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.

Today I want to tell you something simple and basic. Every page of your site should look pretty much like the others, so design and use a template.

Have you ever been to a personal site where every page uses a different type of background?

Often new designers use different colors on each page, different fonts, and different page layouts. I did it myself when I first started designing sites over ten years ago.

This is not done by most professional designers because we know that when a visitor arrives at your site, they’re usually looking for information. They need to know where the information is.

Easy site navigation is essential. The links to all the other pages should be in the same location on every page to keep site visitors from guessing how to get around. And having all the pages look essentially the same is easy on the eyes and holds the pages together so the visitor will indeed know this is one site he’s browsing, not ten different ones. It is a matter of aesthetics and practical site navigation.

So when you’re ready to design your site, do the front page first. Work on that page until the template is perfect, then empty the text area and make as many copies of the empty page as you’ll need to build your site. Fill each page with the appropriate text and graphics, and you’ll have all the pages done quickly and easily.