Web Design - Some Quick Tips To Get Started

Web design can be quite a daunting prospect if you are new to the Internet. You would like to create your own site but have no idea where to start. Html? Photoshop? Fireworks? FrontPage? Dreamweaver?
This article/tutorial will give you some tips and hints on how to get started with web design - and which shortcuts to take!
~ Tip 1: Learn HTML ~I can hear you groan. I said I was going to give you some shortcuts, now I suggest you learn HTML! Unfortunately there is no way around it. Even if you make use to the shortcuts to web design that I am going to suggest, learning HTML will still be the best investment that you can make. It is really not that difficult and it will greatly aid in your understanding of web design.
A really good place for online tutorials on HTML can be found here: http://www.w3schools.com/html/
Depending on your enthusiasm and level of technical skill I would also suggest that you learn a bit about CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Cascading style sheets can assist you tremendously with controlling the layout, colors and images on your web page. You can also find good CSS tutorials on the w3schools website.
~ Tip 2: Use a web template for web design ~Now this is really a shortcut to web design! I suggest that you create your first website by making use of a web template. There are lots of commercial templates available, and frankly, they are beautiful, but I am going to give you some hints on where to find free web templates. Most people would think that searching for 'free web templates' in Google would be the most obvious way of doing it - but I suggest that you rather search for 'open source web templates'.
Here are three sources with open source (basically - free to use) web templates. The advantage of these templates is that they are normally well designed and will also teach you good web design principles (as opposed to most of the commercial templates which, while they are undeniably beautiful to look at, they are normally not built making use of good web design principles).
My favorite Open Source web design site is http://www.oswd.orgThis site has over a 1600 free designs to choose from. Download any design and build your site! Most of these designs make use of CSS as well which is why it is a good idea to learn CSS.
Another site with lots of free template designs is http://www.daydreamgraphics.comI suggest that if you are just starting out you stick with the designs made with tables. These are the easiest to manipulate and use. The templates on Daydreamgraphics are not for everyone - they are mostly geared towards a young funky look, so if you are looking for a design that you can use for your business or company, you might do better to rather select a design from OSWD, but if you are looking at setting up a personal website, a hobby site or a site related to music or entertainment, these designs will work very well.
~ Tip 3: Use Wordpress or Joomla to create your site ~This option is really by far the best way to create your website in the long term. Theoretically you do not need to know HTML and CSS to create and modify your site but in practice it pays off to learn these skills since it will help you master these tools just so much faster.
The steps to creating your website using these tools are as follows:
1. Log into your CPanel control panel (if you are not using a host that provides you with a CPanel control panel and Fantastico scripts - frankly, my only advice is to change to one that does!)
2. Select Fantastico from the control panel
3. Select either Wordpress or Joomla from the menu on the left.
4. Install Wordpress or Joomla in the root folder. You will have to select an administrator username and password to access the admin side of your site.
Log into the admin backend (normally /wp-admin for Wordpress and /administrator for Joomla). There are lots of free Wordpress tutorials available - just do a Google search for 'free Wordpress tutorials' and to get started in Joomla, do a search for 'how to use Joomla'.

Create a High-Quality Website - Quickly!

