Don Lewis Designs

 

Create a Website Without Spending a Dime

Justin Mongiardo

Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada

Today, you can find a website for virtually anything. People create sites for personal interests, business ventures, school projects, and more. However, there is a common misconception that making a site requires a lot of skill or a lot of money to pay a professional. This may have been the case years ago, but now almost anyone can create their own site for free.

The first thing you need before you can build your site is a place to host it. Although many companies charge for web space, there are a few places you can get yourself a free home on the internet. A great way to find these hosts is to browse over to www.free-webhosts.com. This site lists approximately 300 free hosting providers and gives you some basic info about each one, like how much web space you actually get. In many cases, you will be forced to put ads on your site to use a free web hosting service. However, some diligent searching can lead you to hosts that are ad-free. Another option is to create your own homepage through your Yahoo or Google account. Do some surfing and pick the option that will work best for your new site.

Once you have a place to put your site, you need to build the pages. If you’re skilled with writing code from scratch, go ahead and get started. However, most people are not proficient in programming languages. If you are one of these folks, you will want to download some free web-editing software. One of the best out there is Nvu. Although very basic, Nvu will let you create a simple site without knowing any code. You can even add some extra features once you get the hang of the program. Additionally, there is a promising newcomer to the free web software field; Expression Web Designer. This program is available from Microsoft. Some early testers say it may even be able to compete with professional software. A simple web search will reveal dozens of other options available to you. Check them out, read some reviews, and download one that suits your needs.

Now that you have a program to help you create your site, you probably want to setup a layout. The program you downloaded may come with some pre-loaded templates, but these are usually rather plain. If you want something more colorful or creative, search the web for sites that offer free design templates. There are thousands of these available, and a search will lead you to a seemingly endless array of designs to choose from. Once you’ve found the one you want, follow the site’s instructions for download. Make sure you also read any copyright information to make sure you can use the template for your purposes.

After you have your site up and running, you may want to learn how to do some more complex web design. There are numerous free tutorials available to help you. Some of the best can be found on www.w3schools.com. You can also search for tutorials to help you add java applications, flash animation, and more to your website. The more you know, the more popular your site can become. Eventually, you may even be able to make money off your site by adding advertisements.

Web design is one of the fastest growing hobbies. While it used to be a job reserved for professionals, now it is possible for anyone to make a statement on the web. The best part is that you won’t have to spend a penny to make your own site. All you need to do is find the right, free, resources to help you get started today.

 

 

 

 



By: Justin Mongiardo

About the Author:

web design tutorials

I have been working as a SEO Expert in the search engine optimization field in Phoenix Arizona for over 12 years, and unfortunately I am still learning.  SEO consultants can teach you about a lot of things when it comes to the search engine optimization marketing of your website. However, one of the most important things that they are going to teach you about is linking. There are 2 forms of linking, Internal linking within your website and external linking; which is the process of obtaining links from other websites.

If you have never worried about the marketing of your website online, then you may not know how important linking is. Sure, it helps to get the name of your website out there, because the more links to your website, the better. SEO experts will teach you that linking is used also for a totally different reason. They will obtain links to your web site for the purpose of improving search rankings in popular search engines. Internet crawlers are the bots that crawl the web for search engines to find updated information on the internet. Then they report back to the search engines and use an algorithm to determine where you belong on the internet search rankings. The more quality links you obtain to your site, the higher you should rank. The better spot you get in the search engines, the more traffic you will obtain.

This is how it works; As search engines move around the internet, they come across tons of sites. When the search engines come across websites that link to your site, then it’s like you get a thumbs up towards improving your search rankings. As you can guess, the more points you get, the higher your ranking; and thus, this is what a lot of SEO experts build off of. SEO consultants usually use their services to better work on your web site as well as teach you how to improve your site on your own. They will teach you how to obtain quality from popular sites. Because there are a lot of tips and tricks to make it easier and more effective.  Link building is what makes search engine optimization so hard!

The truth of the matter is, you can not just throw your link out there anywhere and expect it to count towards your site. In fact, a lot of search engine crawlers look to make sure that the websites have something in common and that they are credible links and referring sites. For example, let’s say that your site is about cars, and you place a link on a flowers website. This is not going to help as much for your website rankings. If you do this sort of thing a lot, it can actually hurt your site.  Many SEO experts are masters at getting links to your site that work for you. Their services are aimed at simplifying your online marketing with their professional services.  SEO consultants can help teach you about the basics of search engine optimization, and how you can use it to get ahead.



