Tutorials

Website Design Tips Part 1

Wow, never thought I would end up writing about this? But I thought hey, lets give it ago, so that as most of you read this you’ll think, naaa I disagree & this guy’s a moron!

But lets begin none the less…

1. Planning

Well I know a lot of people do this already, but an equal or great number of people don’t do any, and usually its the start of their failing business to get rich quick. But, with me, planning doesn’t at the cost of pages of sketches, mock ups, written specifications and 10 - 15 cups of coffee that might kill me. It starts simple with a piece of paper and I identify all the elements of the web page. I.e the common elements. Header, Footer, Navigation. Unless the web develops so far you need a degree to use it, we will still need these things, and if you forget one, and try and fit in later you may as well go and stick your head down the toilet. Once you’ve identified where these 3 important parts are going to go - now bare and in mind that even though they are necessary, they can be put in different or unsual places, to make an interesting design or template and that’s basically how you should progress, to fill out the paper with what you want and where. What determines this is when you should determine the entire features of your site, so you can cater for them individually. Some examples are, things like recent users, recent posts, recent aricles, calender, time, quick links, and the like, and remember to include that thing which gave you the reason to create the site in the first place.

Once that piece of paper has things filled in, (remember you’re not putting in any fancy design yet), next you can move on to the next phase, phase 2 in your master plan to waste most of you money and not become rich (unless your lucky of course). Get yourself into your favourite graphics software like Photoshop and start translating your artistic flair into template. Depending on your style, I often start with the first mock up with a 1000px width and a 900-1500px height. This gives you a good starting point if you’re not exactly sure of how you’re site will look. If you have a better idea, or more artistic flair than me, then go ahead and start designing in Photoshop as you want.

2. Time

Unless your making a website on how to do something really fast and balls it up, let your domain expire and wonder why you made the effort to make the crappy site in the first place… You should take your time, now again, I don’t mean you should start, go on holiday round the world come back and still take months to complete it, (Of course this doesn’t apply to big database applications or programs - please take your time on those), set yourself a couple of weeks, and make something you’ll be happy with, and please dear god, make a site with a proper purpose.

3.  Come back

I don’t want to bore you with a giant article that you’ll wanna topple yourself before your finished, so if you got any sense you’ll check back for my next Web Design Tips Part 2. If you don’t, I mean, that’s fine, but you’ll become one of those people who make a site and then it fails miserably. lol

Wuup Team

Thanks

Related Wuup Stuff:

• 7 November, 2008 -- Great Web Design Resources
• 3 November, 2008 -- Get to Know Your Website Visitors
• 2 November, 2008 -- PHP Basics : Get Command - Using URL Queries & Variables
• 10 October, 2008 -- PHP Basics: Limit Characters of a String or Input substr
• 28 September, 2008 -- Traffic Vs Quality Traffic

© 2008 Wuup.