Web Design – templates vs. custom designs
If you are beginner and would like to have a quality looking website, you have two options, which are using a template or custom designing a site. There are numerous was to design a site. The most common used format for designing a website is html. These sites are very simple and are limited in visual effect. However, with the integration of CSS, you can create a professional looking site. CSS stands for cascading style sheet. Think of your website like a house. The html is like to frame of the house. With a quality built foundation, you can add all the extras with little effort. CSS is the code that will add the extras to your site. To discover the usefulness of CSS, search the internet for tutorials as well as templates to try.
Template Sites
These sites are designed with non-developers in mind. You can find many templates over the internet as well as in most of the website creator programs. Many template site providers charge for the use of the template or to purchase the site design out right. The costs of the using the site is usually significantly cheaper the buying the rights to the template. Once you have chosen your template, you will need to load the CSS and html files in to a web-creating program. Image editing software will be needed if you are planning to use different image than the ones provided on the template. It will be very important to keep the image size the same as the ones on the template or edit the template to fit your images.
Custom Designs
A custom design website will ensure that you have a site that is unique to your company. It will require some knowledge of the coding as well as graphic design. One of the easiest ways to design a site is by using an image creation program to layout your site design before you start coding. Photoshop is one of the best programs to use for this process because you are able to integrate the files into Dreamweaver (the most popular website creation software). You will be able to use the sections you create in Photoshop by splicing them into Dreamweaver to create clean and easy to edit CSS and html code.
Beyond CSS and html
Other formats can be used to create website including Flash and Content Management Systems (CMS). These very robust formats require more skills then html and CSS sites.
Flash
Flash sites are becoming more and more popular because the visual ability of the sites is unmatched. However, there are many disadvantages to using flash to create a site including the lack of search capability, and the skill level needed to create and edit Flash sites.
CMS
Web content management systems are used on many of the most popular sites today. They use a database format to gather and maintain content for websites. Using a backdoor for administered use, content can easy be added and removed from the site by users with little to no experience with coding. The main disadvantage to a CMS is that it takes much more skill and time to set it up. However, with the growth of CMS platforms like Wordpress and Joomla, how to guides, tutorials and class, CMS websites are becoming more and more popular.
