for them to handle directly. That’s where the help of a
your web designer comes in, once again, as they can take over the web site maintenance for
you.one less thing for you to do is always a good thing in these busy times. Other maintenance
type items include SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SES (Search Engine Submission).
This is the optimization of you web site with elements such as title, description and keyword tags
which help your web site achieve higher rankings in the search engines. The previously
mentioned code validation is something that plays a vital role in SEO, as well. There are a lot of
details involved in optimizing and submitting your web site to the search engines – enough to
warrant its own post. This is a very important step, because even though you now have a web
site, you need to make sure that people can find it.

1.3 THE PROCESS OF WEB PUBLISHING

Planning, organizing, and visualizing Web sites and pages may be more important than knowing
HTML. Unfortunately, these are very difficult things to teach and tend to be learned only by
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experience. The biggest mistake in Web development is not having a clear goal for a Web site.
Even if the site is launched on time and under budget, how can you understand whether you did a
good job? If you had no goal in the first place? Often goals are vague. Initially, many corporate
Web site projects were fueled by FUD—fear, uncertainty, and doubt. With the hype surrounding
the Web, it was important to get on the Web before the competition. If the competition was
already online, having a Web site appeared even more crucial to corporate success. This is a
dangerous situation to be in. Even if budget is not an issue, the benefit of the site will eventually
be questioned. Web professionals may find their jobs on the line. Thus, the first step in the Web
publishing process is defining the purpose of a site.

Determining Purpose
Finding a purpose for a Web site isn’t necessarily very hard. The Web can be very useful, and
many common reasons exist to put up a Web site, a few of which are listed here:

 Commerce
 Entertainment
 Information
 Marketing
 Personal pleasure
 Presence
 Promotion
 Research and education
 Technical support

One problem with Web sites is that they may have multiple purposes. A corporate Web site may
include demands for marketing, public relations, investor relations, technical support, commerce,
and human resource services such as job recruiting. Trying to meet all of these needs while
thinking about the Web site as one entity can be difficult. Much like a large-scale software
system with many functions, a Web site with many different goals probably should be broken
into modules, or subprojects, that constitute parts of a larger whole. This leads to the idea of a
microsite—a very specific subsite that is part of a larger site and that may be built separately.

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Microsites have the advantage of allowing the focus, look, or technology of a portion of a site to
change without having to change the site as a whole.
No matter how the site is structured, keeping it cohesive and logical is important. For example,
establishing a consistent look and feel for the site as a whole is still important, regardless of the
multitude of functions. People should feel comfortable moving from your support pages to your
marketing pages to your employment pages. A consistent user interface breeds familiarity and
generates a united front. The user doesn’t need to know that the site is constructed in modules.
An inconsistent interface can lead to a user becoming lost and confused while exploring. It helps
to have one person (or at least a small group) designated as the overall decision maker on a Web
project.

The Webmaster, or more appropriately termed Web manager, coordinates the work efforts and
helps keep the project on track. The Web manager’s role is basically the same as a project
manager on a large software project. Without such careful management, a Web site with many
goals may quickly become a mess, built to satisfy the needs and desires of its builders rather than
its viewers.
Who Is the Audience?
Of course, just having a purpose for a site isn’t enough: you need to consider a site’s audience.
Notice how often sites reflect the organizational structure of a company rather than the needs of
the customer. The goal is always to keep the user at the center of the discussion. Before building
a site, make sure to answer some simple audience questions:

Are the users coming from within your organization, or from outside?
 Are they young or old?
 What language do they speak?
 When do they visit the site?
 What technologies do they support?
 What browsers do they use?

