My web page sucks ass - I need advice.
 

I was recently asked by my boss to make a web page.
I did a course years ago which told me the basics - HTML, frontpage & I can use photoshop.
Thing is, when I put together a page it looks like shit, It works ok but it looks (compared to the stuff out there) like it was done by a 5yr old & I dont know what im doing wrong. Y'know when a picture loads in a webpage & its all cut up in frames & it looks all cool & professional when its done. How the fuck do i do that????
Could I rape another website & change the words etc?
Im really in a bind here so if anybody can help Id be really greatfull.
Thanks.

Aint it great TFP is back.

If you want to chop up a photo and load it in little pieces on the same page:

Lets pretend you have a 1000x1000 pixel image and you want it to load in 4 pieces:

1) Get a photo editor, and cut the image into four separate, and equal sized pieces.

2) In HTML, or WYSIWIG, make a table that has 2 rows, 2 columns.

3) Make the width of the table 1000 pixels, and the height of the table 1000 pixels

4) Make each TR tag set to 250 pixels, and make each TD tag to 250 pixels.

5) Set padding, margins, and frame borders to Zero

6) Between each TD and /TD tag start putting in your chopped up image. In order, you put in the Top Left piece, then Top Right, Bottom Left, then Bottom Right. Each piece goes in a separate TD /TD pair.

7) Save Reload

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ALTERNATIVES

You can also look for "free web templates" on google or another search engine. Templates are models you build your site on. Someone designs the site, you add the content. It is a really good way to learn HTML, becaue it is a full site and you can edit it and customize it to the way you want it.

Stealing another sites layout - You can do it, but don't make an exact copy. Don't do corporate sites. Make sure you change it in a major way.

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POSTING

If you like, you can post a link to the html (it doesn't have to be complete, just have it posted on a free server or the companies site). There are enough webmasters on this site that you will get plenty of help and design ideas :)

:D good luck

Yeah surely if you post a link we can help you out with ideas :D

Youz guys are the bestest!
Im gonna go searching for templates right now.
The thing about pics some websites are broken into 30+ pieces y'know?
How do I cut one up like that? & why would I want to?
Its not even near posting but when I do all your help would be great, thanks alot meanSpleen & fracturedmind.
BTW, keep the tips coming.

You can shape it better if its cut up, and turn different pieces into different links (if they have words for instance), also, you can use graphics for backgrounds in tables, so if you cut up a nice layout you make in a graphic program you can duplicate it in your site even if you have to move stuff around it should look nice, not sure if that makes sense.

By the way is this a static site for like, a catalog of some sort? Or will you be updating it often with news / new products / or whatever it is you do?

Just a word of warning here. I used frontpage and a template for a site at work, and now I severly regret it. I have since learned php and mysql, and wish I had not used frontpage. Anytime they want the site updated, I have to do it manually, it's a real hassle. Also, if you ever try to use php in frontpage, it will jack up your code. Frontpage tries to fix place it thinks you have made mistakes in the html. I'm guessing it does this with other code also.

If you didn't use FP, I would just suggest looking at a bunch of sites you like and drawing up an outline for your site. Then create the graphics and start writing it.

Good luck to you in whatever route you take. ;)

Its for an English school here in Madrid, It's gotta be in two languages (duplicate it, right? no probs) & also I gotta do a thing where each student can log in or something & get specific info.
I dont have all the info yet but I think the rest is gonna be the normal crap you get on a webpage.
Whats a static site??

Post removed.

Cool links, didn't know photoshop could do vectors!

the most impotant for a good site is content. Stop trying to make it look like the greatest thing ever. Put some good meat in ti, then worry about the other parts.

Totally, Agree w/you 1000%. thing is the content isnt my problem, My boss' gonna deal with that so all i gotta do is learn how to do make um, an internet web page for aah pu-t-ting on the internet.:confused:

Why you would chop up an image:

People on slow connections have hard time downloading huge images. When it is chopped up, pieces are loaded separately, and a person can get a few pieces up and know what is going on. It is easier to down load ten, 100KB images than one, 1000KB image. :)

Or...you could just try not to use 1MB images. Compression and thumbnails are your friends.

For a while, I would see a lot of pages out there that were done in Fireworks...this may be what you have seen. When exporting a sliced image into images and HTML, Fireworks would create elaborate tables and depending on how many hot spots, rollovers, image maps, etc... you used, you could end up with images cut up into at least 30 pieces, some many more.

The best thing you can do is make sure you have your images optimized for the web...if you can control the filesize of your pics, you're much better off then trying to break them up into tables.

There are very few instances that I've ever had to deal with in which images had to remain such high resolution that the filesize was out of control. If you do come across this situation, you can usually link to that image on its own page.

As far as "raping" another website...very very unprofessional. Plus, since this is a commercial site, your boss will be the one to deal with the consequences, and if he/she's paid you to create a site, he/she will not be happy.

Post the link to your site...we'll all give you a hand. We'll make you look like a web designer in no time!

MY personal favorite webpage designer has to be dreamweaver... although I am starting to prefer typing it all out manually.

PHP is awesome. It is the way to go for most pages if you ask me.
SQL... I don't know that much about this yet.

Well if you can give us more to look at then I think that we can help you more :)

Thanks a million Y'all
Im gonna get the content offa my boss on the morrow & start putting something together on Geocities(?).
Im begining to think I can actually do this.
I owe all a y'all favs, Ill put you on the list, ok?

P.s. Keep the tips coming.

I would recommend looking at the <a href="http://www.bluerobot.com/web/layouts/">BlueRobot.com</a>
layouts for pages. They are completely free to steal, modify, and use. I am not sure if this will exactly fit your needs, but they are easy to modify (you do need to learn a little about CSS (cascading style sheets), but it is fairly straight forward and you probably could figure it out by modifying the code a little and reloading the page. Hope this helps.

For a good HTML/CSS reference I would recommend W3Schools

Even if you already know what you are doing, the tag/attribute lookup tables are very handy if you know what you want, but cant remember it exactly.

Plus it has a 'Try-out' section where you can type code in one frame, click a button and have it appear in a frame next to the code. Very handy for quickly testing Javascript or CSS.


If you're serious about making a decent (dynamic) page then I also recommend learning PHP and SQL (specifically MySQL)
Get Apache 2, PHP 4 and MySQL 2.23 (plus the relevant online/dowloadable Manuals) and set up a localhost on your own pc and start playing about.
You can make some complex looking dynamic pages with very simple code.

Of course then theres not just PHP, theres Perl, ASP, and JSP to name a few. And theres just as many other free SQL and HTTP servers as well, go with whatever suits you best.

The first thing you should do before creating anything but the simplest of web pages, is planning. Know what kind of content will be on the page, and create a visual, navigation and structural design for it first.

The structural design is probably the hardest part. Break up the content into logical groups, and decide how each group fits in with the others.

The navigation design will flow logically from the structural design. Each major content group might get its own section of the site, with a global navigation bar giving quick access to each section, no matter where you are.

And finally, the visual design also leads off from the navigation design. You need to decide roughly which elements will be on a page (masthead/logo, navigation bar, banner ads, main content area, textual navigation, etc.). You also have to decide how much space each element will take up. Finally, you should do a few mockups in Photoshop or your favorite image-editing and layout program.

If you do all that, the process of creating the actual web page/site will be a piece of cake.

if you can get your hands on a copy of Dreamweaver, they have several templates for simple sites that you can modify and they look decent. only problem with modifying the templates is that you need fireworks and to figure your way around it.

oh... and don't use geocities...
find a free host, there are a ton of them out there and then point your domain name to it.