How do I build a DECENT looking website?

Dave!

Hey folks,

I've done a few really basic websites when I was learning html (as a hobby, not in college or anything), but they're terribly sloppy and silly.

But now I'm getting a bit more serious with the websites, cos I've got some good ideas, and I'd like to be able to make them look a bit professional, and make some money from them.

I'm studying computers in college, but unfortunately the course doesn't involve any web design, so I'm learning from the internet, and maybe some books from the library if needs be.

But having said that, I do have to go to college, and work, and so on, so I can't learn everything! But what would be the 1 or 2 most important things to learn in order to be able to put together a website like for instance, boards? Or this kind of thing(just took that randomly from the favourites!)?

I just want to be able to get a decent looking thing up and running, to test the idea really! Just a banner on the top, menu on the left, and a main area where information and so on would go. I can't afford to pay someone to do everything now, but if the sites took off, then I could do that and make it better

Thanks for any help!

Also, as a side thing... How much work is required for a simple website, maintaining it etc? Cos like I said, I did really basic things, which display information, so if that was your site and someone put ads on it, then surely it wouldn't require an awful lot of work, and it'd take care of itself to an extent I dunno, I'm sure there's more behind the scenes stuff to be done, but I always wondered what webmasters do all day

And finally, how much money would you generally make from running banner ads on your site? Do you get paid each click, or just for having it on there? Or both? I know it'll vary with traffic, and who's advertising, but would it be €10 a week or €1000 on average?

Thanks again, sorry for the big post!

MartMax

i'd not call myself a webmaster nor web builder considering i havent done a full website on my own. i've always do a website by putting things together, get all the opensource (cms, oscommerce, etc). And, free templates bcoz not being an art person doesn't help me at all to do things from scratch. my latest project is using Joomla. Sorry if this is no answer to your Qs.

bogins

How do I build a DECENT looking website?

well if there was one single answer to that wouldnt everyone be able to build decent sites?

I suggest you do a course in it. Ive spent 4 years in college and 5 working in web design and i still have lots to improve on.

grahamor

• use css to the max
• keep things simple
• dont use any cheesy flash
• get ideas and inspiration from other sites (colours etc.)
• ask any artistic friend for some tips

also, try and use text for the navigation (with some nice css styling). This will make it piss easy to update.

Hope this helps

impr0v

Proper web design isn't one or two things, it's an amalgamation of different degrees of knowledge in various technologies, all of which can be learned with some time and effort, and some pure design skill which some people just have and others have to work very hard at.

Consider getting a book on html (basics) and css (slightly more advanced), which will give you the technical know-how to put something functional together. When you get your head around these, you can move onto dynamic sites, incorporating ASP, JSP or PHP, which are all scripting languages, and building upon what you already know. After that, the sky is the limit and practice makes perfect. You'll also need some knowledge of and access to at least one image creation/editing package such as photoshop/fireworks/freehand/etc.

A book will point you in the right directions and give you the basics and everything else you need to know, and lots that you don't, is available via google.

How much work there is involved in maintaining a site, and the potential ad revenue from same, depends upon the content and whether it's useful or of interest to enough people.

I'd restrain any pie-in-the-sky dreams you have about putting a simple page up about you and your home town and expecting the zeros to mount in your account every week, unless of course you wear a revealing outfit and get an invite onto Podge and Rodge.

DOLEMAN

I was involved in designing -

www.staff.ie and www.dole.ie

1. Simple
2. Clean HTML (validated at validator.w3.org)
3. Nothing flashy/distracting/annoying for the visitor
4. Quick
5. Not too corporate or commerical or money-focussed
6. Ignore criticisms, do it your way (it'll either be wonderful or a disaster, but it's a good way to learn and keeps things original)
7. Keep at it (be a perfectionist)

To develop a proper working website takes more time than you think. Be prepared to invest some of your emotions in it to get it to work.

py2006

DOLEMAN wrote:

I was involved in designing -

www.staff.ie and www.dole.ie

1. Simple
2. Clean HTML (validated at validator.w3.org)
3. Nothing flashy/distracting/annoying for the visitor
4. Quick
5. Not too corporate or commerical or money-focussed
6. Ignore criticisms, do it your way (it'll either be wonderful or a disaster, but it's a good way to learn and keeps things original)
7. Keep at it (be a perfectionist)

To develop a proper working website takes more time than you think. Be prepared to invest some of your emotions in it to get it to work.