Figuring out an audience doesn’t have to be that hard, but don’t assume that your audience is too
large. People from South America or the Sudan can visit your Web page—but do they? Should
they? It is important to be realistic about the audience of the Web. The Web has millions of
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users, but they aren’t all going to visit a particular Web site. If they did, things probably wouldn’t
work well. When the idea of a site’s audience is discussed, don’t think in terms of a nameless,
faceless John Q. Cybercitizen with a modem and an America Online account. When thinking
about users, try to get as specific as possible, and even ask users, if possible. If you already have
a site set up, you have a wealth of information about your users—your server logs. Logs can tell
you quite a bit about your user base. Depending on the server and its configuration, you can learn
the time of day that you get the most hits, the pages visited the most, the browsers and versions
being used, the domains your visitors come from, and even the pages that referred visitors to
your site. From the logs, you can even infer connection speeds, based on delivery time between
pages. If you do not have a server running yet, begin with your best estimate of the kinds of
visitors you expect. Once the site is running, check the logs against your estimates—you may
find that your audience is different than you expected. An important point in Web design is that
you must be willing to revise your designs, even going as far as throwing away your favorite
ideas, if they do not fit with your actual audience.

Who Will Pay for It?

Sites cost money to produce, so they generally have to produce some benefit to continue. While
people do put up sites for personal enjoyment, even this type of site has limits in terms of an
individual’s investment of time and money. It is very important to understand the business model
of the site. Only a year or two ago, many corporate Web budgets were not always the first
concern, due to the novelty of the technology. Today, however, Web sites often have to prove
that they’re “worth it.” The money has to come from somewhere. A site’s creator could pay for
everything, but that probably isn’t reasonable unless the Web site is for pure enjoyment or is
nonprofit. Typically, some funds have to be collected, probably indirectly, to support the site.
For example, while a promotional site for a movie may not directly collect revenues, it can
influence the audience and have some impact on the success or failure of the film. Interestingly,
many Web sites are nearly as indirect as a movie promotion site. Measuring the direct benefit of
having such sites can be very difficult. More directly measurable sites are those on which leads
are collected or goods are sold. Some value can be put on these transactions, and an
understanding of the benefit of the site can be determined. Harder to track, but no less valuable,
are Web sites for customer service and support. Placing product information or manuals online,
or posting URLs for Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) lists on your products, enables your
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customers to answer many of their own questions. Not only can this directly reduce the load on
your customer service and support organizations, it also fosters good will among your customer
base. When a customer is shopping around, the vendor who makes it easiest for them to obtain
the information they are looking for tends to have an immediate advantage. Another possible
business model for a Web site is to have viewers pay, as in a subscription model. This model’s
problem is that viewers must be given a convincing reason to pay for the information or service
available at the Web site. Making a Web site valuable to a user is tricky, especially considering
that value often is both psychological and real. When looking at the value of the information
available in an encyclopedia, think about its form. If the encyclopedia’s information is in book
form, the cost might be as high as N50,000. Put the same information on a CD-ROM, and see if
the information can be sold for the same cost. What if the same information is on a Web site? On
a CD-ROM, the information probably can be sold for n1500 to n5000. On a Web site, it goes for
even less, particularly if the user only wants to buy a specific piece of information. Users often
place more value on the delivery of a good or service than on the good itself. Consider software,
for which the design and production of packaging often costs more than reproducing the software
itself. The bottom line is that packaging does count. It is no wonder that users often mistakenly
overvalue the graphic aspect of a site. Another business model involves getting someone other
than the owner or the intended audience of the site to pay. This model typically comes in the
form of an advertising-driven site. However, what is interesting about advertising is that a good
is actually being sold—the audience. Advertisers are interested in reaching a particular audience
and are willing to pay for an advertisement based on the effectiveness of that ad reaching the
intended audience. The question is, how can an audience be attracted, measured, and then sold to
the advertisers? The obvious approach is to provide some reason for an audience to come to a
Web site and identify themselves. This is very difficult. Furthermore, the audience must be
accurately measured, so that advertisers have a way to compare audience size from one site to
the next and know how to spend their advertising dollars. People often discuss the number of
visitors to their site as an indication of value to an advertiser. The advertisers, however, may not
care about the number of visitors, unless those visitors are in their target audience. Regardless of
who is paying for the site, some understanding of the costs and benefits of the site is necessary.
How much does each visitor actually cost, and what benefit does he or she produce? Understand
that the number of visitors doesn’t count, even when using the advertising model. The value of
the site transcends this figure and addresses the effectiveness of the visitation. In other words,
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many visits don’t necessarily mean success. Having many visitors to an online store who
nonetheless make few purchases may mean huge losses, particularly if it costs more to reach
each visitor. Even the form of the Web site may affect the cost. For example, because the amount
of data delivered from a Web site is generally related directly to the site’s variable costs, sending
video costs more than sending regular HTML text. High costs for Web site development isn’t
always bad, particularly if it produces a big payoff. Goals must be set to measure success and
understand how to budget Web sites.

