Web Development

Important elements of web design

The purpose of proper web design is to highlight and place the focus of the user on the content. Web page content accounts for almost 90% of the information on the web, even with the popularity of video, so you can’t overstate the importance of presenting the text content effectively. Here are some key principles to follow when designing a web page with text content:

The first key principle is to avoid long lines of text. Long lines are hard to read and even harder to follow when the sentence flows on to a second line. When you limit the width of the text, you greatly enhance the readability of that sentence.

Avoid default fonts whenever possible. Most systems have default fonts that contain no styling whatsoever. Sans-serif fonts are the most appealing and setting fonts like Helvetica and Arial as the default is the easiest way to ensure that the text looks good.

Improving readability is all about getting the spacing right. Two important settings here are padding around the text, and the other is the line-height. There is no hard and fast rule or ratio here, but play around with different numbers and see what works best for your font/size combination.

Finally, color and contrast. One of the biggest issues with text readability on the web today is the lack of contrast. Sites like Google and Apple are guilty of insufficient contract in their text when their guidelines recommend otherwise.

Article by Rack Alley. Now that your content is in order get fast, reliable, and secure hosting for your website with LA web hosting from Rack Alley.

The key characteristics of a good web host

There are tens of thousands of web hosts online. Most are resellers of the larger companies and directly sell their services under a different label. Which makes it even harder to choose between, because you might ultimately get the same hosting service from two different providers. The solution is to choose between only the larger providers. However, choosing is still not straightforward. Here are some criteria to go by when picking between your final choices:

Your site

A lot depends on your site and its future direction. If your site is just a simple website for your business, then your needs will be different to someone with plans to the server a million visitors a month with fresh content every day.

Reliability

We all want our website to be as reliable as it can be. There is a, however, different levels of reliability. How much time can you tolerate with your website down? How quickly do you need your website back up and running?

Your requirements

Do you need a WordPress website? A custom script running? Or a simple HTML site? These questions will determine what sort of hosting and technical support you will need. Unless you are technically competent, you will need outside assistance for everything but the most basic website.

Support

This goes to the question of reliability. Different levels of uptime and support come with different costs. Don’t be fooled by the hosts that provide cheap hosting packages, the support and response times are nowhere near as good as the proper hosts. In hosting, you get what you pay for.

Rack Alley provides LA web hosting infrastructure for businesses that are looking for high-performance hosts in California.