Making a very nice site!

[ReC0iL]

My buddy in Denver is really good at that Cold Fusion stuff.... He makes big bucks to.... *Cha Ching!*

--ReC0iL

 

[aswettla]

make sure you scrap what you have and make it all over again. Trust me what you have then trying to move it over could be a lot of work and you could have big problems.

 

[ZAnwar]

yeah, I was thinking of now making it from scratch.

 

[Rigsta]

Zan - I'm sorry, but eeeew. The site you posted is horrible.

- Remove the huge .gif files. And any other large pictures while you're at it. They're distracting and too big. Also, when you're programming a web site, keep in mind that it will be viewed by all sorts of people with different systems. The big images mean that it just takes ages to load. If it was me, I'd have clicked "back" long before it'd loaded...

- General look. What were you thinking? The backgrounds are just nasty. Use a constant background tile image or colour, and keep the theme consistent. Make sure that the text contrasts with the background - kight text against light background just hurts the eyes, so who's gonna bother to read it?. My site's only just started, but I suppose it's ok to show how I think a website should start... Although I'm thinking of removing the big title graphics http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ian.riggott

- Just what exactly is the site trying to say? Everything is BIG. Less is more, remember Instead of trying to overwhelm the user,

- Attitude. Ok, fix this. Telling people that they don't deserve to be on your site is just stupid. When I'd got as far as this sentence, I was thinking that this page did not deserve to be on my screen. And if you don't want people to view it, thejn don't put it on the internet... it's not exactly big on privacy.

- "so if you have got ADSL or faster, get that program, if you are still lagging behind with the crappy 56k, all i can say is SHAME !!!!!"
- If people need more than 56K to view your site, then it's wrong. I use 56K myself. I'm not lagging behind anything.

- Content. All this site really contains is long loading times, and 2 links to an mp3 file and Kazaa lite 2.

My advice is to go back to basics and learn some basic html code and web design principles. There are plenty of online tutorials and resources to use. Before you can build a really cool site, you have to have a good foundation of knowledge and some practice (and a good html reference book ). THEN go on to build the site you really want to build. Tools like frontpage and dreamweaver are very useful, but you need the basic knowledge first. A skyscraper would crumble without the foundation.

 

[aswettla]

good online tutorial is located at www.techtv.com/buildasite/

 

[ZAnwar]

woah man Rigsta. hahahaha

You really told what you thought.
Yeah, now I am thinking that aswell, big graphics ain't good, and a constant background is good.

thanks anway.

 

[aswettla]

heck ya tech tv rocks.

 

[Rigsta]

Originally posted by ZAnwar
woah man Rigsta. hahahaha

You really told what you thought.

Hehe, sometimes I just don't bother to make my words sound nice, just go for brutally honest. In short, my point was that if your site doesn't look nice, no-one will bother looking at it for more than a few seconds.

 

[Geffy]

Personally I love DreamWeaver MX, I originally learnt how to use DreamWeaver 2, and have recently got DWMX, I dont have Flash or any of that stuff.

I use a combination of DWMX, HTML-Kit and Maguma PHP Light.

I mainly use DWMX for the general interface design, I find that I can make a better looking site if I can look at it as I go without having to have a separate IE window open as well.

I then use HTML-Kit to perform some tag tidying, and Conversion of sections like text to CSS, though I am now moving away from doing that and am now doing that as part of the developement and interface section.

Then I have used the CodeView of DWMX to do php coding before, but since I was told about Maguma PHP Light, I dont think I will go back, it is just too nice.

I cant dispute that Note/Wordpad is a great tool to write the pages, but personally I prefer the above.


One of the things that I was taught when I learnt HTML was the following
Directory Structure
Root <-- Where the site pages go
|- images <-- Where you put the sites images
|- Originals <-- Where the original PSD or PSP files go
|- downloads <-- fairly obvious where you put files to be downloaded

Note: Normally I dont upload the Originals folder it is just there so that if you change some of the things about your site, then you can easily edit your images, it is better that way than editting one of your JPG files, and then saving as a JPG again, as then you will loose more of the image data in the compression.

Since then with my dabbling with PHP, I have added an additional folder within the root called "inludes" where any PHP header files are put.

The main rule that I was told not to break, and so far havent, is to never ever use filenames with spaces in them, it will just end up with dead links or images.

Most of the people here probably know all of this, but I thought I would pass along this knowledge anyways.