By: Joel McLaughlin

About the Author:

Caffeinated Content – Members-Only Content for WordPress

Web design is the most important part of any website. Whether your site is a blog for personal use, a business or e-commerce site, or a review website, think of your websites overall look as the finishing touch. It should be alluring and well matched, not mixed up and boring. A website’s look is what your viewers will see when they visit. Without catchy visuals, they may never read your content or click on your ads. A good designer knows that proper placement and coloring will make all of the difference in the world when it comes to traffic and conversions.

While website templates usually require hours of hard work and skill, you can typically obtain themes for free or get some custom made. It’s worth investing in a custom theme because you can tailor it to your exact needs. Trying to find a smooth and enticing theme for your website can be similar to finding a needle in a haystack. A good website template, for any website, will have great usability and quick loading times. You don’t need to be fancy with your design, but something lightweight and eye catching will usually get the job done. You wouldn’t want to look at a woman wearing something overly dramatic, but you would want to look at a female wearing something attractive and reflective of her personality. The same concept applies to your websites overall design. If you are in the business of finding a quality web theme, don’t be afraid to look around. There are thousands of designers ready to dress your site up to meet your needs.

Look at various profiles and price ranges, and never be too shy to pay a bit more than you were expecting. A good theme will last the life of your website and you won’t be disappointed. However, using a cheap or ugly theme will result in a short lived design. You want something classic that will stand out and be relevant to your site for years to come. Many famous websites have still retained their original themes with a few tweaking – even after 5 years or more! It’s also proven that flash isn’t read by search engines, so ditch it for now. The bottom line is that your website graphics will make a huge impact on the overall quality of your site. Anyone can slap up some basic HTML, but it takes an artist to create an alluring website.

Visitors will likely leave immediately if it loads too slowly or doesn’t look visually appealing. Having adequate space and constraints for ads and text will also make a huge difference. Easy to navigate menus are helpful in having a great theme, and have been proven to boost visits to other parts of your site. In the end choose something that reflects your websites idea. Don’t have a theme featuring sexy lingerie if your site is actually about a health or medical field. Make your web design leave a lasting impression!



By: Guinanie Almonte

About the Author:

Create a video blog…instantly.

In today life marketing is equally important as your products. Your company logo represents your image to your customers.That is why the companies spend so much time and money to make their logo unique and appealing. It is not an easy job to do company logo design. Many companies opt for multicolored logos and some other companies opt for simple logos. It is advisable to go for the simple logos. Company logo designing is tough because one needs to understand what type of products and image the company wants to project. Some recent surveys show us that the companies who have logos do appeal more to the customers than the companies without symbols. With that note in your mind you should start working on your company logo designing.

When you are into company logo designing then you must take care of a few things. The symbol must have some words and graphics both. You must not just make it too big or too small. It should look clutter free and sleek. Your potential customers must understand your company symbol and even if they do not understand they must get attracted towards your company. It is a part of your marketing strategy and it needs to be perfect. If you cannot spend thousands of dollars for your logo you can still hire some affordable designing companies and ask them to design your company symbol. There are many companies who opt for cheap designing firms and then end up having something cluttered and not classy as it.

Remember one thing that simplicity rules in logo industry.When a simple logo can create wonders then why should you go for some complex graphics and symbol? When your symbol becomes your representative and can bring a lot of customers and respect to your company then you must take special care about your company logo designing. If you have any idea in your mind then you can say that to your designing firm. There are plenty of interesting logo designing ideas you can find on internet and you can even have invent one. If your idea is unique then it will reflect itself. Make sure that the company charges nothing to edit or reedit the logo. There are many companies who charge extra for editing and reediting. You must not get trapped into that.

You must protect the copyright of the logo you are going to opt for your company. The logo designing firm must take care of that. Otherwise your reputation will get hampered by this. You need to stay safe from all these. Try to avoid using any common graphics or signs that you have seen in other logo. You can register the chosen logo with your company name. It will then belong to your company and no one will be able to steal it or use it outside of your company and products. If you are into partnership business then too you need to make sure who will use the logo if in case the partnership breaks. Follow these rules and stick to the simple designing. Your company will surely make your place strong in the market.



