Three Simple Steps To Designing Your Website

Designing a website is not that difficult and it is actually fun! I have been teaching website design for a couple of years and my students are thrilled with exploring this creative outlet. Some of learning web site design for fun while most of the are quite serious about starting an Internet business.

In order to get starting creating you web page, I would recommend that you first think about the goal of your website and what you want to accomplish. I know it is difficult to take the time upfront to think about such mundane things like purpose. Believe me, this will save you time in the long run. (This topic is covered in another article.)

The next step is to learn HTML. I know you are going to cringe at this recommendation. But hold on. It really is fairly simple to learn. This is one of the languages used to create a website. Your browser then interprets the language and displays what was written. It will just take a couple of hours of your time. (I have some great resources listed that will help you learn HTML is less than two hours!)

HTML is just a simple language used to tell a browser what a website looks like. Most of us have had some type of language in high school. Learning Spanish or French is much more difficult than learning Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML)!

One of the things I love about HTML is it is very logical and follows a set of simple rules. Each task you want performed has a certain tag. In that tag you can usually specify some of the attributes of the tag. For instance, in the font tag you can tell the browser what style of of font, the size, and the color you want. If you don't get what you want, you look at the rules and find out which one you broke. Fix the error and you will get your desired look.

I'm afraid that I digress. (I have written an ebook on HTML and have several resources available for you on my website.) After you learn HTML, I recommend that you use an editor to actually make your website. Using an editor is like creating a Microsoft Word document. It is a WYSIWYG format - What You See Is What You Get. The editor makes designing a web page extremely easy.

You may be asking, "Then why learn HTML?" That is a valid question. Knowing HTML has saved me hours of time. Once you learn HTML you will find yourself fixing problems, diagnosing error by looking at the code. If you learn the HTML first then you will know it and have it at you disposal any time you need it.

Back to editors. There are many HTML editors. The most popular are Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft Frontpage. I have used both and like both. There are also several free editors. The one I use in my classes is NVu. It is a great editor and my students have picked it up quickly. If you are going to create a lot of websites, then I would recommend investing in Dreamweaver or Frontpage.

There are several different web page builders available with your hosting. These are nice to get started quickly. However, you will find that there are severe limitations. I recommend that you not go this route. You will save time in the long run.

There you have it - three easy steps to designing your website!

Step 1: Purpose

Step 2: Learn HTML

Step 3: Design a website with an editor

You can learn this on your own but I recommend: take a class, learn it fast, be online in no time!