There's nothing quite like having your own website. Whether you have a commercial site or a personal site with your toddler's pictures posted on it, there is a feeling of pride and achievement involved.
Most people find the creative process involved in the design of a website to be very enjoyable. Count me among them. It really is fun to do the layout, and the great thing about WYSIWYG software is that it's easy to change things and move them around without having to search through and re-type a bunch of code to make those changes.
The index, a.k.a. home page, is the page that appears in a browser when someone types in your "url" (uniform resource locator) or domain name, for instance "mywebsite.com." We talk about choosing a domain name in the article About Domain Names. For now though, we'll stick to the actual graphical design of the site.
First of all you'll want to design the site to properly fit on a computer screen that is set at a resolution of 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 columns and rows of pixels, although many people now use screen resolutions of 1280 x 1024. A web site designed for 1024 x 768 will simply appear smaller on a higher resolution screen. More of the page will fit on the screen, and all the graphical elements, text, etc, will be proportionally smaller. This is typically not something you need to worry about, other than making sure you don't use tiny text in your original design that will appear even smaller on a high-res screen.
As far as text is concerned, stick to standard fonts. Don't use some fancy script or humorous looking font because many of those viewing your site over the Internet won't have that font installed on their computer. Stick with fonts such as Arial, Verdana, Tahoma or Times New Roman. As a general rule of thumb, it's probably best to use body text with a font size of at least 9 points for easier reading. I often use size 8 for things such as the copyright notice or some links. Of course, this will depend on the font, so see how it looks before deciding on a particular size.
The viewable title of your website can be either text or graphic. The title at the top of this website's home page was created as a .gif image with a special program designed just for this purpose. Typically, WYSIWYG website software programs have capabilities to design titles as image files. These often have effects associated with them that will allow manipulation of and enhance the title in some way. If you use large text rather than an image for this purpose, the edges can appear jagged.
Any drag-and-drop software allows text or images to be dragged from a window and dropped onto the layout screen of the design program, then modified as desired. The typical image formats that browsers can recognize are .jpg, .gif, .bmp, and .png. You should definitely avoid using .bmp files in your website because they are very large in file size. Convert them to .jpg or .gif to reduce the file size so they load more quickly. Also avoid using large (in viewable size) images because they also take a long time to load. You can always create thumbnails (small images) that link to the larger image.
Keep your design clean. Don't clutter the pages and be sure to keep things organized. You can use any background color you want (within reason) but it's best to keep the main text area white with black text since it's much easier to read. Speaking of colors, there is something called the web or browser safe palette. While this is of little importance today, it's something you might want to explore, so we've added a page here: Browser Safe Colors.
Do some research by visiting various sites and noting their colors and layouts. A common theme is to have a title block at the top and a vertical navigation bar on the left. Additional links can be placed horizontally near the top or at the bottom of the page. You don't have to stick to any particular format as long as your layout is visually appealing and the navigation is straightforward. Don't require viewers to hunt for your navigation links.
After your website design is completed you will be able to "publish" or convert the layout to an HTML file (or files) with the associated images, then load this up to your web host. More about all that in the article Web Hosting and FTP. The overall size in kilobytes of the HTML file, as well as any images, will determine how quickly the site will load up for viewing. No one wants to sit and wait on a slow loading site. This is an especially important consideration for a business website because potential customers may give up and go elsewhere.
I recommend that you read all our articles before proceeding with the actual design, since many of the other tips we offer will need to be incorporated into your design at some point. This will provide you with an overall idea of what's required for a good website. Don't get discouraged because of learning "overload" and remember this: if you aren't creating a business website, or don't need to be found by millions of web surfers, don't worry about search engine optimization or some of the other technical aspects of web design covered in other articles.
Regardless of the purpose of your website, just take your time designing it and enjoy the experience.
Most people find the creative process involved in the design of a website to be very enjoyable. Count me among them. It really is fun to do the layout, and the great thing about WYSIWYG software is that it's easy to change things and move them around without having to search through and re-type a bunch of code to make those changes.
The index, a.k.a. home page, is the page that appears in a browser when someone types in your "url" (uniform resource locator) or domain name, for instance "mywebsite.com." We talk about choosing a domain name in the article About Domain Names. For now though, we'll stick to the actual graphical design of the site.
First of all you'll want to design the site to properly fit on a computer screen that is set at a resolution of 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 columns and rows of pixels, although many people now use screen resolutions of 1280 x 1024. A web site designed for 1024 x 768 will simply appear smaller on a higher resolution screen. More of the page will fit on the screen, and all the graphical elements, text, etc, will be proportionally smaller. This is typically not something you need to worry about, other than making sure you don't use tiny text in your original design that will appear even smaller on a high-res screen.
As far as text is concerned, stick to standard fonts. Don't use some fancy script or humorous looking font because many of those viewing your site over the Internet won't have that font installed on their computer. Stick with fonts such as Arial, Verdana, Tahoma or Times New Roman. As a general rule of thumb, it's probably best to use body text with a font size of at least 9 points for easier reading. I often use size 8 for things such as the copyright notice or some links. Of course, this will depend on the font, so see how it looks before deciding on a particular size.
The viewable title of your website can be either text or graphic. The title at the top of this website's home page was created as a .gif image with a special program designed just for this purpose. Typically, WYSIWYG website software programs have capabilities to design titles as image files. These often have effects associated with them that will allow manipulation of and enhance the title in some way. If you use large text rather than an image for this purpose, the edges can appear jagged.
Any drag-and-drop software allows text or images to be dragged from a window and dropped onto the layout screen of the design program, then modified as desired. The typical image formats that browsers can recognize are .jpg, .gif, .bmp, and .png. You should definitely avoid using .bmp files in your website because they are very large in file size. Convert them to .jpg or .gif to reduce the file size so they load more quickly. Also avoid using large (in viewable size) images because they also take a long time to load. You can always create thumbnails (small images) that link to the larger image.
Keep your design clean. Don't clutter the pages and be sure to keep things organized. You can use any background color you want (within reason) but it's best to keep the main text area white with black text since it's much easier to read. Speaking of colors, there is something called the web or browser safe palette. While this is of little importance today, it's something you might want to explore, so we've added a page here: Browser Safe Colors.
Do some research by visiting various sites and noting their colors and layouts. A common theme is to have a title block at the top and a vertical navigation bar on the left. Additional links can be placed horizontally near the top or at the bottom of the page. You don't have to stick to any particular format as long as your layout is visually appealing and the navigation is straightforward. Don't require viewers to hunt for your navigation links.
After your website design is completed you will be able to "publish" or convert the layout to an HTML file (or files) with the associated images, then load this up to your web host. More about all that in the article Web Hosting and FTP. The overall size in kilobytes of the HTML file, as well as any images, will determine how quickly the site will load up for viewing. No one wants to sit and wait on a slow loading site. This is an especially important consideration for a business website because potential customers may give up and go elsewhere.
I recommend that you read all our articles before proceeding with the actual design, since many of the other tips we offer will need to be incorporated into your design at some point. This will provide you with an overall idea of what's required for a good website. Don't get discouraged because of learning "overload" and remember this: if you aren't creating a business website, or don't need to be found by millions of web surfers, don't worry about search engine optimization or some of the other technical aspects of web design covered in other articles.
Regardless of the purpose of your website, just take your time designing it and enjoy the experience.
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