The whole world has moved from the printed page to a page suspended in cyberspace. Websites are the rage in every sphere of life.

For the creation of a website, you have two options: you can either recruit a professional to design the site or you could gather up courage and add a dash of personal creativity to design your own site.

To execute a Website design, one would need basic tools like a computer, an internet connection, web page construction tools such as HTML editor, and a host on the World Wide Web to publish your page.

There are three keys to a website: clear goals, design, and content. The website must serve its purpose and aid personal development, or fulfill business, social, cultural, humanitarian, or business objectives.

Define clearly what the purpose of the website is, how many pages the site will have, what kind of content will it provide, how many pictures and advertisements it will include, and will it have e-commerce of any kind? What kind of investment will it involve? Is the site for personal satisfaction or does it have a business angle?

While designing a website you need to keep in mind a few simple ground rules. Ensure that the resolutions of the web pages are either 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768, the lowest being 640 x 480. Keep in mind the convenience of the user. The page size should not require horizontal scrolling or “page down” for more than three screens. In fact, modern design demands that each page should be within one screen, as anything more means you lose viewers unless, the content grips attention.

The layout must be user-friendly and have spaces, no crowding, easily readable type, and images that are not fussy, garish, or blinking. To prevent delays in page loading, a page must not exceed 50K. A balance between text and images must be maintained, and no image should be too heavy. Even if flash is in vogue, you must also use HTML so that non-techies can make use of the site.

Choose a reliable web host, ensure that the specifications of the web server can support the bandwidth you need, and use an operating system that is universally used. Test the pages to see that they open in Windows as well as Mac.

At all costs, avoid blinking text, animated GIF s, or loud sound, anything that is fussy and distracting. Think about users with slow internet connections or old computers. To be successful and invite visitors time and again a website must be interesting, useful, and user-friendly.

Design provides detailed information on Design, Logo Design, Web Site Design, Interior Design and more. Design is affiliated with Bedroom Decorating.

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An outdoor Christmas decoration holds a special place in people’s hearts. Christmas is an elaborate celebration for many people throughout the world. For most families, Christmas involves an extensive amount of decorating, both indoors and outside. Many towns and neighborhoods hold lighting and decoration contests to see who can come up with the best seasonal decorative scheme for their home. There are many different types of outdoor Christmas decorations.

One type of outdoor Christmas decoration is a homemade decoration. These are perhaps the most sentimental decorations, as families typically get together during the season to create and places these in their yard or on their homes. They are less costly than store bought decorations, as they can save over half the price of store Christmas decorations. Simple items like wire coat hangers can be fashioned into reindeer, trees, stars, bells, candy canes, and other ornamental signs of the season. They can then be wrapped with outdoor lights to illuminate the night. Strips of wood can be fashioned into figures like Santa Clause and set to illuminate the blackness of a winter night as well.

Let an outdoor Christmas decoration spice up your home for the holidays

Another type of outdoor Christmas decoration is a string of lights, though these days they come in many shapes and sizes. Lights are, perhaps, the most popular form of outdoor Christmas decoration. It is possible to purchase lights in the shape of trees or stars. You can also buy lights to hang on your house. For these, you can by dangling lights that resemble icicles or a simple strand with one white or colored bulb every few inches. These strings of lights can flash or blink in any pattern or you can simply have them stay on in a constant fashion.

One final type of outdoor Christmas decoration is a pre-made statue or figure of some type that has lighting capabilities. These come in many shapes and sizes from religious figures and nativity scenes to popular characters like Santa Clause or cartoon characters dressed in festive gear. Air inflated decorations like this are gaining in popularity. They us a constant source of air to stay inflated much like a children’s jumping tent might. Additionally, they are lit for visibility at night. They are inexpensive to own and operate, and look quite festive on the lawn or on the roof with the lights.

An outdoor Christmas decoration can be an important addition to any holiday season. Be sure to choose the right decoration for you.

