I came across this article in the http://www.htmlforums.com newsletter...
You know, there's a lot to learn about HTML, CSS and web design in general, but there's not much to know. For a basic site, you only need to know about 25 HTML 'tags'. CSS is a bit more complex, but most of it is pretty straight-forward. Just remember to chuck what you know of HTML out the window when you're dealing with CSS.
So what are we dealing with, HTML and CSS?
HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. In a nutshell, what it means is that regular text, such as you see here on this page, is 'elevated' to a programming-type language by the use of set inside angle brackets. It's used to set up the basic structure of a site. Sort of like using bricks to build a house. You need to have that wooden frame, that HTML structure, to build on.
CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, are the decorators of your web page. To go back to the building analogy, they not only decide whether you're going to have brick or stucco on the outside, but they can arrange the furniture on the inside, too.
There's more to designing a web site, though, than just putting boxes in a row to make things look good. There are some questions that need answering before you even start designing the first page.
1. Why are I making the site? "Just because" isn't a good enough reason. "I want to be cool" isn't a good reason, either. Once you know *why* you're creating a site ("I want to show off my writing or drawing talents or how well I know/play a game" is good), the site will come together that much easier.
2. Who will be visiting my site? Don't think just in terms of visitors, your grandparents, your schoolmates and friends and so on. Think in terms of what kinds of computers will be seeing my site? Does everyone you know have all the latest in computers and monitors/video cards? Do they have enough RAM and/or speakers to be able to listen to that cool MP3 you found? Once you've figured out the 'who', part of your content work is done.
3. Why will people come to my site? 'Cool' doesn't cut it here, either. Are they coming to see your drawings? Listen to your music? Read your ideas about games? Stories you've written, maybe? Or are they coming to see what it's like to be someone your age (blogs, etc.)? Once you have this answered, you'll have a better idea of what you'll be needing for content.
4. What colour goes best with my site idea? Silly question? Not really. One of the things you'll need to do is choose a set of colours for your site. Black and white may be fine, but even white text on a black background can get boring, if those are your only two colours.
The easiest way to figure out what colour to use on your site is to use your favourite colour. Use the brightest hue of it for trim - around your section heads or as backgrounds to small images. Use a darker version of the colour for text and a lighter version for the background. There, you've just created a site with 1 colour. You could add a second colour by adding a splash of another colour to your main image/section and variations of that could be used for highlights.
Don't use too many colours, though. One main colour, with various shades of it, and one contrasting colour, is all you really need to get started with. Picture your site in your mind and write down the colours you think would look best.
5. What do I want my site to look like? This is the bare bones of the structure. Will you have your information as an L-shape? Like this:
Header
Nav/Content
or as a T-shape?
Space/Header/Space
Nav/Content/Nav
Once you get that figured out (scrap paper or graph paper works quite well for this type of brainstorming), you're on your way to creating a web site in the flesh.
Website Basics
Linear Mode
