The Website Improvement Thread

[messyhead]

As a bit of a web designer myself, (self taught over the last 3 years and not professional), I have learnt quite a bit about the important things to consider when designing a site, and the bad points to avoid. I use CSS to design sites rather than tables, and code by hand rather than using an editor. This way I've learnt to understand the code behind a site and it gives me more freedom when I need to change something quickly. I've read a few books, and plenty of online tutorials about how to best use CSS and HTML, and what works well for design.

There has been a lot of talk recently about how good SEO can improve your sites ranking, but I think that having a well coded layout is just as important. Your site should still make sense to people that have CSS and/or images disabled, and to achieve this the structure of your HTMl should be such that a plain html page can still be read and understood. This also makes it accessible to screen readers for partially sighted or blind people.

I realise this forum isn't for web design, but a lot of the members either have websites or are encouraged to create one in order to get referrals. However, often the sites that I see on here could be doing with some design input to improve the look and usability of them.

Therefore, I thought I'd start this thread to allow people to post any helpful resources that they've used, ask questions about any problems they're encountering when designing their sites, and to generally try and encourage people to think more about the design of their site rather than just using an editor to draw out a table and drop some images and text on it. (or maybe I'm on a one man mission to eradicate tables from web design)

It shouldn't be used to ask for site reviews though as there is a whole section for this in the eXceem Extra forums.

So to get the ball rolling, here are some of the resources I used when learning;

Sitepoint Books - The Principles of Beautiful Web Design - SitePoint Books

Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML & CSS - SitePoint Books

HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS, 2nd Edition - SitePoint Books

The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks, 2nd Edition - SitePoint Books

Forums - .net Magazine

Tutorials - Veerle's blog 2.0 - Archives

A List Apart: Articles

W3Schools Online Web Tutorials

Graphic Resources - Stripe Generator - ajax diagonal stripes background designer

Adobe Labs - kuler

Useful programs - NOTEPAD++

NoteTab Text Editors and HTML Editors

TopStyle for Windows - HTML, xHTML, CSS editing in a single program

GIMP - for Windows

NVU

[corky20]

Nice post man!

[bmh16]

Quality post, worthy of extra only tbh!

[sajidibby]

yehh should be in extra mate.

[messyhead]

I thought about posting it in extra, but TBH not everyone that has website to get referrals is an extra member. And I thought that everyone should be able to benefit from some advice.

If the mods feel it should be moved to extra, then fair enough. Only request I would have is that it is sticky'd, and then if anyone has a question about web design they can be directed to it, and join extra in the process.

cheers
Tony

[Funky]

Excellent post, thanks for sharing with us all.

Merry Christmas

[Praj07]

Brilliant thread!! Thanks for contributing mate.

[greenie]

Great post. Very good advice indeed. Just to add to your list of links, here are several sites that are really handy for getting inspirational ideas when thinking about the design of your site.

CSS Beauty | Gallery
CSS Remix
W3C Sites - Web sites created by designers that conform with W3C standards

And if you need something to get you started:
Open Source Web Design - Download free web design templates.

[greenie]

Woops. That posted twice for some reason.

[Adam552]

If you use a Mac then use iWeb =D!!!!

Nearly done my site just buying a domain!!

[greenie]

Coda is also supposed to be very good for the Mac.

Panic - Coda - One-Window Web Development for Mac OS X

[Adam552]

Ooo I'll try that =D!

[will909]

can you buy a domain after youve completed the website or does it have to be before?

[messyhead]

Originally Posted by will909

can you buy a domain after youve completed the website or does it have to be before?

You can buy a domain name at any time.

[will909]

ok thanks, and thanks alot for the thread

[greenie]

Quick question to the more knowledgeable people out there.

I don't want to restrict my site to just UK only visitors. I want to be able to target US visitors as well to be potential people who click on my referral link and get me another green. With this in mind, are there any referral network sites that allow both UK and US users and will accept people who sign up from the US using my link?

[owenroberts]

Originally Posted by greenie

Quick question to the more knowledgeable people out there.

I don't want to restrict my site to just UK only visitors. I want to be able to target US visitors as well to be potential people who click on my referral link and get me another green. With this in mind, are there any referral network sites that allow both UK and US users and will accept people who sign up from the US using my link?

Both Real-Incentives and Freepay accept US and UK sign-ups. You can also use Xpango, but tbh I wouldn't recommend them as they are rather slow..............

[the_icks]

thanks for this.... I actually thanked for the idea back in december, will have to give rep now as I am now actually going to use the links!!

Quick question... does aserver side 'include' allow itself to be used over more than one domain, or is it domain specific. I have a couple of domains/websites in the pipeline but they have a lot of common elements.

[messyhead]

Originally Posted by the_icks

Quick question... does aserver side 'include' allow itself to be used over more than one domain, or is it domain specific. I have a couple of domains/websites in the pipeline but they have a lot of common elements.

Includes are domain specific as far as I know.

[messyhead]

Found this list of helpful reference sheets for HTML, CSS, PHP and many more. They're available in PDF or as a PNG file.

Cheat Sheets - ILoveJackDaniels.com