The main elements in your website.
Most websites will include the following elements. It will be your task to combine them in a visually interesting and eyecatching way!
To start with, concentrate on ways of creating the elements. You can get creative once you have grasped the basics.
• The background to the site this can be a solid colour, a texture or pattern saved to GIF or JPEG format. My approach to backgrounds like most other aspects of design are - keep it simple! - I usually prefer a single colour background - often no background (ie white) can be more stylish than trying to get clever with background repeats and textures. Only use backgrounds if they add to or improve your page design. Remember if people wish to print your page they will not be happy to use a whole cartridge of blue ink just because you think it makes a pretty background colour (if it is essential to have the blue, consider making a printer friendly version of the page with black text on white).
• A headline or logo the maximum size of text and range of fonts are limited when working directly in dreamweaver. Fonts may also change when others view your website. For this reason it is a good idea to design your heading in Corel draw or Adobe Illustrator and export it as an image.
• Navigation tools. Navigation and link buttons are the two types of buttons commonly found on websites. Navigation buttons are usually placed at the top or side of the site as ‘directory assistance’ for exploring the rest of the site. Link buttons tend to be smaller than navigation buttons (although all buttons you create can serve any purpose), and lead the visitor to a specific area that may or may not be linked to the host site. Images can also be used to create links and can also be divided up using an ‘image map’ to provide several links from one image.
Other navigation options include flash text, flash buttons and simple text links. Partially sighted viewers may use a reader to look at your website, these may not be able to read rollover buttons, or flash elements, so it is a good idea to include simple text links on the page - they are also useful for seach engine robots which may miss other link types.
It helps to have a consistantly placed navigation tool available
on each page to make movement through the site smooth and straightforward.
Research
The best approach when designing your site is to do some preparation.
Decide what content you will have - text and images.
Look at other websites covering similar subject matter to yours - run a search
for the subject using google or yahoo...
Do these sites look good? Are they easy to navigate? Are the pages consistant
- is there an overall feel or mood to the site?
Make a list of all the good points and all the bad points.
Pinch all the good ideas, drop the bad ones and put it all together with some
of your own totally original approach.
If you have chosen wisely your site will knock the socks off the competition!
Plan out on paper what you need for the site:
How many pages will you have (to start with)?
How will each page link together?
Will there be elements of each page that will remain the same throughout the website? - If so you may benefit from using templates or frames.
Think about how you will name each page. Sort out descriptions for the pages and keywords.
If you need to prepare background images what do you need. etc etc
Using what you have learnt so far you have a basic set of tools to make a simple website. As time goes on you will have specific needs for extra tools and other stuff on your site. I will include some of it here, but you may need to do your own research as time goes on. Most information you need can be found on the internet, run a simple search and you will find a whole range of free website tutorials etc.
Index Introduction Setting up Text Preparing images Adding images Tables Design/research More stuff Getting noticed Publishing your site Links