Friends,

I am absolutely new to making a website. I have a informatinoal website in mind and would like to ask a few questions.

Let me say that I have just purchased and installed Frontpage 2003 and I have about 6 books, some on Frontpage and some on website design. They are all helpful but I notice some differences in opinion... so.....

I would like to create a home page with a border on top. (Sorry for the ignorance, but I presume that "border" is the name given to describe the horizontal band that one sees on the top of almost all homepages or other web pages, such as this page that says Webmaster-talk in the upper left hand cornder and teh blue/aquamarine band that goes to the left containing imbedded links.) This border will contain the name of the site and a horizontal row of links to other pages in the website. I would also like a border on the left with other links to other pages on the sites and the main space in the middle of the page will be for up-to-date information, that will be added to every weeks (or more often).

I just need to know where to get started.

Do I use tables or Cascading Style Sheets? One of my books says that CSS cannot be read by Netscape, but don't worry, because no one uses Netscape anymore. (My wife does!) Another books says that CSS is read by all browsers, so use CSS.

I guess I should start with a template. Should I use a template that comes with Frontpage, or should I purchase a CD with hundreds (?) of templates to choose from?

Can I design the appearance of the layout before I put in any content? Or... where to I start first?


Thanks!

David

I know this is not what your looking for but I would start with a plan for my website first. Plan out your content, neccesary and cosmetic features and then design around your plans. This will make things much easier, trust me.

Next, I would use CSS and avoid tables, however frontpage makes some very bad use of tables and other odd tags as well. You can use frontpage just as any other text editor though.

I would avoid using frontpages templates or any template that uses frontpage's proprietary navigational and content objects.

Often, I will design the appearance of a website in Photoshop first and then slice it up and build it into my website so this is the route I would probably take.

Also, keep in mind that you have a lot of learning to do in the next few years and if you stick to it, it will be very satisfying.

cptnwinky has a lot of useful information in his post, but there's a few things I'd like to add.

First, I believe a more industry-wide standard for the top bar on a website is called a header.

The header can contain the title, a motto, graphics, all that kind of stuff you see on the top of websites. Also, it can contain the links, such as these forums do. Followed by the header, is the body, which is obviously where all the content goes. Of course, there can also be side bars in the body also containing links.

Bottom of page - footer. Copyright stuff, extra links which may not hold as critical information.

You may or may not know all this, but oh well, the basics are good to know .

I got into webdesign and everything by first reading various tutorials on HTML and CSS, learning the basis of everything. From there, I first tried formatting stuff with what I learned, and then I moved onto playing with templates themselves. IMHO, downloading free templates, reading through the source, editing them and figuring out how stuff is displayed is one of the best ways to learn. But once again, thats the way I did it, and may or may not apply to you, or others.

I have a lot more useful (I believe) information about starting off in webdesign, so if you'd like more assistance, please feel free to PM me!

Good luck

Head's up...

80% (and more if you are using pure CSS) of web design is done on paper or on a graphics program.

This is how I go about writing a web site.

#1. I talk to my client and let them tell me in layman's terms what they are looking from their web site.

#2. I ask them specific questions about how they would like the site to look, what the reason is for the web site, color schemes, logos, etc.

#3. I sit and sketch out what I would think would satisfy what my client is looking for and then go into Photoshop and do a mock "web site".

#4. After going back and forth with my clients as to how they want the look and feel to be and am ready to start coding then I do another sketch.

#5. This sketch is made for myself. It is more of a blueprint of how I want things laid out. I make a TON of notes about how much positioning should be between one layer and another, what is positioned where and how.

#6. After I know EXACTLY what it is that I am going to code and all the parameters of the coding, it is at that point that I actually get in front of a computer and actually start coding. WYSIWYG editors are great, but to get exactly what you want, there are certain things that just need to be hand-coded.

You say you have books on web design and I am sure that in some if not all of them they will say to get an idea (make a sketch) of what you are going to do before you get started. If you don't do this very important (and boring) step, you are not going to get the results that you want and you are probably not going to finish because of the amount of times are you are going to have to go back to fix things that are just not right.

I know a lot of this might be over your head, but I hope it helps out a little.

Thanks for your help. I'll be working on my sketches and webpages and drop by for other questions as I go along.

David