Website Design

R

rgratto2

2[H]4U
Joined
Jul 22, 2005
Messages
2,319
My mother runs a floral business focused primarily on wedding flowers. She is in dire need of a website and I have offered to make it and want to host it on my own server. What I've been struggling with, however, is the design of the site.

I don't know what layout best suits the nature of the site and I don't know how to come up with graphics and effects for the site to make it look nice and modern. Any suggestions for getting started with things or recommendations? I have invested a lot of time looking at websites that provide web site templates and have some general ideas of things that I like, but don't really know how to pull it all together.

I don't know if this truly belongs in Digital Artwerk or the Webmastering & Programming section, but when I personally think of design aspects, I think artwork applies more as it is the creative side of things.
 
Best bet, pay someone to design it. If it's for a business, you want it to look as professional as possible. If this is your first try at designing a website, it probably wont look great. It takes some practice.

If you are dead set on doing it yourself, then start hitting some tutorial websites (tutorialized etc). What programs do you have to work with? Photoshop? Fireworks? PSP? Gimp? Illustrator? Dreamweaver? Frontpage? You're going to need some sort of graphics editing program, and a dedicated web design program (Dreamweaver, Frontpage etc), though not absolutely necessary, makes things much easier.

If you want to split the difference, then pay for either a template and customize it to your needs, or a Content Management System (Joomla, Drupal, Nuke etc.) and again, customize it to your needs. There are plenty of tutorials floating around that tell you how to do both.

Hope that helps a little.
 
DDigital said:
Best bet, pay someone to design it. If it's for a business, you want it to look as professional as possible. If this is your first try at designing a website, it probably wont look great. It takes some practice.

If you are dead set on doing it yourself, then start hitting some tutorial websites (tutorialized etc). What programs do you have to work with? Photoshop? Fireworks? PSP? Gimp? Illustrator? Dreamweaver? Frontpage? You're going to need some sort of graphics editing program, and a dedicated web design program (Dreamweaver, Frontpage etc), though not absolutely necessary, makes things much easier.

If you want to split the difference, then pay for either a template and customize it to your needs, or a Content Management System (Joomla, Drupal, Nuke etc.) and again, customize it to your needs. There are plenty of tutorials floating around that tell you how to do both.

Hope that helps a little.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply.

I have been toying a little with the idea of paying for a template that I could then use and have been starting to seriously consider it more as this is what is REALLY holding up the creation of the site. I would feel comfortable with that, except perhaps for the creation of some of the graphics (although I guess that would depend on the terms of the template design, maybe I could get them provided).

I know Silverlight, so I was planning on, at a minimum, using that for some of the content. Otherwise I am familiar with Html/Javascript and PHP (although its rusty). I feel pretty confident that I could create the site from a template.

Any good suggestions for where to get such a template? I saw this site linked in a different thread around here... What kind of rate would be fair for the design + graphics?
 
If I were you, since it's a simple florist website; I'd stick with standards and stay away from Silverlight.
 
Better off paying someone to develop it for you if you're "confused" about the layout.
 
I do web design on the side for a lot of people and let me just say, if you don't truly know your way around Photoshop and Dreamweaver or the like, then the site is going to look like amateur hour no matter how hard you try. If you want I'd be happy to help you with the graphics if you want to try to learn how to sort the HTML, I Can help with all of it but I'm sure you'd love to play with setting it up and I'm sure you'll be admining the site going forward. PM Me if you'd like help. Good luck!
 
If you're serious about doing this by yourself, realize this won't happen overnight. Website design isn't nearly as easy to just dive into as it used to be. Like others have said, if you need this thing ASAP then I'd suggest hiring it out.

If you still want to do this yourself, try some of the tutorials on http://www.w3schools.com and http://www.html.net/ to get started with the basics. I'd suggest using something other than notepad or word to make your HTML if you're gonna do it by hand. Always been a fan of textpad myself. Look into some bona fide design software if you can't wrap your head around doing it manually, it makes things much easier to visualize. I find it hard to suggest something other than Dreamweaver, really excellent stuff in there. The help files are even direct copies of O'Reilly books, which can pretty much be called geek reference bibles.

While I was taking a visual interface design class at school we used this site for a good starting point pretty frequently: http://www.mezzoblue.com/zengarden/alldesigns/. Look at http://www.sxc.hu/home for some nice free stock images as filler material.

A bit more stylish than your basic CSS layouts usually are, but there is no flash or fancy scripts running behind those to worry about and they can come out looking really nice. Obviously you will need to provide your own images and replace the body text, they just use the same filler text on all of those examples. The layout part is done for you tho, which is half the battle if you've ever tried to do complex layouts in CSS and HTML by hand, it can quickly turn into a nightmare.

Keep at it and don't get down on yourself at the first failure, like most computer hobbies it takes patience and practice but the feeling you get when you get it right is totally worth it. Good luck!
 
Whoa! I didnt realize that this thread was still alive, it had kinda stagnated for awhile. Thanks for the posts (and offer, Tahoe) I will definitely take everything into consideration. I am glad to say that (thanks to some threads I was checking out), I've come up with a design based off of a site template that I am starting to develop.

I'll keep the thread updated with progress as things come along. I don't think that the general design should take too long (since I have my design to work towrards), but rather the little aspects that will require constant tweaking to get it to where I want it to be.
 
Tahoe916 said:
I do web design on the side for a lot of people and let me just say, if you don't truly know your way around Photoshop and Dreamweaver or the like, then the site is going to look like amateur hour no matter how hard you try. If you want I'd be happy to help you with the graphics if you want to try to learn how to sort the HTML, I Can help with all of it but I'm sure you'd love to play with setting it up and I'm sure you'll be admining the site going forward. PM Me if you'd like help. Good luck!
Click to expand...


I don't truly know my way around Photoshop or Dreamweaver and no one has ever said a website I designed look like amateur hour.

I don't use photoshop because GIMP does everything I need, and I don't use Dreamweaver because I know html/css and I hate the way Dreamweaver adds in extra code.

That being said, the best way I can describe of how we design our layouts is by talking to the customer. Write down all of your mom's ideas on what she likes on other websites., and what she would want her website to look like. If possible, get her to draw out a layout. IF she knows what she wants it will make your job much easier.

The problem here is that, and this is just my guess, but you know your way around html/css but you don't have a eye for design. I'm the same way! I know what looks good or doesn't look good, but figuring out WHAT to start with is always the most difficult part.

We offer free website consultation so if/when you get something online I'd be more than happy to give you some input.

Best of luck!
 
Statewide Software said:
I don't truly know my way around Photoshop or Dreamweaver and no one has ever said a website I designed look like amateur hour.

I don't use photoshop because GIMP does everything I need, and I don't use Dreamweaver because I know html/css and I hate the way Dreamweaver adds in extra code.
Click to expand...

Which is why I said:

if you don't truly know your way around Photoshop and Dreamweaver or the like
Click to expand...

Reading comprehension ftw.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top