10 Web Design Tips For Novice Webmasters

For anyone new to web design, working out how to develop a website that will look sufficiently professional can be daunting. What follows are ten useful tips to assist the new webmaster, particularly if he does not have access to sophisticated software.

Tip #1
Hand draw a design grid first for all but the most simple designs. Use this as the design blueprint when building the page. Consider how much text will need to go into each section and design accordingly.

Tip #2
Using the above blueprint, start by building a table with, if necessary, some cells that span more than one row or column using the colspan and rowspan commands. It can help to make the top and bottom rows span all of the columns.

Tip #3
Non-copyright clipart, widely available online, can be used for page illustrations and as part of the website logo and graphics. Sophisticated image manipulation software for more interesting graphics can help, but even basic word-processing software can be used to, for example, place text over images. These images can then be capiched to produce a new image for website design purposes. Capiche software is available free online.

Tip #4
The cells of spreadsheet software can be used to produce uniform-sized images that can be used as breadcrumb or other links. They can also be used to produce, for example, different font colors, for mouseover effects.

Tip #5
Numerous free webpage templates are available online, as are free HTML editors such as Kompozer. These render site building from scratch unnecessary where an original look is not essential.

Tip #6
Use of web pages with the .shtml extension can share HTML code from a common text file which facilitates making later changes. Often breadcrumb links and graphics shared by numerous pages are coded in this way. It has the advantage that if links change, only one file needs to be updated.

Tip #7
Use different style specifications in the head or a cascading style sheet to give your site a unique look. Have a look at the HTML styles coding of some other professional websites to get some ideas. Free webpage templates often have interesting styles in their heads that you could modify for your purposes.

Tip #8
When a new page is to be added in the future, some webmasters copy an existing page, rename it and then edit that page for the new content. The problem with this is that excessive and unnecessary editing can leave numerous HTML errors which reduces spidering efficiency and may lead to problems with the way the page displays. For this reason a template page that simply needs content added, rather than sections deleted first, should be used to create new pages.

Tip #9
The webmaster should check the page layout on all the leading browsers before uploading the site. These include Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox and Google Chrome. Some HTML adjustments are often needed. Check the effects of changing the browsers’ font display sizes.

Tip #10
Use any of numerous dedicated free websites to check page HTML coding. They will often identify numerous code errors for action.

While the above list is far from exhaustive, these pointers should assist the new webmaster to come as close as possible to developing a professional-looking website which is ready for the next and critical part which is to actually attract web traffic to it.

By: Donald MacKenzie

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Donald MacKenzie is a Business Consultant and Affiliate Marketing Expert. He wrote the Successful Affiliates Guide and runs several affiliate websites including for car insurance and others to compare pet insurance and compare home insurance.