I would have to agree with the above. There is nothing worse than overly cluttered home page with lots of things going on. Its too confusing for the browser.

Also, don't have too much text on a page! People can not and wont try to read through lots of text on a screen.

Apart from having a firm stronghold on HTML and CSS you might want to look into learning a language so you can create a site that interacts with a database etc.

Its important to have a good knowledge of HTML and CSS before using Dreamweaver. While Dreamweaver does alot of the work for you, it can create alot of crap within the code and cause errors that you will only be able to fix if you are knowlegeable of the coding side of things.

frost

DOLEMAN wrote:

I was involved in designing -

www.staff.ie and www.dole.ie

1. Simple
2. Clean HTML (validated at validator.w3.org)
3. Nothing flashy/distracting/annoying for the visitor
4. Quick
5. Not too corporate or commerical or money-focussed
6. Ignore criticisms, do it your way (it'll either be wonderful or a disaster, but it's a good way to learn and keeps things original)
7. Keep at it (be a perfectionist)

To develop a proper working website takes more time than you think. Be prepared to invest some of your emotions in it to get it to work.

Nice clean sites, Doleman. The first one is very like O'Reilly books - is that intentional?

py2006

frost wrote:

Nice clean sites, Doleman. The first one is very like O'Reilly books - is that intentional?

I noticed that too!

mewso

frost wrote:

Nice clean sites, Doleman. The first one is very like O'Reilly books - is that intentional?

See number 6. He did it his way and ignores criticism

I would agree with reading books if you are any way adept at the stuff. Something basic followed by some good css stuff preferably with an XHTML angle. Also use the newgrangehotel.ie link as an example of what not to do

Loomis

musician wrote:

See number 6. He did it his way and ignores criticism

I would agree with reading books if you are any way adept at the stuff. Something basic followed by some good css stuff preferably with an XHTML angle. Also use the newgrangehotel.ie link as an example of what not to do

What exactly is bad about that site?Is it just that there is too much content per page?
I thought the layout of the site was good,simple et cetera.Is it?Does it have anything going for it?

Mr. Anderson

Mr. Anderson wrote:

What exactly is bad about that site?Is it just that there is too much content per page?
I thought the layout of the site was good,simple et cetera.Is it?Does it have anything going for it?

.

Loomis

EduMyth wrote:

.

How did you spot that??
Stupid question but is that intentional or a mistake the webmaster hasn't copped?
Do the rest of my questions from my last post apply?

rip2roar

Nice designs.I designed my own site with little knowledge of html.I started learning about a month ago and have gotten good-ish with it.I advise that you mess around with codes and just get a feel for it.I use Frontpage and Macro to code and it gets easier as time goes by.After all, I'm only 16 next month.

Here is mine:
www.menace-media.com

Not fully completed but getting there

mewso

Mr. Anderson wrote:

What exactly is bad about that site?Is it just that there is too much content per page?
I thought the layout of the site was good,simple et cetera.Is it?Does it have anything going for it?

It looks fine but I'm a bit of a stickler. Images with no alt tags, tables for layout, styles defined within the page, incredibly bad use of Flash not to mention the white coloured text at the end of the page (revealed if you drag your mouse highlight). I'm not artistically inclined as others have said so I often pay a visit to http://www.oswd.org to grab the odd free template that I can rely on working in most browsers, be accessible and standards compliant.

bucks

Just to add on the CSS note, i got hold of a lynda.com tutorial on CCS2 and it is after opening my eyes big time.

