Bad Habits to Avoid in Webmedley

1) Pasting directly from Word

Most people like to create their web content in a word processor like Microsoft Word.  Although this is a good idea, the problem comes when you paste that content from Word into Webmedley.   Word processors like MS Word use formatting code and other html tags of their own to keep all those "smart" features that Word is famous for working properly.    When you paste that text into webmedley you will also paste all that needless formatting code with it, in time this can build up and cause your website (and our system) to run slower.  Read about this more at our Cut and Paste Hints and tips page.

Case and Point: 
The average HTML page in Webmedley page is around 47K.  That same page with the same content pasted from word can grow to 487K.  In this page there are around 500,000 needless characters in the HTML code. 

Solution:  Paste from Word into Notepad (Start - Programs - Accessories), then paste from Notepad into Webmedley. 

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2) Too Many Main Pages

Every page that is created in the first level of webpages (pages that are a direct subpage of Home) gets a link automatically created for it in our templates.  These links are called your dynamic navigation.  This is designed to let a visitor to easily navigate through your website.  Navigating gets difficult when you have too many main pages to choose from.  A long list of main pages to choose from can become not only unattractive, but tedious to look through. 

Solution:  Use the main pages to represent the main topics of your website.  Try not to get too specific with this first level.  It's a good idea to have no more than around 10 main pages.  From there use subpages to get into the more specific details of that topic.

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3) Long Names for the Main and Sub pages

Probably one of the most important parts of a webpage is the name.  This is what you see first, and what makes you choose that page as oppose to another one.   Having names that are too long can give your site not only an unprofessional look, but it can also cause the template you are using to grow in ways it was not designed.  Most templates are designed to a page name that fits on one line.  Although they can handle extremely long names, this will cause your page names to take up more than 1 line.  Attractive and useful names for webpages are short and meaningful.

Solution:  Keep your titles down to 3 or 4 words.  This keeps your dynamic navigation short, concise, and meaningful.  Why name a page "Our Staff and their contact information" when the name "Staff" will do just as good. 

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4) Using more than 1 template

Templates are designed to give your website a uniform look.  Using different templates for different pages will defeat that purpose of keeping uniformity.  Also doing this can make your visitor feel like they have left your site completely.  Many of our templates offer different themes and color schemes to allow some diversity within your website, but using different templates can cause much confusion and give your site a very unprofessional look. 

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5) Absolute Position

When you have a lot of pictures on your website, getting them all to align correctly can be a nightmare sometimes.  We urge you to resist the temptation to absolute position the pictures where you want and take the easy way out.  Absolute position uses the X and Y (or row and column) coordinates of the picture to tell Webmedley where to place the picture.  Unfortunately, if someone has the their monitor settings different, this can place the picture or a table in a completely different spot.  This causes your picture to cover up nearby content or jump around the page, giving it a sloppy look.

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