Defining Goals
A goal for a site is not the same as its purpose. A purpose gives a general idea of what the site is
for, whereas a goal is very specific. A goal can help define how much should be spent, but goals
must be measurable. What is a measurable goal of the site? Selling x Naira worth of product
directly via the Web site is a measurable goal, as is selling x Naira of product or service
indirectly through leads. Reaching a certain usage level per day, week, or month can be a goal.
So is lowering the number of incoming technical support phone calls by a certain amount. Many
ways exist to measure the success or failure of a Web project, but measurements generally come
in two categories: soft and hard. Hard measurements are those that are easily measured, such as
the number of visitors per day. Soft measurements are a little less clear. For example, with a
promotional site for a movie, it might be difficult to understand whether the site had any effect
on the box office sales.

Defining Scope
After you define a site’s goals, you need to define what is necessary to reach your goals. You
might call this defining scope. One thing to remember, though—scope equals money. Because of
the flexible nature of the Web, many developers want to add as much as possible to the Web site.
However, more isn’t always better. The more that is added to the Web site, the more it costs.
Furthermore, having too much information makes finding essential information difficult. To
think about scope, return to one of the first steps in the process. What is the main purpose of the
site? Shouldn’t the information of the site reflect this purpose? Looking at the Web, this doesn’t
always seem to be the case. Have you ever gone to a site and not understood its point? Finding
the essentials of a Web site might not be easy, particularly if it has many purposes or many
parties involved in its development. One approach is to have a brainstorming session, in which
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users provide ideas. Each idea is then written down on a 3×5 card. After all the cards have been
created, ask the users to sort the cards into piles. First, sort the cards into similar piles to see how
things are related. Next, sort the piles in order of importance. What is important can eventually
be distilled out of the cards. Remember to cut down the number of cards, to make people focus
on what is truly important. Instead of coming up with ideas of what should go into a site to meet
a particular goal or goals, you may be tempted to take existing materials, such as marketing
pieces, and convert them to the Web. Unfortunately, creating the content of the site based solely
on text and pictures from manuals, brochures, and other support materials rarely works.
Migrating text from print to the Web is troublesome, because the media are so different. Reading
onscreen has been proven to be much slower than reading from paper. In practice, people tend
not to read information online carefully. They tend to scan it quickly and then print what they
need. In this sense, writing for paper tends to go against screen reading. Think about newspaper
or TV news stories: the main point is stated first and then discussed. This goes against the slow
buildup of many paper documents, which carefully spell out a point. With visitors skimming the
site, key bullet points tend to be read while detailed information is skipped. The main thing is to
keep the points obvious and simple. Even if information is presented well, poor organization can
ruin all the hard work in preparing the information. If a viewer can’t find the information, who
cares how great it looks or how well it reads?

1.4 WEB CONTENT

Web content is the textual, visual or aural content that is encountered as part of the user
experience on websites. It may include, among other things: text, images, sounds, videos and
animations.

Beginnings of web content

While the Internet began with a U.S. Government research project in the late 1950s, the web in
its present form did not appear on the Internet until after Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues at
the European laboratory (CERN) proposed the concept of linking documents with hypertext. But
it was not until Mosaic, the forerunner of the famous Netscape Navigator, appeared that the
Internet become more than a file serving system. The use of hypertext, hyperlinks and a page-

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based model of sharing information, introduced with Mosaic and later Netscape, helped to define
web content, and the formation of websites.
Largely, today we categorize websites as being a particular type of website according to the
content a website contains.