Excellent tutorial which shows you the ins and outs of CSS.

Eoin

Also remember that W3C valid HTML is not the "end all and be all" of web design, it is only one aspect of the site that you should keep in mind. Valid mark-up may mean that it will work as you intended in as many browsers as possible, but that is not to say that the way you intended it to look is particularly good. For instance, I'm pretty sure that an empty "alt" attribute will pass validation, but it isn't particularly useful.

Be careful of using JavaScript, and in particular AJAX. These technologies can be easily used to make a site behave in a manner that is totally unintuitive to the user.

With regards to the NewGrangeHotel website, the right hand navigation is all related to the hotel's services, but it sort of looks like a load of sponsored links - this will cause a lot of people to ignore it immediately. Also, the contrast between some of the headings and the white background is not very high, so that makes it harder to read.

Some links that may be handy:
http://www.useit.com - Jakob Nielson is regarded by many as one of the foremost experts on usability.

Similar site: http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

Accessibility toolbar for IE: http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/ais/ Among other things, it checks that the colours you used in the page contrast enough - i.e. that font and background colours are sufficiently different to make it legible.

Colour chooser: http://www.siteprocentral.com/cgi-bin/feed/feed.cgi Only glanced at this, but it provides a complimentary colour pallette for a colour you choose.

Dave!

Thanks for all the help so far!

Just re: the Newgrange site, I don't actually like the colours etc on the site, but I was just showing it as an example of the menu on the left, banner on the top, and the main section. Just chose it at random

I like the idea of using templates to get started, and this is one I think I might go with for now...
http://www40.brinkster.com/davidmcginn/index.html
(although I'd probably get rid of the comment thing on the right-hand-side)

Just a few questions...
ya see the main page of boards? www.boards.ie? All of those tables and so on, are they part of vBulletin, or did they just design a main page with links to the actual bulletin board, using the same colour schemes?
Because the site I was thinking of doing would centre around a message board (I posted a thread on this before actually, sorry!), so would it just be a case of building a main page, and when you click on the links on it, it goes to a different site (in the case of phpBB) or to the vBulletin software? Or is the whole of boards just tinkering with the configurations for vB?

Dunno if that makes sense to ye...

Well basically what I want is, a main page like this, which has a bit of an introduction thing, and a few links on it, and when you click the link to the forum, it goes to a message board, keeping the same scheme and layout of the main page (so it could probably just be a BB using the same hex colours, with a banner on the top).

Is this possible? And if so, could it be done with phpBB and a free host(which I have registered with)? Would it be smart to do this, and to just mask a .com address over it?

Jesus, sorry for all the questions, this is pathetic I'm not as naive as I'm coming across, but I just wanna be sure before I start paying out money on this site.

Thanks alot, you're saints!

Eoin

DaveMcG wrote:

Just a few questions...
ya see the main page of boards? www.boards.ie? All of those tables and so on, are they part of vBulletin, or did they just design a main page with links to the actual bulletin board, using the same colour schemes?
Because the site I was thinking of doing would centre around a message board (I posted a thread on this before actually, sorry!), so would it just be a case of building a main page, and when you click on the links on it, it goes to a different site (in the case of phpBB) or to the vBulletin software? Or is the whole of boards just tinkering with the configurations for vB?

Dunno if that makes sense to ye...

Probably a combination of custom code, and plug-ins for the BB software.

DaveMcG wrote:

Well basically what I want is, a main page like this, which has a bit of an introduction thing, and a few links on it, and when you click the link to the forum, it goes to a message board, keeping the same scheme and layout of the main page (so it could probably just be a BB using the same hex colours, with a banner on the top).

Is this possible? And if so, could it be done with phpBB and a free host(which I have registered with)? Would it be smart to do this, and to just mask a .com address over it?

