What is web mastering?

Most books on the creation of a website address only the implementation phase (creation of Web pages in HTML format), mainly technical, and abandoning most of the time all stages of draft. The establishment of a website can not be restricted solely to the create web pages. It is primarily a strategic and creative approach to be conducted in a participatory way, involving all stakeholders (staff representatives, management, customers, etc.).The design of the website is an essential phase of the project, in which global thinking is conducted, as a first step, the objectives of the site and the potential target and, secondly, the structure, ergonomics and navigation.

Realization

The creation of Web pages is to create HTML files. There are two ways to create this type of file:

• In editing HTML files “by hand”, i.e. by entering the HTML code in a text file by using a simple text editor. This solution is the most tedious (despite the relative simplicity of HTML), but still the best way to learn to make a site, to understand how it works, and thus be able to create a code optimized and clean.
• By using an HTML editor WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). It’s software for creating Web pages visually by placing objects and controls. The software will generate the HTML code automatically. This is a very practical solution for creating Web pages, because the complexity is largely hidden. This method can be very boring if the publisher does not achieve what the user wants. Knowledge of HTML is nevertheless desirable to be able to master the editing options advanced software, allowing to manually changing the attributes of style. On the other hand, a friendly website must contain pictures. Drawing software will be needed to enliven the site with pictures (in GIF, JPG or PNG).

Accommodation

A company making available a Web server connected to the Internet is called host and offers a service called accommodation. There are two main categories of hosts:

• Hosts free. They give free disk space on a server to create your Web pages. This type of service is generally free. They make money either with ad space on your site (this process is increasingly rare), or only through traffic on their own site.
• Hosts professionals. This type of accommodation guarantees quality service (bandwidth) and security (data security and assurance of a reduced number of breakdowns). It is quite necessary in the case of site traffic (more than 1000 visitors per day) and allows the purchase of a domain name (a name type www.commentcamarche.net).

Online

To create a website, it is not necessary to be connected to the Internet, given the fact that it is only a first step to create HTML files and images. However, when the website is ready to be seen by visitors, it is essential to put online, i.e. to transfer (copy) files from your computer to the server. To do this it is essential to connect to the Internet, then send the pages on the server with an FTP client (a software file transfer).

Promotion

A website will be visited only when a certain promotional effort has been made. Once the site is sufficiently known, the promotion may be self-perpetuating through hypertext links set up by other webmasters, as the content of the site has a sufficient interest.