 

[jonifen]

I tried using Dreamweaver, but got overwhelmed by all the features, so I went back to using Notepad... simplicity at its very best

I'd play around with a few different designs ZAnwar, upload them into different folders and ask your mates and other ppl who would give honest opinions on them to tell you what they think.

I'd try a different font than "Times New Roman"... not saying that its a poor font, but something like Verdana, Tahoma or even Arial (at like 9px in size) can look a lot more appealing and professional.

I made this site not long ago - http://www.ackclan.tk - basically a Q3 screendump (well its a Q3 clan website lol).It has links at the bottom (easily readable) and a main header which is also clearly visible. I included an IFRAME for the website content, I think its Verdana font (cant remember offhand, pretty sure it is), with black backgrounds for each news post - makes the text stand out a lot more against the background image that lies below. I find using stylesheets makes webdesign a lot easier as you dont have loads of font tags all over your page code (which can cause big lag when loading the sites).

I aint saying that my site is the best, cuz its far from it. But I've learnt more from genuine comments from site visitors and friends etc, than I've learnt from HTML/ASP books. The books show you the theory behind it... what you do with the theory depends on where your imagination takes you

Good luck

 

[Nick M]

Originally posted by Rigsta
Hehe, sometimes I just don't bother to make my words sound nice, just go for brutally honest. In short, my point was that if your site doesn't look nice, no-one will bother looking at it for more than a few seconds.

No, but you have excellent advice. Pretty much what I though when I saw it.

Don't tell me I don't deserve to be on a site that doesn't contain anything, if the case, the site doesn't deserve to be on my screene, like Rigsta said.

 

[Grandmaster]

I think you (ZAnwar) should change the background because it is extremley hard to read the text...

 

[Geffy]

Originally posted by jonifen
I tried using Dreamweaver, but got overwhelmed by all the features, so I went back to using Notepad... simplicity at its very best

I was originally taught HTML on dreamweaver at my school as part of a computer course so that is why I am more at home with it. Though I do hate some of its always putting in <p> tags everywhere, but I cant be arsed trackin down the thing to change that.

Originally posted by jonifen
But I've learnt more from genuine comments from site visitors and friends etc, than I've learnt from HTML/ASP books. The books show you the theory behind it... what you do with the theory depends on where your imagination takes you

Yeah its the imagination that makes almost every single site different.

 

[jonifen]

the only problem with me is when my imagination thinks of cool graphics which i'm too poor at graphic design to actually make

 

[Geffy]

Originally posted by jonifen
the only problem with me is when my imagination thinks of cool graphics which i'm too poor at graphic design to actually make

Oh yes I know that problem very well though I am slowly getting better.

 

[ZAnwar]

Ok thanks everybody, really appreciate it.

Now I am making a site with a black background, all the way through and putting a very nice Navigation Bar at the side. It will be finished very soon and I will post it here!

 

[gonaads]

ZAnwar, Go to this site that I have linked and get this book. It is a great book for HTML web design and it is also a tutorial. I have the first version of this book. it also came with a CD so you can follow it and see what it should look like.

It is called:

<creative html design>
a hands-on html 4.0 web design tutorial

the new one is:

<creative html design.2>
a hands-on web design tutorial

http://www.htmlbook.com/


I created my works web site http://www.skillcentre.com/ while I was reading and learning HTML. And I used NOTEPAD only. And it is W3C compliant. I gotta change the menu... I'm starting not to like the buttons. i need new ones, some mouseover one would be nice. Gonna have to write some new code.


But get this book, easy to read and follow... and very complete.


[edit]
Aaaaah... new buttons. :happy: Now I gotta figure out the mouseover "chit". :huh:

 

[thebear]

www.lissaexplains.com

really good site if ur starting at HTML, and CSS. Used it myself when i was starting 3 years ago.

 

[Zedric]

Originally posted by thebear
www.lissaexplains.com

really good site if ur starting at HTML, and CSS. Used it myself when i was starting 3 years ago.

*GAAAAHHH!!!* MY EYES!!!
*runs*


Horrible colors on that one. Makes it pretty unrelaxing to read IMO. Probably a good site though.

 

[dubstar]

Good Luck!

please take a look at this site, i know its easy to ask a bunch of questions and get instant answers, but thats not learning.

so check this out, and then lets hear some questions

http://www.htmlhelp.com/

http://webdesign.about.com/mbody.htm

http://www.colin.mackenzie.org/webdesign/