Jesus, sorry for all the questions, this is pathetic I'm not as naive as I'm coming across, but I just wanna be sure before I start paying out money on this site.

Thanks alot, you're saints!

The phpBB site says that it is fully customisable, and that they have totally seperated content from design, so it should just be a case of changing around the CSS.

By the way, if you expect a bit of traffic, personally I would pay for the hosting. Some of the hosting companies throttle the bandwidth on their free hosting plans, and the performance of the sites ends up very poor.

aoa321

DOLEMAN wrote:

do it your way (it'll either be wonderful or a disaster, but it's a good way to learn and keeps things original)

That's good advice doleman, I'm gonna take it on board anyway.

It's just my opinion but I don't really like the logo of the upside-down zebra on the staff.ie site - what is the general reaction to it? I would say it gets a lot of attention because it's so unusual.

Dave!

hmmm, that wasn't upside down last time I looked

ahh, notice the 'i' has become a '1' and it's turned into a calendar

Thanks for all the help lads!

I used a template and changed it around a bit, and I'm nearly finished! Just have to

1. fill in the text and so on, on the main page, contact page, etc.
2. buy some hosting (what's the best one, in your opinion?needs php and mysql)
3. buy the domain name (best site to buy it off? I looked at domain.com and domaindirect.com)
4. upload phpBB to the new host

Then it's pretty much done! Gonna have to start a bit of an advertising campaign

EDIT:

Oh I designed a cool banner for it too All by meself

I'll post the site when I finish it!

DOLEMAN

aoa321 wrote:

That's good advice doleman, I'm gonna take it on board anyway.

It's just my opinion but I don't really like the logo of the upside-down zebra on the staff.ie site - what is the general reaction to it? I would say it gets a lot of attention because it's so unusual.

April 1st....

You can see all the zebras here - http://www.staff.ie/zebras

DOLEMAN

DaveMcG wrote:

2. buy some hosting (what's the best one, in your opinion?needs php and mysql)

If you want cheap, get a host in the US (search on www.webhostingtalk.com)

If you want in Ireland, I recommend www.hosting365.ie

DaveMcG wrote:

3. buy the domain name (best site to buy it off? I looked at domain.com and domaindirect.com)

They're all pretty **** I use www.registerfly.com out of laziness (their software and support are dire.) Don't use www.godaddy.com (*****!)

DaveMcG wrote:

Then it's pretty much done! Gonna have to start a bit of an advertising campaign

Check out SEO (forums.seochat.com)

rsynnott

Unfortunately, you'll also need some artistic ability; some people, myself included, just can't do visual web design.

Dave!

Thanks for all your help folks!

I've got some important decisions to make...

As it stands I'm trying to build up enough cash to go travelling for the month of August, so I'm trying to save as much as possible. My job isn't giving me alot of shifts at the moment either, so it looks like I'll be a few hundred shy. That's where I would like the website to come in! I can't see it giving me much money at the start, but maybe a few bob.
However, I'm on a free web host (brinkster.com), and I'm using a free forum (phpbb-host.com), and I really don't want to start using that forum, as I won't be able to transfer members or posts from it if and when I need to move to a more secure one -- and it's already showing how crap it is, as it's been down for the whole day! If I want to use phpBB for the forum, then I'll most likely have to pay for hosting, since brinkster doesn't take php or mySql (unless I'm mistaken -- does anyone know a good free server that takes these types?).

So in order to make any money from this site, I'm gonna have to invest some in it! When I'm tryin to do it for as cheapo as possible! I just don't know if the idea is good enough, or if I'll be able to make it work

BTW, I put Google AdSense on the main pages, today. But as I haven't given out the url, it's gonna be pretty useless

Dave!

Can someone confirm that there are no free hosts that allow you to upload phpBB (php & mySql)? Cos if there is, then that would be very handy Otherwise I'm gonna have to find a cheap host that allows me to upload the stuff.