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Introduction to designing your website.

 

Experienced coders can do this with a simple text editing tool such as NotePad. However, if you are not a coder there are alternatives and DoveSoft recommend free tools such as MobiriseWordPress and Joomla. For the hobbyist, other recommended non coding software includes Xara Web Designer and  Incomedia WebSite X5 Evolution.

You may simply require to host your site on your own computer and its web pages will contain links to web addresses of your choice. This is achieved by simply publishing/exporting your site from the web design software to a folder on your computer. Most users however will require their site to be accessible to all on the Internet, in which case you will need a domain name, web host and optionally a database.

A domain name such as dovesoft.uk, can most easily be purchased from your web host. Domain names vary in price depending on the suffix used. Typically co.uk names are for hobbyists and cost about £2.50 per annum while com names are for business users and cost about £10 p.a. You may have a web host already but if not try 1&1 and select domain names from their menu and check if your required domain is available.

An important first consideration is if your web site will be designed using a fixed, responsive or adaptive layout. Fixed layouts are easier to design as the designer decides the page width and content is positioned in fixed or absolute positions. Currently, this approach is adopted by Serif WebPlus.

Most responsive websites rearrange the text and graphics to fit the screen size with often unattractive results. What looks good full screen on your computer might not look so great on a tablet or smart phone when the text and graphics are reshuffled. Some web design software such as Xara Web Designer and Wysiwyg Web Builder lets you design Variants of your website for specific display sizes, from full desktop browsers to mobile devices. These variants, which are actually different layouts of the same site are linked, so if you change the text or photos on the main site, the text and/or photos on the variant or variants changes as well. Your browser automatically loads the right variant.

Both adaptive and responsive layouts have their pros and cons. The biggest drawback to adaptive is maintenance. With responsive you are changing just one site, but with adaptive it is spread over a minimum of two sites, so the challenge is to make it easier to make changes. A number of recommended companies such as CoffeeCup  and PineGrow have created code which allows text and images to act in a responsive manner within the fixed width of the site.

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