The page concept

Web content is dominated by the "page" concept. Having its beginnings in academic settings,
and in a setting dominated by type-written pages, the idea of the web was to link directly from
one academic paper to another academic paper. This was a completely revolutionary idea in the
late 1980s and early 1990s when the best a link could be made was to cite a reference in the
midst of a type written paper and name that reference either at the bottom of the page or on the
last page of the academic paper. When it was possible for any person to write and own a Mosaic
page, the concept of a "home page" blurred the idea of a page. It was possible for anyone to own
a "Web page" or a "homepage" which in many cases the website contained many physical pages
in spite of being called "a page". People often cited their "home page" to provide credentials,
links to anything that a person supported, or any other individual content a person wanted to
publish. Even though "the web" may be the resource we commonly use to "get to" particular
locations online, many different protocols are invoked to access embedded information. When
we are given an address, such as http://www.youtube.com, we expect to see a range of web
pages, but in each page we have embedded tools to watch "video clips".

HTML web content

Even though we may embed various protocols within web pages, the "web page" composed of
"html" (or some variation) content is still the dominant way whereby we share content. And
while there are many web pages with localized proprietary structure (most usually, business
websites), many millions of websites abound that are structured according to a common core
idea.

A blog (a blend of the term "web log" is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually
maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other
material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological
order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. Most
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blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via
widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites.
Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more
personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web
pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an
interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although
some focus on art (Art blog), photographs (photo blog), videos (Video blogging), music (MP3
blog), and audio (podcasting). Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short
posts.

A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The search
results are generally presented in a list of results and are often called hits. The information may
consist of web pages, images, information and other types of files. Some search engines also
mine data available in databases or open directories. Unlike Web directories, which are
maintained by human editors, search engines operate algorithmically or are a mixture of
algorithmic and human input.

An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold
conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat room sin that messages are
not shown in real-time, to see new messages the forum page must be reloaded. Also, depending
on the access level of a user and/or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be
approved by a moderator before it becomes visible. Forums have their own language; e.g. a
single conversation is called a 'thread'. A forum is hierarchical or tree-like in structure: forum -
sub forum - topic - thread - reply. Depending on the forum set-up, users can be anonymous or
have to register with the forum and then subsequently login in order to post messages. Usually
you do not have to login to read existing messages.

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or ecommerce, or e-business consists

of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and
other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown
extraordinarily with widespread Internet usage. The use of commerce is conducted in this way,
spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management,
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Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory
management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce
typically uses the World Wide Web at least at some point in the transaction's lifecycle, although
it can encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail as well.

1.5 STATIC AND DYNAMIC WEB CONTENT

Types of Website Content - Static and Dynamic

Static Web Site

static web page (sometimes called a flat page) is a web page that is delivered to the user exactly
as stored, in contrast to dynamic web pages which are generated by a web application.
Consequently a static web page displays the same information for all users, from all contexts,
subject to modern capabilities of a web server to negotiate content-type or language of the
document where such versions are available and the server is configured to do so. Static web
pages are often HTML documents stored as files in the file system and made available by the
web server over HTTP. However, loose interpretations of the term could include web pages
stored in a database, and could even include pages formatted using a template and served through
an application server, as long as the page served is unchanging and presented essentially as
stored.

Advantages and disadvantages

Advantages
 No programming skills are required to create a static page.
 Inherently publicly cacheable (i.e. a cached copy can be shown to anyone).
 No particular hosting requirements are necessary.
 Can be viewed directly by a web browser without needing a web server or application
server, for example directly from a CDROM or USB Drive.
Disadvantages
 Any personalization or interactivity has to run client-side (i.e. In the browser), which is
restricting.
 Maintaining large numbers of static pages as files can be impractical without automated
tools.
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Application areas of Static Website:

Need of Static web pages arise in the following cases:
 Changes to web content is infrequent
 List of products / services offered is limited
 Simple e-mail based ordering system should suffice
 No advanced online ordering facility is required
 Features like order tracking, verifying availability of stock, online credit card
transactions, are not needed
 Web site not required to be connected to back-end system.

Static Web pages are very simple in layout and informative in context. Creation of static website
content requires great level of technical expertise and if a site owner is intended to create static
web pages, they must be very clear with their ideas of creating such pages since they need to hire
a web designer.

