Beginners webdesign

Hi there,

Im a complete beginner when it comes to webdesign. I want to build my own website - a photography website - and would appreciate some help.

I want the website to look smart and modern and would like as well to incorporate some flash animations (the kind of having some of my pictures switching automaticaly).
I would like the website to be simple to navigate, having the different galleries at reach and a central window where the selected photos would be displayed.

Being a complete beginner the help I would appreciate is if you guys could tells me 1st) what documentation should I start reading in order to understand better how a website design works? 2nd) direct me to some good tutorials that show step by step how to create some good looks to such a webpage. 3rd) any other things you think would be important for me to know in advance when designing the website.

Thank you.

Have you got some web space already? Many hosts offer free goodies like site constructors and photo gallery software.

If you really want to do your own I think the best thing to do is find a site you like the look of and copy its design as a starting point.

On the tutorial side I'd scroogle for "web site build tutorial" and choose one you can understand.

http://www.w3schools.com is a good starting place

I agree with you on this, i have no clue coding and use template software bundled with my web host. I use web album generator for my thumbnail galleries. You make the gallery and upload the whole folder to your ftp site and its sorted.

For the software http://www.ornj.net/

The results http://www.dustysworld.net/photogallery/

The site i made using template software bundled in http://www.raybezzinacarrentals.com/

The downside is getting an added domain to work with templates. Files and folders have to be altered and it is hard work. I have not done this but others who are far more technical than me have changed them for me and say its a bit of a dog to do, that's using click be.

Before you buy your web space find out how easy it would be to point a domain to the template software. If you don't use an add on domain and add it to your main domain directory, your have no problems and all you need do is name it and it will add its self to your domain.

Example www.dusty.com

make the template site and name it world. It will show up as www.dusty.com/world

Tiago,

special offer for U dude. Free webspace with MySQL and PHP support and 1GB space for your website + e-mail address in your own domain (ex. [email protected]) + webstats and ftp access.... if you want it ... go to canteen and bring me a coffe (large with milk and sugar) and I will get this sorted for you

Regarding website design. It depends what you would like to put on your website. If that will be just photos, you can build photo gallery on Coppermine. I would recommend to create website using Joomla CMS with flash photo gallery plugin.

As JonathanHodd said in his reply, W3 schools is the best place to start. To build the type of site you want, you will need a good grasp of HTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL. If you're up for a challenge, then go for it. If not, your web hosting may offer a package with that can provide you with a pre-made template.

Cheers!

Hi

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Yes i have confirm solve your question about flash animation of website for looking smart and modern.

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@technoblue - If tiagomenezes was looking for someone to build the site, imagine he would have said so. BTW if you are posting in an overseas forum for any reason, I always find Google translate a help.

@tiagomenezes - Learning to build and run your own site is a great idea which you won't regret but you have to accept the need to put in time. There are site builders of various forms, although learning basic HTML/CSS will give you more independence/control.

Plenty of good suggestions so far, although as old fashioned as this seems, can be useful to buy a good book. There's one called HTML, XHTML & CSS by Elisabeth Castro that is pretty good for your situation, on Amazon, they will probably then fish up alternatives if you want to look at them.

Would also recommend you spend time reading all you can on search engines and indexing. As an example, for a photographer's site you will probably want the images indexed but that might not happen if you use a flash gallery. Search engines can have quite a few problems with flash. Also, building flash sites in a way that works at all with search is quite an art, one you might want to bypass at present.

There are plenty of free XHTML/CSS template sites and others offering similarly built galleries. You might take a look atStu Nicholls site. None of this is as complex as seems the case at first glance. Be prepared to spend a couple of months learning how to build a good site and that will serve you well.

The original post was made 18 months ago - and the spammer technoblue has put this topic near the top just to promote his/her services.

I am surprised that one of the mods hasn't jumped on the spam yet. If I knew how to report it, I would!