When you have decided that it might be best to hire professional for designing your website, you must keep certain things in mind. First of all is that not all web design professionals are exactly professional. Some of them might be having even lesser knowledge about web-deisgn than you.
Qualifications are Meaningless- Web design professionals would generally not have any qualifications as this is still a nascent industry. You can guarantee that most people with web design qualifications did them at a community college to try and get rich during the dot-com boom. What you should pay attention to when searching for web designers is which of their skills they think are important. If they can competently explain what XHTML and CSS are and why they're good for your website, then they're a better candidate. Let them explain how they will proceed with your website and how that would be useful to you.
The Portfolio- Looking at the earlier work of any designer would give you a lot of idea about the knowledge and the expertise of the web designer. Good designers will have an assorted portfolio, with plenty of attractive sites that they've built for all sorts of customers, and they'll be able to explain to you why they built each site the way they did. You can contact some of their other clients (website owners) and get their feedback on the web designer.
However, you shouldn’t just shun off of a new web designer as he might still not have enough diversity in his portfolio. You must let them know that you’d like to see something before they you can commit your website to them. A good designer will gladly create a sample for your website (a small one page sample) and will tell you how he/she intends to proceed.
Work-You should make sure that the external web designers build your website for all of your users. They should keep in mind that this website is not just for a few people. For this, you must tell them the kind of target audience you want for your website. Amateur web designers have a propensity to come up with designs that they think would impress others but in their zeal they ignore the majority of the people who would be visiting the website. They should design a website suitable for as many browsers as possible.
Price- You should try and judge for yourself the proper price for designing of your website. Many a times, you’ll find that the designers themselves are not sure of the price to be charged. The best thing in such a scenario is to find an independent and an experienced professional who will tell you the correct price for designing your website. But you must also be prepared to tell exactly what you are looking for in your website and so the designer can charge you appropriately. And don’t forget to negotiate.
When you have decided to write your own HTML code for your site, and have spent some time learning HTML and how it works, there's one more thing you need to decide: which program are you going to use to do it? While you can use Windows programs like Notepad or Wordpad, they don't have any specialized HTML editing features. There are many HTML editors available though.
Syntax Highlighting- One of the most fundamental features for any editor is syntax highlighting. This means that it understands how HTML works, and will make tags a different colour from text, making it easier for you to see what you're doing.
When looking for a HTML editor you should find an editor that has up-to-date syntax highlighting and checks whether your tags are valid. It should check whether what you're entering is valid HTML, and warn you if it isn't.
Tag Suggestions- Getting an editor that knows about valid HTML tags and how they're structured can be helpful as that means it will let you know what you should be including and let you browse through tags to find the one you're thinking of. Tag suggesting editors can often save you typing, if they come up with a drop-down when you start typing and allow you to accept their suggestions easily by pressing tab or space. This can speed up your HTML editing significantly.
FTP Upload-Having a HTML editor with a built-in FTP upload facility saves you a lot of time, allowing you to enter your server, username and password, and upload the files you've just edited to the server. If your program doesn't do this, you'll have to use a separate FTP program which can be a bit time consuming.
Text to HTML Conversion- If you're making a lot of text content into HTML, one important feature to look for in the HTML editor is easy text-to-HTML conversion – otherwise you'll spend a lot of time putting tags at the start and end of each paragraph. Ideally, the software should be able to spot pieces of text that are headings, lists and so on, and add HTML tags for you automatically. This would make your life much easier.
Few Options-
SciTE Editor (www.scintilla.org) has excellent syntax highlighting, making it easier to be sure that you're writing correct HTML tags and you haven't made any layout mistakes.
Crimson Editor (www.crimsoneditor.com) is popular but it can be quite very technical when it comes to actual usage. Its biggest advantage is that it has built-in FTP uploads.
These are just a few suggestions and you must decide what’s convenient for you.
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