Dynamic Web Sites

A dynamic web page is a kind of web page that has been prepared with fresh information
(content and/or layout), for each individual viewing. It is not static because it changes with the
time (ex. A news content), the user (ex. preferences in a login session), the user interaction (ex.
web page game), the context (parametric customization), or any combination of the foregoing.

Two types of dynamic web sites

Client-side scripting and content creation

Using client-side scripting to change interface behaviors within a specific web page, in response
to mouse or keyboard actions or at specified timing events. In this case the dynamic behavior
occurs within the presentation. Such web pages use presentation technology called rich
interfaced pages. Client-side scripting languages like JavaScript or Action Script, used for
Dynamic HTML (DHTML) and Flash technologies respectively, are frequently used to
orchestrate media types (sound, animations, changing text, etc.) of the presentation.

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The Client-side content is generated on the user's computer. The web browser retrieves a page
from the server, then processes the code embedded in the page (often written in JavaScript) and
displays the retrieved page's content to the user.
Server-side scripting and content creation
Using server-side scripting to change the supplied page source between pages, adjusting the
sequence or reload of the web pages or web content supplied to the browser. Server responses
may be determined by such conditions as data in a posted HTML form, parameters in the URL,
the type of browser being used, the passage of time, or a database or server state. Such web
pages are often created with the help of serverside languages such as PHP, Perl, ASP, ASP.NET,
JSP, ColdFusion and other languages. These server-side languages typically use the Common
Gateway Interface (CGI) to produce dynamic web pages. These kinds of pages can also use,on
the client-side, the first kind (DHTML, etc.).

Server-side dynamic content is more complicated:

(1) The client sends the server the request.
(2) The server receives the request and processes the server-side script such as [PHP] based on
the query string, HTTP POST data, cookies, etc.
The dynamic page generation was made possible by the Common Gateway Interface, stable in
1993. Then Server Side Includes pointed a more direct way to deal with server-side scripts, at the
web servers.

Application areas of Dynamic Website

Dynamic web page is required when following necessities arise:

 Need to change main pages more frequently to encourage clients to return to site.
 Long list of products / services offered that are also subject to up gradation
 Introducing sales promotion schemes from time to time
 Need for more sophisticated ordering system with a wide variety of functions
 Tracking and offering personalized services to clients.
 Facility to connect Web site to the existing back-end system

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NOTE: The fundamental difference between a static Website and a dynamic Website is a static
website is no more than an information sheet spelling out the products and services while a
dynamic website has wider functions like engaging and gradually leading the client to online
ordering. But both static web site design and dynamic websites design can be designed for search
engine optimization. If the purpose is only to furnish information, then a static website should
suffice. Dynamic website is absolutely necessary for e-commerce and online ordering

2.0 WEBDESIGN CONCEPT

Unit Structure

2.1 Basic rules of Web Page design

2.2 Types of Website
2.3 Importance of websites to any business

2.1 5 Basic Rules of Web Page Design and Layout

Your Web Site Should Be Easy to Read

The most important rule in web design is that your web site should be easy to read. What does
this mean? You should choose your text and background colors very carefully. You don't want to
use backgrounds that obscure your text or use colors that are hard to read. Dark-colored text on a
light-colored background is easier to read than light-colored text on dark colored background.
You also don't want to set your text size too small (hard to read) or too large (it will appear to
shout at your visitors). All capitalized letters also give the appearance of shouting at your
visitors. Keep the alignment of your main text to the left, not centered. Center-aligned text is best
used in headlines. You want your visitors to be comfortable with what they are reading, and most
text (in the West) is left aligned.

Your Web Site Should Be Easy to Navigate

All of your hyperlinks should be clear to your visitors. Graphic images, such as buttons or tabs,
should be clearly labeled and easy to read. Your web graphic designer should select the colors,
backgrounds, textures, and special effects on your web graphics very carefully. It is more
important that your navigational buttons and tabs be easy to read and understand than to have

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"flashy" effects. Link colors in your text should be familiar to your visitor (blue text usually
indicates an unvisited link and purple or maroon text usually indicates a visited link), if possible.
If you elect not to use the default colors, your text links should be emphasized in some other way
(boldfaced, a larger font size, set between small vertical lines, or a combination of these). Text
links should be unique -- they should not look the same as any other text in your web pages. You
do not want people clicking on your headings because they think the headings are links. Your
visitors should be able to find what they are looking for in your site within three clicks. If not,
they are very likely to click off your site as quickly as they clicked on.

