This phase includes implementing and testing your site as well as going live through the use of advertising and search engines. This is the phase that your site's owners will be running around and paying a lot of attention to you so enjoy it while it lasts.

HTML Coding
     Once the design has been approved by your customer, you can start coding the site. This is when you use that editor you set away in the second phase. First, a quick word about editors.

      There are roughly two types of editors, WYSIWYG and text-based. WYSIWYG stands for 'What You See Is What You Get.' These are the editors that let you make an HTML document without coding any HTML. You physically place images, text and tables as you see fit. You can download some WYSIWYG editors in our Editors Beginner section. The problem with these is that they generally produce bulky code and are overall harder to use with complex pages.

      Text-base editors, on the other hand, deal with the actual HTML coding. You must have HTML knowledge in order to use the text-base editors. The good thing about text editing is that you have considerably more power over the web page's layout and positioning. We have some pretty useful HTML text editors in our Editors Text section. Some features of text editors include syntax highlighting for special keywords, auto-completion, and special editing support for style sheets and scripting.

     Besides just writing HTML, you should also be making and editing images for use on the web site. Fixing up and pruning existing images as needed. Unless your customer provides some graphic manipulators, this is your jurisdiction. You can get some good image editors in our Image Editors section.

     Here are some tips about coding your pages. When creating your HTML documents, try to keep file names simple and consistent so you can easily reference them. Organizing web pages in a hierarchy of folders is also a useful trick when coding for a big site, and if it's at all possible, have a common folder for all the images used in the site so you don't double up on images. That will speed up site's download time. Last, but not least, backup, backup and backup. Keep everything backed up for those unexpected crashes, deletions or save overs, because there's nothing more gut wrenching then spending two hours on a web page, then accidentally saving a blank page over it.

Beta Testing
     During and after all the HTML work and toil, comes Beta Testing. Beta testing is when you, or a group of people, put the web site through a rigorous routine of testing and error detection. Such tests include, looking for dead links, broken images, missing tags resulting in a mass page deformation, correct spelling and grammar, browser compatibility, and other web page oddities. Depending on how much time you spent on the design part of phase two in the WSDLC, you could be spending a lot of time making corrections.

     An important test is browser compatibility. Internet Browsers all render HTML in different ways, and depending on the target audience, it's your job to make the web site look good in each of the browsers. You can download different types of browsers in our browsers section.

     Tools are also available to help you through the beta testing. Bobby is a good one that tests your page for browser compatibility along with handicap accessibility and HTML tag errors. There's also software and web site services that can check your code for broken links or images, and W3C compliance. You can find some of that software in our validators section.

Flipping the Switch
     Finally, the site is ready for the World Wide Web. Although, simply putting the site up won't get you hits. There's a little more work involved for that. The main methods people find web pages are through other web pages and search engines.

     So how do you get people to go to your site from other pages? Easy, advertising. You pay the owners of another web site to display a banner ad for your site. You can also get free exposure by agreeing to display an ad for them in exchange. This is commonly called banner exchanges. Some care should be taken when you choose sites to advertise on. For example, don't advertise fish food on a software download site. People are there to download software, not to download fish food. Just remember to keep the target audience in mind when choosing a site to advertise on.

     Now for search engines. There are 1500+ search engines out there so you're not going to have a problem finding one to list the site on. You can choose to do it manually by going to the individual search engines and filling out a form about the site, or through the use of a program that can submit your site to 1500+ search engines simultaneously. You can download some of these programs in our web promotion section. You may also have to add some <META> tags for it to work properly in some search engines.

     Some other things you can do is register a domain name for about $70 a year and advertise the domain name on different mediums such as TV, radio and magazines. In the next phase we'll talk about maintaining the site.

Head on to:

Web Site Development Life Cycle

Phase 1: Data Hoarding
Phase 2: Site Design
Phase 3: Going Live
Phase 4: Site Maintenance