If you don’t have a knowledge base for your webdesign business yet, start today. Start collecting all those tidbits of information that tell you how to do neat tricks with your webdesigns. Anytime you learn something new, you can keep the information in your new knowledge base.

I didn’t do this when I started webdesign - and I wish I had. I have a small knowledge base which I created at PBWiki. It mainly has links to places where I can get help with the many different aspects of webdesign that I work with. Here’s my knowledge base: Klamath Design Knowledge Base. If I’d started earlier I’d have included a lot more snippets of code, and all those links to cool sites that helped me along the way. By the time I decided I needed a knowledge base, I had most of that memorized!

My knowledge base has the following categories:

• Page Design
• Cascading Style Sheets
• JavaScript
• Hyper Text Markup Language
• Business Development
• Search Engine Optimization
• Graphics
• Content Writing

When I do a new webdesign, I open my knowledge base in another browser tab and have it handy for quick reference when needed. If your business progresses to the point where you hire designers to work with you, your knowledge base can serve as a reference point for them too.

Since I’m telling you about this, I’m hereby making a commitment to add new cool stuff to my knowledge base. If you make one, or have one, please leave a link to it in the comments to this post so we can all check out your knowledge base creativity and progress.

If you’ve browsed the web for long, I’m sure you’ve come across sites where, when you click on links, a new browser window opens. If you want an example try this link: Blog Top Sites.

This is done by adding the attribute, target=”_blank”, to the link anchor tag.

How do you feel about having a site designer choose to force you to open a new browser window?

Lots of people don’t like this at all, and in fact I’ve seen it featured in lists of the most annoying things people have seen in web design, along with animated graphics and being caught inside someone’s frames. Many if not most people do not like having a site force the opening of a new browser window. It is intrusive.

Now, with the tabbed browsing used in Firefox and Internet Explorer v.7, I too find it annoying because I like to keep all my sites opened in tabs, in one browser window.

There’s a simple way to get around these types of links. If you realize you’re at a site that is opening browser windows you don’t want, just right-click on the mouse, right over the link you want to explore, and choose “open in new tab”. Voila! No more browser windows opening!

This tip is also very helpful for sites that use frames and force you to stay inside their frames while you explore other sites they’ve linked to. About.Com does this, though it also gives an option to click to get rid of their frame at the top of the page, so it is much better than many other framed sites we’ve seen. In the future if you find you’re at a site that keeps a frame open on the new site you want to see, just hit your back-arrow, and then right-click on the link for the new site you want to see, choosing “open in new tab’.

I’ve been using PB Wiki for a personal to-do list kind of site, plus got an account for what is going to become the Klamath Design knowledge base. I highly recommend it as an easy-to-use, fun, and free tool - great for businesses, and very flexible. You’ll see permanent links to PB Wiki in the sidebar of this blog. Their tagline is: “PBwiki makes creating a wiki as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich,” and that is so true.

Another good thing about PB Wiki is that it can’t be spammed. A few years ago I had a wiki set up on one of my homeschooling sites and it attracted ridiculous spammers after a while. They would replace my page text with links for casinos and hotels. It was impossible to keep them from ruining that site so I took the wiki down. But with PB Wiki, I don’t have to worry about that because the only people who can change my wiki are the ones I give the password to. That’s one of many reasons I love using PB Wiki.

Before you design a website, you need to know what its purpose is. Why would you put time and money into a website if you don’t know what it’s for?

When your site visitors arrive you’ll have only a few moments of their time to let them know what your site is about, so be clear about it up front. The best time to decide what the site is for is before you start building it.

Making a business plan for your site is not a bad idea, though you might not need to do much more than create a mission statement and a list of goals. What do you hope to accomplish by having the site on the web? What features should the site have in order to fulfill its potential?

If you already have a mission statement for your business you may want to post it on a separate “about us” page on the site, or you could integrate it into the text on the main page to clarify what your business, organization, or personal site is about. Either way, have a specific focus for the site, then build the site around your goals and objectives.

You are not building the site for yourself; keep that in mind. You’re building it for your potential visitors. Do you have ideas about who they will be? What will they be looking for? Who are you trying to attract? Knowing who you’re talking to will help you decide what kind of site you need.

Put yourself in the place of your ideal potential site visitor. What is this person looking for? What is this person like? What colors will appeal to this person? What features will make this person return to your site often?

You need to give people reasons to want to come back, so plan these features of your site in advance. You might want to offer interactive online post cards, a photo gallery with free images to share, frequently changing articles or stories, free e-book or software downloads, or consumer tips reflecting your area of expertise. Other ideas include an online store and shopping cart or a message board for community musings, though that last idea can be problematic if you don’t have enough site users.

By the time you finish planning your site, you should have a good idea of what it will be like and who it will serve, and how. Then it’s time to put your HTML skills to work and create the best site possible. Knowing where you’re going with this site is much more important that putting a half-finished idea online quickly, without having a plan.