TUTORIAL: Web design crash course

[trampus]

Well since I don't know much about collecting yet I figured I could help out in this way. I noticed alot of you have small websites set up to display your collection, not calling anyone but some of you don't make the best choices for ease of use.

I'm no pro or anything, but I have been into this for about 3 years now and during this time I've picked up a few things and I'll share all of them.
(Sorry if it sounds like I think you're all stupid, I just like to describe things in detail)

1. How to start

The first thing you will need is a home for your website, this is called hosting. There are 2 types of hosting you can go with, free and paid. Free obviously has the price on its side but it is usually limited and has advertisements. Paid hosting has limits as well, but they're much higher than free and it has alot of features. What you need to do is decide what features you need and how much (if any) money you want to spend. Paid hosting also comes with domain names, so instead of a long address you'll have yoursite.com/net/org or whichever extension you choose. I'll supply some links to some decent free hosts and more things at the end.

After you pick your host, the next thing you'll need to do is design. You have several options for design, you can do the HTML yourself, download a free layout or use your hosts building tool (such as Geocities Pagebuilder). An HTML layout is not as complicated as you would think after you learn a couple of things. It would take way too much time to type up a complete HTML tutorial, but if you need any help with it feel free to ask me.

2. Design tips

This is the biggest part of the site creation. A good design will make a visitor feel welcome and want to stick around, while a bad design will have the opposite effect. You don't have to be a master designer to turn something out that looks decent, just stick to a few simple guidelines.

Background color should be neutral (white/black/grey), or a pale/dull version of a regular color. A brightly colored background really has a negative impact on text.

Speaking of text, it is also a big part. You want to use black text if possible since it is the easiest on the eyes. Avoid white text like the plauge if you have a dark background color, and bright text alltogether.

The choice of font is also very important. I reccomend either Tahoma or Verdana. Tahoma works best at a smaller size, it's also rougher than Verdana which you may not like. Stay away from Times New Roman as it looks cheap. You have to thnk about everyone else, while you may have a cool font on your computer that doesn't mean that everyone else does. If you use a font that someone does not have then it will just show up in their browser default which is usually Times. Special fonts that come with Windows like Chiller and Old English are not good choices as they are hard to read.

Images are fine as long as you don't go overboard. If you use a background image make sure it tiles properly. Try not to use spinning/flashing/glowing animated gifs as they annoy most people. Don't use images for something a link can easily replace. Images are much larger in size than text and if you get too many going on a page it can take some users a while to load and even lag slower computers.

3. Other things

If you want some interactivity on your page then a tagboard (or shoutbox, whichever you prefer) is a good way to let people leave quick messages. It has the same basic concept as a message board such as this only in a smaller package with less features. You can get remotely hosted tagboards, and any other script you might want. Want a poll? Message board? Comments system? Visitor counter? All can be had through remote hosting. Remotely hosted scripts usually have small links on them, but bigger ones can have ads.

Another thing you might want to look into is a URL redirection. What that is is something that makes your link shorter and easier to remember. A few popular ones are cjb.net and .tk, I'm sure you've all seen those. Example: say your current url is geocities.com/mikescollection/cards.html, it could be just mikescollection.tk.

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Well, I hope you learned something new and get out there and make that page. As I said earlier here are some links to useful things.

Hosted scripts:
http://www.hostedscripts.com/
http://www.cgispy.com/

Hosting:
(free)
http://geocities.com
http://freewebs.com
http://www.freewebspace.net/ (host search engine)
(paid)
http://hostgator.com
http://hostrocket.com
http://powweb.com

URL redirection:
http://cjb.net
http://www.tk/
http://www.has.it/
http://webalias.com/

Well, that's all for now. If I think of anything else to add I will. Don't forget to ask any and all questions you may have, I like helping people with their websites/pages more than I do working on my own.

Update, here's a few more in-depth tutorials.

http://www.cadaverous.org/tut/basics.html
http://www.cadaverous.org/tut/images.html
http://www.cadaverous.org/tut/tables.html