Simple mistakes that could cause hours of work!
What am I talking about? Well most novice web designers easily make the simplest mistake when creating their web site. And that is designing the whole site and then forgetting to add something to the navigation!
I?m going to guide you through a step by step guide on what you should do when designing a site from scratch. If your new to designing web sites then this a must read cause I have wasted so much time designing sites to find that I have forgotten something at the end when everything is finished.
Drawing a sketch of your layout:
This is a must, drawing your site out onto an A4 pad can save you so much time in the long run. Why is this? Well when designing a site you normally get side tracked with the design and new ideas always pop into your head but by then its already too late to change the design.
If your drawing the site down in rough then you can easily amend it by scrubbing out any of the sites and adding your new idea. Remember to always use a pencil not a pen! Unless you want to use a pot of liquid paper then I?d stay well away from pens. You can easily rub away any errors with pencil and change things with easier results.
Use a key index, this helps with knowing what colours your using on your site and where these colours are going to go. Use coloured pencils too, it?s easier to recognise what colour is what with the actual colour.
Remember drawing a site layout on paper ain?t got to be a work of art, has long as you can under stand what you have drawn and written then that is all that matters.
Moving a level up: Web design software!
What software is there to design your site? Well I have used many programs but the two main contenders for me are Dreamweaver and FrontPage. I use though mainly Dreamweaver has this is my favourite web package. The layout and advance features in Dreamweaver help me a lot to get things done quicker.
I?d say use FrontPage if you?re a novice but if your like me and want to become advance quicker then use Dreamweaver cause you will have to learn two sets of software in the long run if you go for FrontPage first. Saying that you might like FrontPage so much that you stick with it to the end of your days, so you decide what you want in the long run.
We will use Dreamweaver for our site we have already drawn out our site template so our next step is to get messy and start putting our ideas into html practice!
Getting stuck into Dreamweaver!
Dreamweaver can be scary at first but once you tame the wild beast it?s just a small pussycat. All in all Dreamweaver will punish you if you don?t know what you are doing! Go through the built in tutorials first and learn how the layout of the tools and programming languages it uses work first.
These tutorials are a lifesaver and will save you lots and lots of time during the process of building your web site.
You can download many plug-ins for Dreamweaver that can cut time with coding and making sure your site is CSS Web standard and HTML Web standard. Use Google to search for these plug-ins and you will find loads and loads of sites giving them away for free.
Final Thoughts!
Ok what have we learned here? Well the main idea of this article is to teach you to draw your site out first and make sure you are 100 percent confident that this site layout is the one you really want. Don?t change your mind halfway through or start adding buttons to your links navigation bar. It?s annoying having to add a URL to every page that you have created on your site. This is why making sure your happy with the site and that you have a complete idea on what your doing from the start is key to building a web site.
Another great tip? Always save your site after each change or you will be swearing at your computer when it crashes after 2 hours of work!
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