Feature Article

WYSIWYG - The Benefits and Drawbacks

by: Ben Coleman RealFreeWebsites

Origins

WYSIWYG programmes for the Internet were developed to allow non-programmers, without technical or design knowledge to create websites. Normally these programmes were standalone software programmes, but increasingly they are web-based. WYSIWYG editors often come with ready-made templates that allow users to make minor changes such as colour or width of page within the template's parameters.

The Benefits of WYSIWYG

• Usable by non-experts: This is the greatest contribution WYSIWYG has made: allowing anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of computers to create a website. Some editors may require some learning, particularly the more sophisticated packages.
• Speed: Making a website can be done much faster using a WYSIWYG editor, as the editor takes care of creating the code. Most WYSIWYG editors can help you to create a website in minutes.
• Cheap or free: There are many editors that are free or very cheap. Many web hosts now offer free create-a-website WYSIWYG editors that allow you to create a professional looking website. This is far cheaper than employing the services of most website designers.

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• Direct inputs into the design: As WYSIWYG editors are so easily usable, they allow website creators a direct input into the design of the website. There is no communication barrier that can be faced when the website is designed by someone else.
• Easier to edit the design: This depends on the editor used (for example some online editors do not allow many design changes), but in general, if the user has been involved in the creation of the design, they should be capable of altering it.

The Drawbacks of WYSIWYG

• Bad code: This has always been the classic complaint of WYSIQYG editors. Although the website that is designed may look great, what you cannot see is the monstruous code that has gone into making it look like this. The problem with having poor code is that your website will not necessarily look the same on different browsers, and search engines may struggle or penalise your website. Increasingly, however, editors are improving the code they output, making it much cleaner and valid. Still, the greater the complexity of the design, the greater the chance that the editor has produced unnecessary code.
• Limited control: Sometimes the editor will not let a user make a certain design or layout. This is because the WYSIWYG editor is simply a tool with fixed outputs that cannot match the inventiveness of a human to create a design or effect.
• Neglected web design issues: If the user does not involve professional web designers or web developers, they are potentially missing out on valuable advice and experience that could lead to a better website - in terms of design and functionality. Websites may appear to be easy to make, but a good website involves far more than just looking the way you want it to look. Among others, these are topics that a non-expert is likely to ignore: search engine optimization, usability, optimization of graphics.

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• Accessibility: Providing websites that are accessible to the disabled is not only ethical and good business sense, but in some countries a legal requirement. WYSIWYG editors cannot by themselves follow the best practices for coding that creating an accessible website requires. Furthermore, any non-valid code increases the useability difficulty faced by disabled people.
• Harder to upgrade or redesign: If at a later stage a website made using a WYSIWYG editor has to be worked on by a web designer or programmer, an absence of logical code, comments and/or structure can make this task much more complicated. A web designer would then have to pass off the extra time and effort needed to alter the code to the client as an extra cost.
• Steep learning curve: While the learning curve for WYSIWYG editors is always lesser than learning internet coding, some of the more sophisticated WYSIWYG editors, such as Dreamweaver are large complex programs. To be able to use these properly, a large investment of time is needed.

Conclusions

WYSIWYG editors have improved dramatically since they first appeared. The code the better editors create is relatively clean and valid, especially in the case of templates. Using a WYSIWYG editor is appropriate for some people that wish to have a simple website, where search engine optimization is not crtical. The most serious criticism of WYSIWYG editors is the neglected design considerations, which can seriously damage a website's potential. If profitability or high traffic is a goal of a website, learning internet coding or hiring a web designer/programmer is a better solution.

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Ben Coleman is the CEO and owner of RealFreeWebsites. He has been designing websites and working on website technologies since 1999. RealFreeWebsites was created to fill a niche: to offer free or low-cost customized websites and top quality hosting.

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Second Article

How to Get Links to Your Website

by: Timothy Tye HappyJoblessGuy.com

One of the best ways to get search engines to index your website is to get other websites to link to yours. Okay, I know you are going to say, "Now that sounds easier said than done!" I agree, it may be effortless to link from your website to other people's websites, but how do you get other websites - good ones especially - to willingly link to you? In today's article, I want to show you that it is entirely do-able, and you will find your website listed in no time at all.

Write Your Way In

The easiest and fastest way to get links from other websites to your own is simply to place the link there yourself! Yes, it can be done. What you do is to write an article relevant to your own website. Then go to an Article Directory and post your article there. You can post your article in as many article directories as you wish, the more the better. You may also want to make slight variations to your article submitted to different article directories, so that they do not come out looking exactly alike. Your article should provide valuable content that is useful to readers. It is not the place to promote yourself. That comes separately. In most article directories, you are provided a box called "bio" or "resource box". This is where you sell yourself. Write a short description of yourself that is relevant to your article and your website, and at the end of it, include a link to your website. That backlink to your website is the entire purpose of the whole exercise.

If the article directory does not have a bio or resource box, then include the bio with the backlink as the final paragraph of your article. Reject any article directory that does not allow you to link back to your website.

You can find article directories by simply going to Google and search for "Article Directory". Prioritize on article directories with a PageRank of 5 or 6, as getting your articles listed there will help get your website found by the search engine faster. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the higher a website's PageRank, the more often Google crawls and index it. Getting one PageRank 6 website to link to your website will ensure Google index your website in 3 days. If you can get a PageRank 7 website to link to your website, more power to you, Google will index you within 24 hours.

I can prove to you how well it works too. Go to Google and look for "Guide to earning a living without holding a job", and you will see HappyJoblessGuy listed at the top of the ranking. Below the HappyJoblessGuy website are other articles I have written, now showing in the article directories. The appearance of my articles in the article directories has boosted the popularity of my website to the number one ranking.

Writing articles to the article directories is my preferred way to promote my website because it is entirely free, and I can recycle what I have written for my own website to be submitted to the directories. All I have to do now is to keep writing new articles and posting them, to maintain my position.

Buy Your Way In

If you find that writing articles for the Internet is too tough for you, then the other option available is to buy your way in. To do this, look for a reputable link broker - a person or website that buys and sell links. Be prepared to pay about $150 per month to get one link from a PageRank 7 website to yours. You only need to buy the link for one month, because within that time, Google would have been able to find and index your website. As earlier mentioned, a link from a PageRank 7 website will get you listed in 24 hours, but you get to keep the link to your site for a full month. Of course, if you buy a link from a site with a lower PageRank, you'll need to pay less, but you have a longer wait before Google indexes you.

Where to buy links? Go to Google and search for "Link Broker" or "Text Ad Links" and a whole list will come out.

Between the two choices above, my preference is the first. After all, it is free. However, I am just showing you the options available. You can jolly well try both.

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Timothy Tye has been earning from the web for the past four years. He shares tips on how to earn a living without holding a job from his website, www.happyjoblessguy.com

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