General tips

Line spacing in the text editor

Pressing the return key creates a new paragraph, with extra spacing below that line. To get a new line but in the same paragraph so there's no extra spacing press shift-return.

Paragraphs are the "blocks" to which header styles, indents and alignment are applied.

Use of heading styles

When you first get to edit your website it is tempting to use make all your text large using header styles for body text. It is best however use heading styles in a logical fashion, i.e. 'heading 1' for the main page heading (which should be no more than half a dozen words or so), heading 2 for subheadings, and so on, and finally 'Normal' should be used for the main body text.

Search engines give extra weight to keywords they find in headings, but they are smart, so they won't do this if the whole page is a heading!
Using heading styles logically will help your readers to scan and make sense of your web pages.
Heading styles are designed to highlight a short phrase, whereas the body style is designed to allow loner passages to be read comfortably.
If you use a heading style for your body text because you want the body text to be larger, tell us, and we will adjust the size.
If you use heading styles logically, it is a simple matter for us to change the heading and body text styles at a later date if you wish. If you use heading styles for body text and you later want the styles changed you may find that you need to re-format large amounts of text on your site.

Writing style

Keep it short and to the point but be sure to fully explain your offer. Write your text, then come back later and see if you delete 50% of the words while retaining the sense.
Use short words not long ones.
Use short sentences.
Break up pages with subheadings and bulleted lists.
Don't waffle.
Don't use jargon. If you have to use specialist terms, explain what they mean.
Don't be cryptic or clever - your visitors may not understand what you mean and leave. This is particularly true of the text in your menus.

Escape key

You can use the escape key (top left on your keyboard) to close a popup dialog box rather than use the "X" in the top right corner.

Note: Using the escape key means your changes will not be saved.

Browser settings

There is no need to change any of your browser settings unless you find that your pictures and the buttons in the website editor take a while to appear again after you perform some action. This will be because your browser is set to not use it's cache. The cache is a place on your hard drive where images and files are stored temporarily for quick access.

To make sure your cache is enabled:

at the top of Internet Explorer click Tools/Internet Options
click the Settings button
select "Automatically".

On the same screen you may also want to check that the amount of disk space allocated to the cache is sufficient, provided you have spare room on your hard disk set this to 500Mb. Click "OK" then "OK" again.

Deleting your cache

You will find that deleting the temporary internet files once in a while will help speed things up. Some problems with web pages are also caused by a corrupted cache.

On internet Explorer's toolbar click Tools/Internet Options, then click the "Delete Files" button