Best layout scheme for website please ?

[digmen1]

Hi Guys

I am teaching myself to design a couple of web sites.

They will be small to start with and feature a few pics on each page that will link to other pages.

I am using Dreamweaver and am studying a tutorial on it.

What do you guys think is the best way (modern practice) of designing a web site ?

Ie Frames, Tables, Cascading Style Sheets, Database ? I get confused by all these different terms.

The tutorial tells you how to set up each system, but not which one is best for different applications.

I would like to try to start off on a good layout system so that I do not have to re-design the whole thing later on.

regards

Digby
NZ

[Barbarossa]

I actually like frames, but they are frowned upon at the moment :dabs:

Frames make it harder to navigate using the forward and backward buttons on the browser.

Start off with tables in terms of layout. Cascading Style Sheets are powerful, and good to use, but they could be a bit overwhelming for a "novice", but if you're serious about doing things properly, I'd say look at those too.

Also, the thing to think about when you're designing the page layout, is that not everyone has the same browser as you, and not everyone has the window size set up the same as you.

[superguy]

user dreamweaver, download the webpage from the internet and do some researching.

[digmen1]

user dreamweaver, download the webpage from the internet and do some researching.

What web page do you mean for me to downlaod ?

The reason I asked this question is the main reason people use forums !

That is to get other peoples ideas and suggestions.

Yes I could study 50 web pages, but I wanted to ask some of the experts on here "that have been there and done that".

I would help you on any subject if I was able to !

I wanted to know what is the best styel ofsetting up websites these days ?

Frames, Left Hand Navigation, Top ? Right Hand ? Tables etc etc

Regards

Digby

[Manouweb]

Hello digmen1,

Here are some tips:
- You shouldn't use Frames because search engines like Google, Windows Live and the other don't like them at all, thus you won't be as well referenced on the internet as you would have been if you hadn't frames
- Use tables or, better, Cascading Style Sheets, to create your website layout (check out that website http://www.devguru.com/technologies/css2/8044.asp for all the existing properties).
- You can use a database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc) if you need to store persistent data, like user account information or news
In order to access your database, you need to use a scripting language which supports it (ASP.NET, PHP, etc) which are executed server-side. Please refer to the corresponding websites in order to learn the existing methods and properties.
Last but not least, when you've finished your work, validate your webpages on the W3C Website (XHTML 1.0 Strict is the best at the moment).

Hope that helped!

Good luck ;)

[goobieghoulash]

hand written code, by with simple frame scripts- keep it simple

[digmen1]

Thanks guys,

That is exactly the sort of information and help I was looking for.

Kind regards

Digby

[m.r.davies]

depends what you are doing, but tables are considered out dated now

its all DIV and SPAN and use CSS classes to style them
get yourself and tutorial video, Lynda.com training has a good CSS one out

[bgiovand]

http://www.w3schools.com/.

Do some tutorials. Depending on how serious you are about getting into it, I would recommend getting some books about CSS and XHTML. It’s extremely handy to have references, code examples, and general coding principles that you can easily refer to.

I think its important to understand, from the beginning, the idea of separating content from style. Xhtml and CSS standards will help you adhere to that principle. So learn them, and stick to them.

Tables and frames, although they may initially seem easier to understand will leave you with cluttered, outdated and error prone code.

There are people that swear by Dreamweaver, but if you really want to learn how to code I would recommend using a text editing program.

Also there’s nothing wrong with downloading someone else’s webpage and picking it apart. Play with it, change some CSS properties and see what happens.

[digmen1]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys,

Very helpful !

Regards

Digby

[kazaa2002]

Hi Digby,
I agree with bgiovand, his comments and suggestions are meaningful.
You should get a couple of books on this subject....in the mean time
here are some links on tutorials,some templates,suggested reading and some lists/index for other relative sites on css and xhtml .

Alsacreations, creating websites with CSS and XHTML (http://tutorials.alsacreations.com/)
Cascading Style Sheets (http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/)
HTML and CSS Tutorials, References, and Articles | HTML Dog (http://www.htmldog.com/)
World Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3.org/)
Free Web Templates: XHTML+CSS Templates for Building Web Pages (http://webdesign.about.com/od/websitetemplates/a/bl_layouts.htm)
Accessible Header Images With CSS And XHTML [CSS Tutorials] (http://www.sitepoint.com/article/header-images-css-xhtml)
Free Css Templates (http://www.free-css-templates.com/)
Web Coding: HTML, CSS, XHTML, XML (http://www.interleaves.org/%7Erteeter/webcoding.html)
From XHTML/CSS to WordPress | The undersigned (http://theundersigned.net/2006/05/from-xhtmlcss-to-wordpress/)
Open Source Templates | Free CSS and XHTML Website Templates (http://www.opensourcetemplates.org/)
HTML XHTML CSS Book (http://www.cookwood.com/html6ed/extras/)
HTML Tutorial, HTML Tips, XHTML, CSS Tutorials, Photoshop, Articles Tips, Web Design, Web Site Tips - HTML Tutorials, CSS Tutorials and Tips, (http://websitetips.com/articles/)Markup Tutorials - HTML & CSS tutorials (http://www.markuptutorials.com/)Photoshop Tutorials, Website Tips, Websitetips.com (http://websitetips.com/articles/)
WeLoveCSS - XHTML/CSS Forum for beginners to advancers - Powered by vBulletin (http://welovecss.com/)

[RTFM]

Not exactly a layout tip, but a search engine tip (since someone talked before about Google not liking frames):

If you're looking to get search engines to index your site better, use mod_rewrite for the URLs, makes them more readable and easier to index.