For any business, big or small, a high-quality website is the key to success. But what if you are strapped for time (or money) and need to build a website that will attract customers to your site, keep them there, and have them coming back for more? You might think your only option is to invest a good amount of money into hiring a professional web designer to create that perfect website - but what if there was another way? Luckily there is an easier, more affordable way to make a professional website without the professional price tag.
Forget the designer, and forget spending endless hours struggling to learn HTML or trying to make that WYSIWYG application do what you want. Instead, take advantage of the resources that are out there for businesses just like you.
First, look for a company that sells inexpensive website templates. You should be able to find professionally designed templates in the range of $20-$40 for non-copyrighted templates (copyrighted templates that won’t be resold to anyone else after you make the purchase are slightly more expensive, but still cost much less than hiring a web designer). This is the most important initial step to take because the template will be the backbone of your new website. Essentially, a template is a ready-to-go designed site that you can download to your computer and use for your professional purposes. You can choose from many different designs, no matter where you decide to purchase a template, and can view all the choices in a gallery displaying the different template designs. This is the quickest, easiest, most inexpensive way to get started. One such website template company I found that offers reasonably priced, quality templates is http://templatedogma.com/.
Now that you have the basis for your site, you need to make it unique. You have to inject the template with content, a logo, graphics, animation and pictures - whatever you think necessary to create a professional-looking website. With the template ready at hand, this next step in the process is made much easier.
Website templates are wonderful to work with because your site is kept consistent. This means that every page will have a matching header, graphics and theme. And as time goes by, it is just as easy to update the site as it is to create it in the first place. If you need to add more content, or fresh text, change your contact information or anything else that isn’t static, a simple HTML editor will do the trick.
Getting Started
Now that you have the template and customized it with your company’s unique content and imagery, it’s time to set up everything else you need to get your site online and bringing in paying customers.
Domain name: Most people are already aware that you need a unique domain name where people can find your site. Your domain name might be the name of your company "nameofcompany.com" or it might be something easy to remember related to your business. Whatever you choose, make the title of your site match the domain name. This is how visitors will easily remember the address of your site even if they forget to bookmark it.
If you have conducted keyword research, many experts recommend that you use the most profitable keyword as your domain name as this will help you rank higher in the search engines for that particular keyword. A well-chosen domain name does not take a long time to envision, and is a relatively easy procedure, but it is well worth the small amount of effort required. If you choose a domain name that clearly states the purpose of your site people will know exactly what they can expect when they visit.
Domain names can be up to 63 characters, but as with everything on the web, shorter is better. When you write content keep the text short, sweet and to the point - when you come up with a domain name, do the same thing. If your domain name is available (this must be checked because someone might have already come up with the same brilliant idea as you!) all you have to do at this point is purchase the domain name. It’s easy to find a company that sells inexpensive domain names - competition is fierce and as a result domain prices are extremely low.
Hosting: You must do more than just register a domain name to finish building your site - you must also choose a hosting company. A hosting company is the entity that holds your website on its servers and keeps it running 24/7 online. You have to pay a monthly hosting fee for this service, but again, competition between providers is stiff so it is possible to find a reliable hosting service with tons of features, benefits and a responsive customer service team for a decent price. And of course, a good web hosting company will make it simple for you to upload and update your site, no matter what type of business you have set up.
When choosing a specific hosting package, choose one that suits the needs of your website best. Ensure that an adequate amount of disk space is available for your exclusive usage and the bandwidth provided will be enough to handle the amount of traffic you expect your site to generate. If you purchase a hosting package that includes FTP access (File Transfer Protocol) it can’t get any easier to transfer documents from your hard drive to the hosting server.
It’s easy to see that if you start with a website template and go from there, building a high-quality website in a short amount of time is quite an easy task. Templates allow you to cut down the time it normally takes to begin creating a website without cutting corners.

