Copyright is a significant issue online, perhaps more so because there is a sense freedom, or anonymity when online. It’s part of the whole what is “reality” debate. How does the “online” world differ to the “real” world and do the same regulations apply?

Well, in terms of copyright, the same rules apply.

I found a really good introductory document to copyright (PDF File) made especially for students on the Curtin website. It goes through the do’s and dont’s of copyright whilst studying.

Copyright information can be quite difficult to read, which may be a contributing factor as to why some people think it is alright to ignore it.

For example, I couldn’t find a definitive answer as to whether it would be acceptable for a student to display the Curtin logo at the top of their web page – however, I imagine it would be a breach of copyright.

When using someone else’s words or ideas, it is always a good idea to acknowledge them as a source. Imagine the situation in reverse. I’m sure you would want your work to be acknowledged.

There are some good initiatives online to improve awareness of copyright, such as the Creative Commons organisation, who help provide licences to online users who wish to share or protect their work.

Here’s a handful of rich resources to improve your online writing…

Jakob Nielsen’s Writing for the Web
A List Apart – Writing

SitePoint have brilliant “Guru Lists” like the one below:

So You Want To Be A Copywriting Guru?

• Writing for the Web
• Building a Content Rich Website
• Don’t Lose Your Foreign Visitors by Insulting Them!
• Why Write For Another Site?
• Web Content: from Fabulous to Frankenstein

Make It Scannable
Use appropriate headings, bold text, and lists to mark important information. The crew at 37 Signals execute this really well – and even explain how they test the effectiveness of this via their Signal vs. Noise blog.

Go Above The Fold
Put your best material “above the fold” – that is, within the top part of the page the user sees before scrolling downwards. It’s your best chance of getting your user’s attention.

Link Meaningfully
Instead of adding a link that says “click here“, use a descriptive one like Lance Armstrong’s Bike Shop. It improves the readability and the quality of search engine indexing for your site and the destination site.

Encourage Exploration
Explain your content as best you can with the limited space you have but provide links to related sites where more extensive information is available. This way, you won’t lose your users attention, and you’ll be noted as a source of valuable referrals.

Size Matters
Keep your paragraphs small, have one idea per paragraph and make sure the opening sentence outlines the idea. Large chunks of text deter the reader.

Introduce these rules into your online writing and see how you go.

Web users don’t read, at least not in the same way as if reading a book or newspaper.

According to web usability expert Jakob Nielsen, web users scan the page, looking for words and headings that are relevant to them. On the web, less is better in terms of words, but they need to be targeted to the audience.

Popular business marketing guru Seth Godin writes in one blog post  “If you’re writing for strangers, make it shorter” which pretty much sums up the concept of writing on the web. This is where careful selection of headings and keywords is beneficial, not only from a reading point of view, but also in terms of search engine optimization (SEO) – that is, making the content of your site clear for search engines like Google and Yahoo to see.

In fact, whilst reading some of Nielsen’s work, I found myself scanning through the content and predominantly reading just the headings, bold content, and lists until I came across something of particular interest. Nielsen states “On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely”. Probably about right in my case.

What would you think if someone walked up to you and said “I own a building supplies yard, how about you help yourself to the materials and build whatever you can dream of”?

In the case of the Internet, that is exactly what has happened, and it is exactly why I love the whole concept.

HTML is one form of ‘material’ you have at your disposal. All you need is access to a computer connected to the Internet and a basic knowledge of HTML and you can start building!

The whole idea of being able to create something real from materials whose supply is infinite (code written by you) is what excites web designers and developers around the globe. Flickr, Digg, Facebook - they were all dreamed up and then written using the languages available to all of us. The speed at which web applications are being created and updated is largely due to the low barriers to entering the marketplace, relative to offline business.

I’ve done just as explained above – built something I thought of – and have a few more ideas in the pipeline.

As my HTML example (although it also uses a few more web technologies – which I will explain further) I put forward Eventlist.com.au – a website I’ve built which is an Australian Triathlon and Multisport Event Calendar. It’s targeted at Australian athletes who participate in endurance sporting events around the country. I’ve also created a sister site for our kiwi friends – Eventlist.co.nz.

A site I have created for Australian athletes.

My site uses several web technologies:

• HTML
• CSS
• Javascript
• PHP
• MySQL

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is used primarily to provide the structure of the site. I have used “div” elements to lay the foundations of each page. As Lachlan Hunt explains in his article “A Preview of HTML 5” for web design site A List Apart, we use “div” elements to structure each page because HTML 4 lacks the ability to semanticly define page structure.

However, this may be a worthy reason for updating the sites code to HTML5, which allows for elements such as “header”, “nav” (for navigation), “section”, “article”, “aside”, and “footer”, eliminating the need to use classes or id references to identify structural elements.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is used extensively to define the style of elements throughout the site. When CSS gained popularity it spawned a creative following that sought to take the artistic style to the web, lighting up what was once a pretty ugly scene. A few of my favourite CSS gallery sites are CSS Zen Garden, CSS Beauty, and CSS Drive.

Javascript is used to do some of the “behind the scenes” work like validating user input, hiding tables of data that must not be visible at a particular time, and occasionally swapping an image when a user rolls the mouse over it.

The whole site however, is run using PHP & MySQL. PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a server side programming language which allows you to make dynamic web pages. PHP enhances your HTML code by adding a dynamic element to it, so that the user experiences something that is custom made for them. In the case of my website, when a user searches for an event such as a triathlon, they are presented with a list of search results which have been dynamically created by a PHP script. That script involved querying a MySQL database, checking for all database entries that match the search criteria, and then printing those search results on the screen in the form of HTML. So PHP is basically a way of publishing HTML with an added bit of spice (or interaction).

All in all, HTML is a language that is basic enough to learn in a couple of hours but holds such power that the majority of the Internet as we know it, has been written using it. The difference between much of this HTML is how it has been created.

Since the volume of individual publishers has grown, so too have the number of ways in which you can publish. Hand-crafted HTML is rare, but popular among professional web designers. Mainstream blog software produces the HTML for you, so you don’t have to worry about it. Adding a comment on a blog or news site requires just your own words, the HTML form will write the HTML for you.

As stated earlier, all you need is access to a computer connected to the Internet and a basic knowledge of HTML and you can start building!