By: roxenrobert

About the Author:

Caffeinated Content – Members-Only Content for WordPress

For professional web designer looking for a rapid application tool to design web sites, this is your best bet. People are being using Dream-weaver for a long time and highly recommend it to everyone who is interested in learning web site development. As this tool generates good HTML code for you, so you don”t have to be an expert HTML programmer to develop a web site.

It generates code for forms and to link up to a database using almost all popular technologies like PHP, ASP, XHTML and .NET. We can have Cool design stuff possible using Dream-weaver which includes rollovers, CSS styles, and server side includes templates and much more. Inbuilt extensions and downloaded extensions functions created by other developers are also supported and are a big help especially when time is a constraint and you cannot afford to build the functionality from scratch in Dream-weaver.

Professional web designers highly recommend Adobe’’s Fireworks 8 for fantastically designed and optimized web sites. It is a specialized tool for web developers; we use this tool to design web site layouts, logos, graphic designing etc. It is also great for optimizing images and exporting them in the gif or jpeg format. Some of cool features in Fireworks include making animated gifs, swap images, rollovers, horizontal and vertical drop-down menus or fly-outs, auto shapes and much other cool stuff.

For web site animation Adobe’’s Flash 8 Professional is the best software to use. It is very popular in web designing because you can do fantastic animations while still keeping the file size low and so that sites can load fast. We also have a huge online community of Flash developers so if you have questions or need resources like articles, tutorials, sound loops, flash files – it is all readily available on the Internet. Advanced features of Flash Action-scripting have given an absolutely new angle to web animation.

It is specially made for advanced Action-Script programmers. People who are not too keen on doing programming you can go in for the Flash Basic 8 instead of Flash Professional 8.

Most important is to have a reasonably fast loading web site so that viewers are not made to wait for a long time and to accommodate users on slow internet connections. Some tips should be taken care of while designing and developing your site, always make sure that your site doesn”t have any unwanted tags and that it is optimized. Always use design using nested tables instead of using cell merges and splits. And use separate tables where ever possible.

Read more web design articles



By: Anantait

About the Author:

Kansieo.com

The compelling, if somewhat obscure, paintings in the caves of Lascaux around 14,000 BC and the birth of written language in the third or fourth millennium BC, are both significant milestones in the history of graphic design and other fields which hold roots to graphic design. 

The Book of Kells is a very beautiful and very early example of graphic design in a form that would be acceptable even today. The Book is a lavishly illustrated hand-written copy of the Christian Bible created by Celtic monks in the ninth century AD. 

Johann Gutenberg’s introduction of movable type in Europe made books widely available. The earliest books produced by Gutenberg’s press and others of the era (the Incunabula). Only through the design of Aldus Manutius did the book begin to have a structure that would became the benchmark by which the design of future books, even as late as the 20th century, would be judged. Graphic design of this era is called either Old Style (especially the typefaces which these early typographers used), or Humanist, after the predominant philosophical school of the time. 

Graphic design, after Gutenberg saw a gradual evolution rather than any significant change, in the late 19th century when, especially in the United Kingdom, an effort was made to create a firm division between the fine and the applied arts. 

From 1891 to 1896 William Morris’ Kelmscott Press published some of the most significant of the graphic design products of the Arts and Crafts movement, and made a very lucrative business of creating books of great stylistic refinement and selling them to the wealthy for a premium. Morris proved that a market existed for works of graphic design and helped pioneer the separation of design from production and from fine art. The work of the Kelmscott Press is characterized by its decadence and by its obsession with historical styles. This historicism was, however, historically important as it amounted to the first significant reaction to the stale state of nineteenth-century graphic design. Morris’ work, along with the rest of the Private Press movement, directly influenced Art Nouveau and is indirectly responsible for developments in early twentieth century graphic design in general. 

Piet Mondrian, born in 1872, is often called the father of graphic design. Although he was a fine artist (not a graphic designer) his use of grids inspired the basic structure of the modern advertising layout known also as the grid system, used commonly today by graphic designers. 

