I’ve recently got involved in assisting a couple of people with their web sites.
However pretty they are, some basic problems seem to be repeating themselves in simple technical aspects of web site construction.
So, here are a few top tips:
- Make sure that the site can be reached with both www. and non-www urls. e.g. you can get to this site as http://www.dragonthoughts.com/blog or http://dragonthoughts.com/blog. I’ve seen a lot of sites, including some IT contract agencies, who don’t do this and show an error page instead for one form of the URL.
Why is it important for your web site to work with www and non-www?
Some people think they need to type in the www, others omit it, but if a customer reaches an error page, saying that the site isn’t there, then they may move onto another web site that does work. - When you register alternative domain names, to protect them for the future, they should all take you to the relevant web site, e.g. http://iwoty.com leads to the same site as http://ImWorseOffThanYou.com as well as http://ImWorseOffThanYou.co.uk etc. Many registrars leave them pointing to default page that their host uses for advertising their hosting services, instead.