Five effective ways of making money out of web templates

Five effective ways of making money out of web templates
Web templates are the in-thing now-a-days and most of them are selling like hot cakes resulting into huge profits for web template providers. You too can cash-in on this web template craze and make money. Discussed in this article are five effective ways of making money out of web templates.
Five effective ways to make money out of web templates
1.) Creating turnkey pages from web templates
Turnkey websites are the hottest resource on the internet. If you are a web designer, web hosting company or simply own a website you can make good money by creating turnkey websites from readymade web templates.
What are turn key websites?
Turnkey websites are completely functional websites having relevant content, domain names and hosting. Depending on the type, turnkey websites can have shopping carts, interactive scripts, graphics forms, forums, live chats etc. All that a buyer needs to do is buy the website and he is ready to do business.
What you need to do?
In order to set up a turn key website business, you need to do the following;
1) Purchase professional looking web templates with resell rights or join a template membership program
2.) Modify the web templates by adding relevant content, links, images and graphics
3.) Purchase domain names and hosting accounts
4) Host the completed web templates as websites
5) Advertise/promote your websites for sale/rent by SEO and Email marketing
What will be your ROI?You ROI Will surely be very high. This is because of the fact that the retail value of turnkey websites is around $200 - $500 per website and can also go higher based on the website quality. You can also go for renting your websites instead of selling them. As you will be purchasing web-templates for a cheaper cost your ROI will be higher. The best way to go about it is by joining membership programs that will give you access to a host of http://www.buytemplates.netweb templates at a low one time cost. Also make sure to host your sites with hosting service providers who offer unlimited domain name hosting. One good example of a turnkey website service is ready-set-web.com. 2.) Joining an affiliate program Affiliate programs are quite popular over the net. If you have a well ranking website with a good traffic margin then you can very well join an affiliate program offered by many if not all web template providers. All that you need to do is promote their templates and you can make easy money in the form of commissions.What you need to do?In order to join an affiliate program you need to register yourself for the program. As soon as the registration process is over you will receive a link or banner advert that you can place on your website at strategic places. In case your website visitor clicks the banner and makes the purchase you get a part of the commission. Commissions can range from 2% to 10% of the actual sales proceeds. Most companies use tracking software programs or individual services like clicksgalore, commission junction etc. for tracking sales.
Some good web template providers who offer affiliate programs are buytemplates.net, templatehunter.com, templatemagic.net and webzonetemplates.com Before joining an affiliate program make sure that the template provider offers allied/complimentary services like web hosting, search engine optimization, content insertion, domain name registration, template customization etc. In fact the more the complimentary services offered the better will be your returns.
3.) Reselling/redistributing web templates
If you own a website that attracts good traffic or is likely to attract traffic in the future, you can go for purchasing templates as a bulk and reselling them. To get redistribution rights all that you need to do is purchase reseller templates that many web template providers offer today. Some good web template vendors who offer reseller templates are http://www.buytemplates.net , http://www.templatemagic.net and freewebsitetemplates.com. Purchasing reseller templates on your own and reselling them can fetch you more returns than by joining an affiliate program.
What you need to do?
All that you need to do is purchase web templates that come with resell rights. You can then modify the templates and sell them to potential customers with non-exclusive rights. You certainly need not be a html pro to start this business; instead you can partner with template providers who offer related services like template customization, hosting, SEO etc. and earn good commissions by referring your customers to them. 4.) Joining Referral based programs
Referral programs are very unlike affiliate programs in the sense that they do not involve you to place links or banner ads on your site. This is basically a word of mouth program and requires you to promote products by word-of-mouth. In case a customer referred by you joins a membership program or buys a web template and refers your name in the referral section, you get a commission. But such referral programs are offered by very few template vendors today.
5.) Web designing with web templates
If you are a professional web designer you can earn higher returns by making use of web templates. Firstly you can satisfy your clients with the speed at which you complete the work and at the same time get more ROI as the readymade website templates are way cheap. All that you need to do is buy exclusive templates and resell them after making modifications. One way to go about it is by joining membership programs offered by web template providers. This will give you access to a host of web templates at a one time cost. Most web designers can almost double their profits, take care of multiple projects and also retain customers by making use of this technique. Also web designers can attract new customers by lowering their service charges.
So what if you can’t make web templates on your own, you can still cash in on web templates by making use of these sales techniques.

Compare And Merge Tools Will Help To Change Blog Template

Various compare tools designed to help businesses and individuals to get valuable information out of two versions of the same document. Software designers use compare utilities to check the code, highlight changes and write version info. Legal professionals use compare tools to analyze changes made within documents. Educators can compare student job against original key, quality assurance specialists use compare and merge tools to learn more about changes.

There are a number of compare tools, some are freeware, other very expensive focused on a very specific task. The key difference between tools is what kind of documents can compare tool handle and in what way.

Today most web tasks are about web-mastering. People need to design web-pages, people need to design templates for their blogs, people need to maintain their home page up-to-date and process various changes. The most important is help that compare tools can provide for php and htm updating and spam fighting. Actually, we face these tasks constantly, as most on-line solutions that we install on our web-sites need to be updated regularly.

There might be several reasons, why it is necessary to update my web-site or php files of my blog. The first, the bad one -- to fight spam. These who run web-site, blog or forum know about spam messages, broken down php scripts and so on. The second reason is regular web-site update.

So what the problem is? Why not just download updated files and install them into the blog? Because, I'm sure, a lot of modifications, updates, patches, tweaks and self-made modifications were processed. When it's time to update blog or forum php list it seems to be tool hard to remember about all changes that were made. Is there a solution? Sure, use any compare and merge tool to find and apply changes that were made.

Follow the simple step-by-step guide. Get the copy of old files with all changes that you have made before. Then get the copy of new files, suggested by author of your blog, forum or cms engine. Then use some compare tool to find changes that were made. If you remember what files you have modified then you can open and compare two versions to each other. Find the changes that you have made and apply them to the newer version. Upload updated files to your web-site.