Your Web Site Should Be Easy to Find

How are your visitors finding you online? The myth, "If I build a web site, they will come," is
still a commonly held belief among companies and organizations new to the Internet. People will
not come to your web site unless you promote your site both online and offline. Web sites are
promoted online via search engines, directories, award sites, banner advertising, electronic
magazines (e-zines) and links from other web sites. If you are not familiar with any of these
online terms, then it is best that you have your site promoted by an online marketing
professional. Web sites are promoted offline via the conventional advertising methods: print ads,
radio, television, brochures, word-of-mouth, etc. Once you have created a web site, all of your
company's printed materials including business cards, letterhead, envelopes, invoices, etc. should
have your URL printed on them.

Your Web Pages' Layout Should Be Consistent Throughout the Site

Just as in any document formatted on a word processor or as in any brochure, newsletter, or
newspaper formatted in a desktop publishing program, all graphic images and elements,
typefaces, headings, and footers should remain consistent throughout your web site. Consistency
and coherence in any document, whether it be a report or a set of web pages, project a
professional image. For example, if you use a drop shadow as a special effect in your bullet
points, you should use drop shadows in all of your bullets. Link-colors should be consistent
throughout your web pages. Typefaces and background colors, too, should remain the same
throughout your site. Color-coded web pages, in particular, need this consistency. Typefaces,
alignment in the main text and the headings, background effects, and the special effects on
graphics should remain the same. Only the colors should change.
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Overall Web Page Size Should be 75K or Less

Studies have indicated that visitors will quickly lose interest in your web site if the majority of a
page does not download within 15 seconds. (Artists' pages should have a warning at the top of
their pages.) Even web sites that are marketed to high-end users need to consider download
times. Sometimes, getting to web site such as Microsoft or Sun Microsystems is so difficult and
time consuming that visitors will often try to access the sites during non-working hours from
their homes. If your business does not have good brand name recognition, it is best to keep your
download time as short as possible. A good application of this rule is adding animation to your
site. Sure, animation looks "cool" and does initially catch your eye, but animation graphics tend
to be large files. Test the download time of your pages first. If the download time of your page is
relatively short and the addition of animation does not unreasonably increase the download time
of your page, then and ONLY then should animation be a consideration. Finally, before you
consider the personal preferences of your web page design, you should consider all of the above
rules FIRST and adapt your personal preferences accordingly. The attitude "I don't like how it
looks" should always be secondary to your web site's function. Which is more important:
creative expression corporate image or running a successful business?

2.2 Types of websites

There are three website types:

 Content (information)
 E-Commerce (online sales)
 Interaction (Blogs, Bulletin Boards, Chat Rooms, and gaming sites).

Website types are implemented as dynamic or static:

 Dynamic websites have frequently changing content or interact with the visitor. Dynamic
websites typically use server side programming to generate HTML code as requested.
 Static websites are written in pure HTML perhaps with a bit of JavaScript and only
change when manually updated. It's common to see combinations of the three types as

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well as combinations of dynamic and static. It's important to understand what they are are
and what works for you!
Content or information websites may be dynamic or static and the implementation depends
upon how frequently the website information changes. News sites and search engines are
dynamic database driven websites to allow rapid information update. Many corporate websites
are static but that is changing rapidly.
E-commerce sites are almost always dynamic allowing for frequent product changes, pricing
changes, sales and inventory updates. Simple e-commerce transactions like membership
applications and online payment may be interactive while the main website is still static.
Interaction sites (Blogs, Bulletin Boards, Chat Rooms, and gaming sites) are dynamic.
Websites can be a combination of Content, E-Commerce and Interactive as well as a
combination of dynamic and static. It's common to see a combination of dynamic and static
implementations and combination of types. Because of this, more website owners are moving
toward dynamic pages.