Adam Peters writes regularly for an online interior home decorating magazine. Peters contributes adding reviews very often on decorating and design topics. You can also reach interesting articles on easter and christmas decorations at his site

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Women take pride in home decoration and gardening and want some unique and prized possessions that are not part of the neighboring dwellings. Gardening offers opening as there is no end to creativity, especially in the fields of flower arrangement, bonsai, mini-rock garden etc. But a sure and unique possession is a bottle garden. Many of us have seen a ship inside a bottle. This creative craft has given rise to the concept of bottle gardening. Bottle gardening can be compared to an aquarium where fishes survive with regular inputs of water and feed. Like wise, a bottle garden has the essential requirements of soil and water for the survival of plants that are housed in it, but with occasional care and maintenance. Apart from these essential requirements, the bottle garden has reservoir of water which keeps readily available moisture to the plant and also enables a humid environment in the bottle. Bottle gardens if effectively designed can fetch very high price. Selection of plants to be planted for the bottle garden is very important and in quite a few cases people fail to appreciate this fact and try to incorporate any plant they can lay hands up on! An ideal bottle plant is of slow growth and dwarf habit. Because combinations of plants are housed in a bottle garden all the plants selected must be slow growing and dwarf, so that smothering can be avoided. Extremes of temperatures should be avoided and hence the bottle garden should be placed in such a location where there is adequate availability of sunlight. Also the soil or the compost, used in bottle gardens be just adequate for survival of the plants and should not induce vigorous growth.

Bottle gardening can be taken up in many different shapes and sizes and one can even go for custom made glass containers of the size and shape of choice. But containers of the shape of a normal bottle with narrow neck are the most effective for bottle gardens as it helps in proper maintenance of humidity and also for the appearance when the garden gets established.

The first step is to clean the container thoroughly by using water and detergent. Rich compost is avoided, as the plants are chosen for slow growth and dwarf habit. The compost, which is moistened enough but not wet, is put into bottle by means of a paper funnel, preventing the compost from spilling on the sides of the bottle by adhering to the wet surface. It will be beneficial if a layer of crushed charcoal or small sized gravel is put before running in the compost. This layer of charcoal or gravel acts as water reservoir and replenishes the compost or soil with water as and when needed. Small amount of water can be added by the aid of a straw fitted with funnel or running down the water carefully along the inner surface of the bottle.

Coming to planting in the bottle gardens, the plants should have previously grown in small pots so that they have a compact ball of roots with adhering compost. A thin rod or stick be taken to make holes of suitable sizes on the compost layer and the plants are dropped in to these holes, after carefully pressing through the bottle neck.

To increase the aesthetic appearance of a bottle garden, natural things of beauty such as colored and suitably shaped stones or pieces of bark can be placed in the bottle garden. Care must be taken to sterilize such things before introduction as these may carry pests and your bottle garden may get destroyed.

After planting, the bottle neck is plugged with cotton wool. During the day time when the plant receives sunlight, it is advised to turn the position of the bottle periodically to maintain the symmetry of the plants in the bottle, otherwise, asymmetry may be caused because of elongation or more growth of the portion of the plant towards light.

The bottle garden rarely needs watering, but maintenance in terms of removal of accumulated dead leaf and shoots and occasional pruning are necessary for a healthy bottle garden. Direct sunlight causes heavy growth and may even raise the temperature inside the bottle and hence extreme temperatures be avoided.

Few of the plants which can be taken up for bottle garden are Pilea, Selaginella, Peperomoia, Maranta etc.You can experiment a lot, keeping in strict adherence to the rule that the plants grow slow and have a dwarf habit.

If you have the creativity, time and resources, you can develop a beautiful and unique bottle garden, which can be named after yourself. If you don’t have such patience, time, energy, creativity or resources, but want to pride yourself with one, there are many stores around that can offer you a fantastic range!

Ravikumar Uppaluri hails from Kaikalur, Krishna District of Andhra Pradesh State in India.The author Holds a Masters degree in Agricultural Sciences.The author is based in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India and is cofounder of an organization involved in Nature conservation and sustainable development. The author can be reached at uravikumar@yahoo.com

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