Web Design For The Beginner
Web Design For The Beginner
I am in the field of children’s health and fitness, but I just love web design and photography. With no experience, many ask me how I have created some of my web designs, which to me, are still beginner level, but attractive and usable.
The first thing I tell someone is to go visit opendesigns.org and download a few templates. Once you download the templates, unzip them to your desktop. Look for the file called index and open it up in a web editor. I like to use Notebook++ as my HTML editor, which is a free download.
In the Notebook++ program, you can change all the text you’d like to personalize your new web site. I personally like to see what I am doing, so I also open up the index file in my Firefox browser, and click the reload button to see the changes I have made as I go along.
Now, for the newbie, you may want to experiment with the .css file that is enclosed in your download. The .css file controls many things on the site such as the font, headings, colors, forms etc.
Many of the open source designers will tell you in the .css what each part of the .css controls, so you know what you are changing. The key thing is to always backup what you are doing before you make the changes, so in case you mess up, you have the original .css.
I must have done this a least 100 times before I started to try and create my own web template. Once I felt comfortable with this, I found a site by another Open Designs member called, Tinderbox.
On this site, you can find various plain and basic web layouts for you to start to personalize. If I am brave, I may visit css play to try and place in a cool navigation system.
Once I complete the design, I have a couple of my web friends check it out, then submit it to Open Designs for others to download.
If you are interested in learning about web design, this is a great way to start. You can see some of my work at: web.lensaunders.com
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August 26th, 2008 at 11:10 am
I am new to web design, so this helped me out a lot. Thank you.
August 28th, 2008 at 8:23 am
This is a great little article to introduce people to web design. I am a professional web developer who had forgotten about Tinderbox. Excellent resource.
Notepad++ is a good editor, but I find it a tad frustrating. Crimson Editor or Nvu/Kompozer (open source WYSIWYG) to be better tools.
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:22 pm
I love using Notepad ++ it is great when with all the languages it supports. As for a new person getting into web development I started using webgen. It is based off of Ruby and has been fairly easy to learn. The developer is also really good about answering questions and adding features. Great article and the two CSS links have been added to my favorites!
October 1st, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Thank you for your kind words.
October 5th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
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March 2nd, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Good for beginner