Now that many people are pretty comfortable with creating at least a basic website, it is time to move on to other considerations, such as developing readable content or finding the right images.

I put the emphasis on 'readable', as writing and designing for the web means adapting for a different medium the styles we have all come to love. Writing for reading on the Internet needs to be mostly sharp, short and broken up for easy eye scanning.

By 'short' I do not mean that every article or writing piece has to be bite-sized. There is room on the Internet for briefs, bits, short articles and multi-page stories. However the key to getting attention, and readers, is to keep the multi-page, longer stories to a minimum and to write more briefs, bits and short articles.

Readers generally have a short time to spend on the Internet at any one time, and a low tolerance for reading anything over an extended period on the medium. This factor is the reason why blogs are so popular, and why newspapers have had to adapt their stories when placing them on the web.

In fact I find that the web writing style is slowly creeping into the hard copy newspapers!

A site I have found very good as a primer for those who want to improve their sites is actually a briefing document created to help designers at the European Union's (EU) European Commission.

The online guide, the Information Providers Guide (IPG), covers all aspects of publishing on the EU's Europa site, so skip chapter one on the 'Basics'. The rest of the handbook is useful for relevant editorial, technical and presentation standards in force, and also provides a more general range of recommendations based on best design practices for the web.

The 'Define' chapter is really good for businesses and individuals starting a website for the first time. However, if your company's web site is a mess, the chapter provides a great roadmap for getting it back on track by listing all of the necessary ingredients that go into creating a site, starting with 'The Concept'.

The purposes of websites can also change over time as companies learn how to leverage their presence on the Internet, moving over time from a simple billboard ('We are here!'), to providing information ('Here is what we do and here is why we do it well'). and sometimes to revenue generator as a sales site.

Be sure to scroll through all the sub chapters under 'Define', including the one on project workflow. The most useful sub chapters may well be the ones on 'Tools', 'Quality assurance' and 'Standards'.

The 'Tool' sub chapter has a description of every piece of software that people may be using to create sites or to read sites. It is a way of understanding the language of the internet. The chapter on 'Quality assurance' links to useful sites that scan your creation and lets you know if the HTML is correct, and if it may take too long to load.

The IPG also provides a nice checklist that web creators can use to check that they have optimised their sites.

However it is the chapters on 'Content' and 'Design' that will be most useful to those hungering to create something more web friendly. The sub chapter 'Writing for the Web' is a great primer, one that I would also recommend to my colleagues in the news business. Some of the advice is actually about good writing principles that many of us seem to lose from time to time and need a reminder to get back to (myself included).

The 'Design' chapter places the importance of its subject clearly in focus: "The purpose of the interface and technical design phase is to translate the site's objectives into a visual solution and to define the site's 'look and feel'". Once you strip out all of the references to how to create an Europa.eu webpage, what remains are the basic principles that apply to all sites.

The Information Providers Guide (IPG) is available here: http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/

How about images? Most people will take their own images for their personal websites. If you are a business, you can probably afford to hire a professional photographer. Even so, there are some good ways of buying on the cheap, royalty free images to give your site that extra zest.

Enter the "micropayment" or "community-based" image stock service. Prior to the advent of such services, buying stock photographs was expensive and the ability to use them was restricted under a variety of copyright rules imposed by the rights holders.

Now you and I can go to these sites, pick out a royalty free photo for a dollar, and use it on our website, or elsewhere as often as we would like. As a reference I direct you to iStockphoto (www.istockphoto.com), Dreamstime (www.dreamstime.com), and Fotolia (www.fotolia.com), all three of which I use regularly.

Lastly I note that the Bermuda College - PACE Division will be offering an International Computer Driving Licence course starting on May 5. The ICDL is a global standard for measuring a person's computer skills.

Completing the course provides candidates with an internationally recognised certification of skills. Sign up by sending an e-mail to tmartin@college.bm or by telephoning 236-9000 x 4117.

Contact Ahmed at elamin.ahmed@gmail.com if you have any comments.