The term Graphic Design was first coined by U.S. book designer and type designer William Addison Dwiggins in the early 20th C. 

20th century 

Famous SS Normandie poster by Adolphe Muron Cassandre.Modern Design of the early 20th century, much like the fine art of the same period, was a reaction against the decadence of typography and design of the late 19th century. The hallmark of early modern typography is the sans-serif typeface. Early Modern (not to be confused with the other modern era of the 18th and 19th centuries) typographers such as Edward Johnston and Eric Gill after him were inspired by vernacular and industrial typography of the latter nineteenth century. The signage in the London Underground is a classic of this era and used a font designed by Edward Johnston in 1916. 

Jan Tschichold codified the principles of modern typography in his 1928 book, New Typography. He later repudiated the philosophy he espoused in this book as being fascistic, but it remained very influential. Tschichold, Bauhaus typographers such as Herbert Bayer and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and El Lissitzky are the fathers of graphic design as we know it today. They pioneered production techniques and stylistic devices used throughout the twentieth century. Although the computer has altered production forever, the experimental approach to design they pioneered has become more relevant than ever. 

The following years saw graphic design in the modern style gain widespread acceptance and application. A booming post-World War II American economy established a greater need for graphic design, mainly advertising and packaging. The emigration of the German Bauhaus school of design to Chicago in 1937 brought a “mass-produced” minimalism to America; sparking a wild fire of postmodern architecture and design. Notable names in mid-century modern design include Adrian Frutiger, designer of the typefaces Univers and Frutiger; Paul Rand, who, from the late 1930’s until his death in 1996, took the principles of the Bauhaus and applied them to popular advertising and logo design, helping to create a uniquely American approach to European minimalism while becoming one of the principal pioneers of the subset of graphic design known as corporate identity; and Josef Müller-Brockmann, who designed posters in a severe yet accessible manner typical of the 1950s and 1960s. 

The reaction to the increasing severity of graphic design was slow but inexorable. The origins of post-modern typography can be traced back as far as the humanist movement of the 1950s. Notable among this group is Hermann Zapf who designed two typefaces that remain ubiquitous Palatino (1948) and Optima (1952). By blurring the line between serif and sans-serif typefaces and re-introducing organic lines into typography these designs did more to ratify modernism than they did to rebel. 

An important point was reached in graphic design with the publishing of the First things first 1964 Manifesto which was a call to a more radical form of graphic design and criticized the ideas of value-free design. This was massively influential on a generation of new graphic designers and contributed to the founding of publications such as Emigre magazine. 

I Love New York campaign by Milton Glaser.Another notable designer of the latter 20th century is Milton Glaser who designed the unmistakable I Love NY ad campaign (1973), and a famous Bob Dylan poster (1968). Glaser took stylistic hints from popular culture from the 1960s and 70s. 

Advances in the early 20th century were largely inspired by technological advances in printing and also in photography. In the last decade of the same century, technology played a similar role, but this time it was the computer, and at first it was largely a step backwards. Zuzana Licko worked very early using computers for layout, in the days when computer memory was measured in kilobytes and typefaces were created using dots rather than lines. Together with her husband Rudy VanderLans they founded the pioneering Emigre magazine and the Emigre type foundry. They played with the extraordinary limitations of computers as something which, in itself, could provide creative freedom. Emigre magazine became the bible for digital design as the technology rapidly advanced to the point where the advantages outweighed the disadvantages. 

David Carson is, in a sense, the culmination of the movement against the restrictiveness of modern design—some of his designs for Raygun magazine are intentionally illegible, featuring typography designed to be visual rather than literary experiences. 

Soviet Constructivism 

Mainly in the 1920’s, in Soviet Russia, Soviet Constructivism applied ‘intellectual production’ in different spheres of production. The movement saw individualistic art as useless in revolutionary Russia and thus moved towards creating objects for utilitary purposes. They designed buildings, theater sets, posters, fabrics, clothing, furniture, logos, menus etc.



By: Vibhu Mallick

About the Author:

Kansieo.com

Web Color

There are many web design tutorials that cover Web color in detailed scientific terms. However, for our objectives, let’s briefly discuss Web color and how it will be used in the Web portfolio. You will need to develop a color scheme for your Web portfolio pages. This means that you will designate colors for your page background, the type used on the page and any other static elements that reside in the page. There are two types of color that can be used in Web graphics. The colors can be associated with the Web graphic file formats we just mentioned: GIF and JPG.