Pictures and graphics are always good to liven up a website. You should have at least some
because the phrase "one picture is worth a thousand words" is as true now as when it was coined.

2.3 The Importance of Having a Website for Any Business

One of the most surprising things when you look at small businesses is how many of them don't
have a website. You would think that in this day and age everybody would know how important
a website is for all businesses. Clearly that is not the case. Any business that does not have a
website is missing out on one of the most powerful marketing tools available to them.

So should your business have a website, even if your business is small and sells products or
services you don't think can be sold online? My answer is yes, if you have a business, you should
have a website.

The main reason that it is important for businesses to have a website is how people are likely to
find you. These days most people will go online and research products and companies before
they make a purchase, if you don't have a website you are missing out on all of this potential

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business. Even if people don't buy your product online they are still likely to research it online so
you have to have a website so these people can learn about your business.

Also, don't be so quick to dismiss your product as one that can't be sold online. Nowadays,
there's very little that can't be sold over the internet. More than 20 million shoppers are now
online, purchasing everything from books to computers to cars to real estate to jet airplanes to
natural gas to you name it. If you can imagine it, someone will figure out how to sell it online.

Let me clarify one point: I'm not saying you should put all your efforts into selling your wares
over the internet, though if your product lends itself to easy online sales, you should certainly be
considering it. The point to be made here is that you should at the very least have a presence on
the web so that customers, potential employees, business partners and perhaps even investors can
quickly and easily find out more about your business and the products or services you have to
offer.

That said, it's not enough that you just have a website. You must have a professional-looking site
if you want to be taken seriously. Since many consumers now search for information online prior
to making a purchase at a brick-and-mortar store, your site may be the first chance you have at
making a good impression on a potential buyer. If your site looks like it was designed by a barrel
of colorblind monkeys, your chance at making a good first impression will be lost.

One of the great things about the internet is that it has leveled the playing field when it comes to
competing with the big boys. As mentioned, you have one shot at making a good first
impression. With a well-designed site, your little operation can project the image and
professionalism of a much larger company. The inverse is also true. I've seen many big company
websites that were so badly designed and hard to navigate that they completely lacked
professionalism and credibility. Good for you, too bad for them.

You also mention that yours is a small operation, but when it comes to benefiting from a website,
size does not matter. I don't care if you're a one-man show or a 10,000-employee corporate giant;
if you don't have a website, you're losing business to other companies that do.

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Here's the exception to my rule: It's actually better to have no website at all than to have one that
makes your business look bad. Your site speaks volumes about your business. It either says,
"Hey, look, we take our business so seriously that we have created this wonderful site for our
customers!" or it screams, "Hey, look, I let my 10-year-old nephew design my site. Good luck
finding anything!"

Your website is an important part of your business. Make sure you treat it as such

These days, almost any small business should have a website. With costs being extremely low to
develop a website, it's becoming difficult to imagine a reason for any company of any size not to
have a website. Many user-friendly, free and open-source content-management systems are
available to assist with Web design, so it is even possible to build a basic small business website
without a professional Web designer.

Other importance of having a website includes:

Low-Cost Advertising

The Web has a far wider reach than any other form of advertising. While it takes time to build up
enough traffic to your website to make a worthwhile impact on your company's marketing
campaign, it costs next to nothing to do so. Your website will be the center of your company's
online presence; through it, you advertise your business around the Web on social networking
sites, forums and through pay-per-click advertising programs.

Visibility

Increasing visibility is one major factor that makes having a website important. Even if people
have heard about your company, they may want to carry out research online first, before leaving
the house. Provide a map and directions to your company's shops or offices on your website so
that visitors are less likely to have trouble finding the place.

Accessibility

A website is online and accessible 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Because of this, your
customers and potential customers can visit your site for support or information about new and
upcoming products and services whenever it is convenient for them. Your website will act as an

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invaluable and always-available resource for information which would otherwise only be
accessible during your company's business hours.

Sales

Your website can sell products at any time. Potential customers are not restricted to business
hours. Instead, they can go online and purchase products whenever they want. A website with an
online shop can provide a dramatic boost in sales.

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