18 5 - 18 February 2020 Email us your website building questions at [email protected]
If yourrequirementsaresimple,youcanbuilda straightforwardHTMLwebsiteandhostit forfreefroma
DropboxaccountwithDropPages.Anychangesyoumaketothesitewillsyncautomatically.Practisenewcoding
techniquesin CodePen
LearninghowHTML,CSSand
JavaScriptworktogethercanbe
complicated,becausethecodeis
usuallysavedin separatefiles.A
goodwaytoexperimentis touse
a codeplayground– a website
thatletsyoueditallthreefilesat
once,andshowstheeffectsof
anychangesyoumakeasyou
makethem.CodePen(codepen
.io) is oneofthebest.It breaks
thecodeintothreesectionsatthe
top,thenshowsyouhowthe
resultswillappearonyour
websitein thepanelbelow.
Getyourwebsitegraded
Achievinga goodsearchengine
rankingcanseemlikea darkart
buttherearetoolsthatcanhelp.
WebsiteGrader(website.grader
.com) scansyoursite’scodeand
tellsyouwhat’sgoodandbad
aboutit tohelpyouimproveit.
Enteryourwebandemail
addressestostarttheanalysis.1
If youdon’talreadyhavea
Dropboxaccount,signupforone
atwww.dropbox.comandverifyit by
clickingthebuttonin theemail
messageyoureceive.Thenvisit
droppages.comandsignin toyour
Dropboxaccount.Under‘Yoursites’,
clickthe‘Createa newsite’button.^12
Entera nameforyoursiteusingthe
formatyourname.droppages.com.
Thiscreatesa folderinsideyourApps
folderin Dropbox.If youdon’talready
havea websiteprepared,knockupa
quickHTMLdocumentin Notepador
anothertexteditor.^1 Saveit asa ‘.html’
fileandcallit ‘index’,sothebrowser
knowsit’sthemainpageofyoursite.3
PlacetheHTMLfileintothe
Dropboxfolderatapps/My
.Droppages/yourname.droppages.com/
content.^1 You’llseethatthere’s
alreadya textfilethere,^2 but you can
delete that. Type your droppages.com
address into a browser and your site
should appear.Specialist tips, top tools and practical help
Build a Better Site
Top Tips of the Fortnight
MINIWORKSHOP | Host a simplewebsiteonDropbox
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Q
I want my website to look great
on mobile devices as well as
large monitors. Should I design
a different site for each type of screen?
SidGranger,viaemailA
Google’s advice is to design one site
that adapts to both types of screen.
The easiest way is to use a mobile-
friendly template in a content management
system such as WordPress (wordpress.org),
which happily adapts to any size of screen.
The reason for this advice is that Google
now indexes sites based on their mobile
version, so if you have two different sites,
only the smaller one would appear in the
index. If it’s a
reduced version
of your main
website, Google
may never find
out what’s
missing. Google
offers further guidelines at bit.ly/mobfir494.
Andy Shaw, Technical & Reviews Editor1112