GIF

GIF files use index color. Index color consists of 216 common colors found on all computer monitors and within all Web browsers. These common colors reside in a Web palette. The Web palette of colors is available in Macromedia Fireworks and Adobe Photoshop so they can be used in design of Web screens without variance of color when the pages are on the Internet. Also, the Web palette is the standard color palette in Macromedia Dreamweaver and Macromedia Flash. This allows us to achieve consistent color across Web applications and Web browsers.

We use Web colors for:

Web text/HTML text

Web page backgrounds

Web page colors used for table or layer backgrounds

Web links

GIF files

JPG

JPG files use red, green, and blue (RGB) for graphical color. RGB color is also known as full color. Full color items include bitmap graphics or photographs. We want to utilize photographs as much as we can within a Web portfolio to add to the visual rhetoric and the narrative that we are trying to present. Extensive use of photographs, especially their manipulation in programs such as Adobe Photoshop, require a brief description of the RGB color model. RGB color is known as additive color because of all colors, red green, and blue were added together at their full intensity that would create pure white. The mixtures of the relative strengths of these colors, “create the millions of colors computer monitors can show” (Kimball, 2003, p. 95). The strength of these colors is set in from zero to 255 with zero being the least intensity and 255 being the highest intensity. When red, green and blue are combined at zero intensity the result is black. At full strength, high intensity, where the values are set at 255, 255, 255, the result is pure white. To remember this, here is a simple metaphor. Think of the red, green, and blue as light switches. Each light switch using a slider has a range of zero to 255. When all the white switches are set at zero the room is dark. What all the light switches are set to 255, the room is lit at full intensity. Once you begin to use image-editing applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia fireworks, you begin to explore computer color within your graphics and photographs. When discussing color usage, full color or RGB color is present in photographic JPG files and other created artwork. Full color images should not be saved as GIF files because of the limited number of colors. By having limited colors, the full color image will represent the true colors using the existing Web palette of 216 colors.

This creates a poor, dithered, and ugly image. That is why it is very important to use the right file format for each specific graphic. When converting print images to the Web, it’s important that you do not use the CMYK color model for anything including graphics. The CMYK model is not a monitor friendly color space. The CMYK graphics cannot be seen in CMYK on the Internet. They can only be represented by the RGB color model or the Web safe (indexed) color model. Here are the rules for Web color:

Full color images (RGB palette) and photos are saved as JPG.

Flat graphics (Web 216 palette) with limited color are saved as GIF files.

For Page backgrounds use the Web safe palette (Web 216 palette) in all computer graphics, multimedia, and Web development applications. Now, let’s discuss Web page and graphic size.

Size

Web pages are measured in pixels. Pixels are the unit of measurement for the screen. A Web page can literally be any size. Standard Web pages usually fit into a few sizes:

W × H

600 × 800

640 × 480 (Dreamweaver default)

1024 × 768

550 × 400 (Flash default)

The default Web page sizes provided in Web friendly applications and listed earlier are a great place to start. You will probably use a smaller, custom size for pop-up windows. The Web page size you choose is up to you. Remember to use actual space for the Web page effectively so that the content is in the proper proximity to the user’s navigation patterns. Web page size affects the way users move around the Web pages and the Web portfolio site. One rule: Pick a size for all main screens and stick to it.

Consistency in page size r should be used on each level of the Web portfolio design flowchart. You will need to understand size in the image editing application when you develop screens and Web graphics. We must keep our graphics within the page size guidelines otherwise they will over extend the Web browser and the user will need to scroll to see them. That is not a good thing and will definitely turn off the user. When you are looking at Web screens and graphics in an image editing application such as Macromedia Fireworks or Adobe Photoshop, you can see the exact size the image will occupy on a monitor when the view is set to 100 percent.

This means that you can get an accurate indication of how a page will look before going through the process of making it an HTML Web page. This helps with design and production. It helps eliminate guess work when developing pages. Size also depends on resolution. Let’s discuss resolution next.



By: Author

About the Author:

Create a video blog