HTML - Basics - Lesson 1

Before we delve into any actual Webpage code stuff, I thought this would be a good opportunity to float a few ideas past you.

Just to get things straight in your head.

They may make sense or they may not, but here they are.

Make sure your new website has a purpose!

Now this may seem obvious and I hope that it is but it is very important!

Knowing what your website's purpose is, will help you decide on the design...

Which just by chance brings us to the next point.

Plan your website

Let's take this website for instance, Remembering it's purpose is to hopefully teach how to create your own websites, It started out with a design in mind.

It's a very simple layout. It has a navigation section on the left and a content area.

It also has a logo and a title up at the top. A simple sketch of this is enough to get you started.

You can and you will, make improvements to the visual side of things later on.

The important thing is to have a pretty good idea on the layout and what colors you want to use etc.

Don't let the Pretties as I call them, hold you back.

Now for something different!

Some Guidelines (Guidelines are suggestions and not rules set in concrete!)

• Make your website accessible.

No, that doesn't mean it has to have wheelchair access or low doorknobs so the kiddies can reach them and open the door.

It means to have it so people can easily find the information or service that you are offering them.

I'm sure you've seen both kinds. The ones you can just glide through and find everything and those that you sit there scratching your head because you "Got to that page last time" but you just can't find it again.

Now this is something that people will argue about forever...

• Decide on the width of your webpage.

i hope you have noticed that I have deliberately made this 800 pixels wide as people still have 800 x 600 monitors (actually the correct term is Visual Display Unit or VDU).

Update: I've since let these pages fill the entire screen width as an experiment. I'm not certain I like it but we'll wait and see.

Yep, they'll have to scroll up and down, but they won't have to scroll left to right which upsets some people.

Some people think, I'll make my pages wider because "most" people now have bigger screens. But do they?

• Fluid Pages Vs Fixed Width!

This continues on from the above point.

You can make you pages expand to fit the screen and also shrink. It depends upon your website!

I've chosen to make this site have fixed width pages because it suits it. Doesn't it? Well I hope so!

I'll add more to this later...

These are just a few things to consider when embarking upon building a website.

I hope they have helped to get those cogs going...