To most people the process of building a web site remains
somewhat of a mystery. This confusion probably stems
from the fact that there is a cornucopia of web sites
on the Internet. Even with wide variety of sites, every
single one can be divided into two sections: front-end
and back-end.
The front-end is the first thing that it is designed.
It encompasses the look and feel of a web site. This
is probably the most established part of the web site
production process. Design has been around since Guttenberg
printed his first bible. Much of what has been used
in print media (especially art magazines) has transferred
to the web.
Most well thought out web sites start off with sketches
on paper. We like using the big huge box of crayons,
the one with the crayon sharpener built in. Most of
the colors in the "big box" are pleasing
to the eye and are web friendly. If you use begin
paying attention to sites you'll notice that only
a few colors are actually used, 256 to be exact. Only
about 100 of those won't give you a headache when
you look at them. On request we will give these early
designs to a client that wants to control the look
and feel of their site. The site, of course, never
ends up looking like the early designs. The same idea
and concept is there but because of restrictions colors
and whole images are lost.
This brings us to the next part of the front-end,
the actual site creation. This is what many people
view as the most important, which is what separates
a professional looking site from an amateur one.
The images are created using products from across
the board. Mainly, designers stick to industry standards
like Photoshop and Illustrator. After getting the
basic image in terms of proportions and size the designer
should create the static HTML page.
This is the basic page you would see if you viewed
the page source. This is one of the most rewarding,
most hated and most tedious part of the web design
process. Each browser displays a page differently.
Since most users either use Internet Explorer 4+ or
Netscape 4.5 we cater to those two. Sometimes we build
a different site for each, trying to maintain the
same layout.
That concludes the front-end section. Personal sites
and some small business sites stop here. While this
maybe acceptable today, tomorrow any web site hoping
to attract and keep visitors is going to have a strong
back-end.
There are many sites and website designers that offer
premade templates, these have the entire graphical
layout that a page needs.
For those with little or no experience with website
design software, templates have quickly become a practical
solution to professional website design. Most of the
top end sites offer a huge selection of very impressive,
easy-to-edit website templates. All you have to do
is check your email containing the link to download
the .zip file. The html in these templates is compatible
with Adobe GoLive, Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft
Frontpage. The major advantage is the price, they
run anywhere from $20 to $70. Another great advantage
is you don't have to hire a web designer, who usually
takes 1 to 2 weeks to produce a page of such high
quality. Webmasters, either novice or expert, can
easily save thousands of dollars on design fees by
using website templates.
There are also some exception sites, such as http://www.web-site-templates.org
that provide packages of templates at one price, instead
of providing a different price for each template.
About the author:
Alexandru Marias is an IT student mentaining software
sites like: www.amicutilities.com,www.downloadsplaza.com,
www.fungamesplaza.com, www.bluedownloads.com