Another important aspect is controlling the changes that were made by authors of software. Running compare tool for two versions of on-line blog or forum can give you an idea about what changes were made. Does it worth installing update, how will it affect your web-site and so on.

And finally, my favorite application of compare and tools. If you do a lot of modifications then sometime you face the problem, that it stopped working now. Why? I don't know, what I do is moving step back with compare tool and compare version with bug to the version that works properly. Found changes? OK, let's apply the to the version with bug. Wow! It works properly now.

Not that I don't like Notepad or html-editors... I like the filling when I know about what changes I do upload to my web-site. I like to see in what way were php scripts changed, I like to see what changes were made to htm files, I fill comfortable when I can compare version that works properly to the newest version with some bugs. This feeling of control worth few bucks spent on reliable compare tool.

Blog Layout Templates Are Simple

The great thing about most blogging sites is that they provide you with templates that you can quickly use to design your site. This leaves you hours of time available for concentrating on the search engine optimization aspects of it.

The layout of your blog is a template. This template is going to be the workspace where you contribute blogs for the next few months. In order to prevent this space from becoming cluttered with links, it must be well organized in the first place.

Most blog software or online blogging sites comes with software. This software comes with a number of preformatted layouts that can help you put your links, archived blogs and other information away in an orderly fashion that is easy for readers to navigate.

Many of these templates are also very well designed and allow you to choose your own set of fonts and colors. There is also usually some kind of function that allows you to upload images and even directly create hoplinks. Most blogging sites come with a series of template that will put your blog elements where your readers expect them to be. These templates will allow you to set fonts and colors, decide if you want one gutter or several, and place your own artwork on the page. They will allow you to set up an archive, start a mailing list so your subscribers can be notified every time you post, and provide a standardized structure into which you can add the codes and features that will make your blog unique. Just remember that every blog host and package offers different features (some are simple but don’t allow imported art, some require HTML knowledge but offer great latitude in design).

Just keep in mind to choose a blogging template that does not conflict with your blog’s theme such as one for a teenage girl’s diary!

Finding The Right Blog Template

A blog template is the format in which the blog will appear and how it can be used. If you are designing your website and want to include a blog, you will want to choose something that will serve your needs and not just look good on the page. You first need to decide the use your blog will serve.

Will you use the blog to communicate with customers? Will you use it more of a log to track your thoughts and new ideas? Regardless of what you use it for, you will want to find a blog template that suits your needs.

Finding this blog template is not going to be hard. More then likely you will find so many that you won't know which to choose. In order to find a blog template that's right for you, find a website that has them and browse. There is no better way to find what you want then to see one working. How is it set up? Do you like the initial appearance? Do you like how it works? Is it easy to use?

When you have found something you like and know what your looking for, take a tour of the many sites that offer blogs and different templates. You can often find several for free on most sites. Take your time to find the blogger that offers the best solution to satisfy your needs and wants. Doing all of these things can lead to the perfect blog for your website.

Myspace Layouts

There is so much you can do when it comes to Myspace layouts, it is so much fun! You don’t have to be a teenager to have a myspace account either, if you want I, you can get it! With a Myspace account you can personalize it how you want to, you can add things like stars, stripes, hearts, polka dots and lots of other shapes and designs. You can also personalize your Myspace with graphics like glitter images, blinkies, banners, quotes, contact tables, icons, images, avatars and more.

To get a Myspace account all you have to do is log on to a page that supports this function and become a member. Most of the time is does not cost you anything to join and have a Myspace account, but be careful and read everything on the page.

You can just about any one of the Myspace layouts on your account, pictures of cars and flowers to pictures of your favorite celebrity or model to pictures of your favorite animal. You can also change your layout every once in a while if you wish to do so. There are at least fifty different types of layouts you can choose from in order to personalize your Myspace to reveal more about you. It does not matter what kind of pictures you like or what kind of person you are, you will definitely find a picture that tells something about you.

In most cases the Myspace layouts are updated every day so there is always something new to look at if you decide that your existing layout is getting a bit too boring and you have had it for too long.

You will never be bored with all the new Myspace layouts, there is always something to do and the best part of it all is how much fun one can have when creating a Myspace account.

Find more of the latest Myspace Layout.