The rules of the game have changed since we became a global village. We anointed a new playground which is the World Wide Web. Here you can be whatever you want to be, you can express yourself and build anything you dream of. There is one problem though, how do you stand out? How do you stay relevant?
One of the simplest ways is to make an awesome website. A website that is appealing to all your users. The number one rule for such a website is to make it responsive. Why do you need a responsive website? You need a website that can work across all devices and all web related software e.g. browsers and still remain user-friendly.
A responsive website will, for example, change its look when you shift from a computer to a smartphone to accommodate the difference in physical features. You can even go ahead to create a desktop version and a mobile version and users can toggle in between according to their preferences.
Making a responsive website will depend on which methodologies you are using to come up with a website. Mostly it will either be by coding from scratch or using a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress.
For the coding fellas, responsiveness majorly falls on using CSS and HTML to resize, hide, shrink, enlarge, or move the content to make it look good on any screen. You can create a responsive design yourself or use an existing responsive style sheet. During the development process, it is highly recommended to test your design across all platforms and devices in order to know which changes to make.
For the CMS fellas, most of the rules apply too. There are a lot of responsive web themes currently available for you and it Is just a matter of choice. Most Wp themes have emulators to let you see how your website will look on PC, tablets and phones. Apart from that, you can also use Bootstrap to make your site even more responsive.
What is Bootstrap? Bootstrap is a toolkit that was developed at Twitter which helps in the development of complex web applications. Bootstrap is very lightweight. Just like in the above example, it is highly recommended to continuously assess and test during development.
In both cases, it helps to have a pre-thought of how you want the site’s foundation to look in respective devices. It is easier to work towards an established goal rather than hunting myths.
After you’re done, add your content to see how your website handles glory. Does it stay firm or does it come crashing? While designing responsively, keep in mind the important things like navigation menus and other important buttons/functions that are vital to the site.
Let’s get to work!
This article was originally published on Decode
