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Overview of Web Design
by Ron Kurtus (updated 21 December 2022)
Web design is the process of constructing a website that will achieve your goals or the goals of your client. This includes the design of your web pages.
Before you start designing the website, you need to establish your goals and the purpose of the site. Your initial considerations consist of planning for the site. You get an idea and plan of what you want to achieve, what it will look like, and to whom it will appeal. You also want to get things set up for the website to be hosted.
Then you design the web pages and the structure of your website, including navigation. You need knowledge of HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), as well as other programming languages. Graphical design also comes into play.
Finally, you want to test your site and then publish it, as well as get visitors to your site.
Questions you may have include:
- What initial considerations should you make?
- How do you design web pages?
- What are the final publishing steps?
This lesson will answer those questions.
Initial considerations
Before you start designing your web pages, you need to define your plans and set things up for having a website.
Plans
- Define the purpose of the website. What do you hope to achieve?
- Who is the intended audience of the site?
- Plan the structure of the site. What are the major pages you want to have?
Initial actions
- Get your domain name
- Sign up with a web host
Designing web pages
In designing your web pages, you want to use HTML to set up the content of the page. Then you use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to format the look of the page. Finally, you need to be concerned about the usability of the web pages for your audience.
Navigation and usability
Navigation is an important element in structure of the website. Once you have completed the website, you also need to maintain it and make sure everything is operating properly.
Technical aspects
Considerations must be made for the various technical aspects in putting a website up on the Internet. The pages must look pretty much the same on different Internet browsers, computer operating systems and screen resolutions.
By defining your audience, you can often tell the technical sophistication of the audience as to whether they have high-end computer systems or older, basic units. A website appealing to average people, should look to the lowest common denominator in what type of system the users have and thus what level of sophistication can be expected.
Publish website
Before you publish your website, you want to check it to make sure the navigation is effective and the pages are user-friendly. You need to test the website to make sure everything works correctly. In addition, it is good to get feedback from users.
You can upload your pages to the web server with FTP (file treansfer protocol).
And finally, you want to make sure you get visitors to your site.
Summary
Before you start designing the website, you establish goals and the purpose of the site. You plan what you want to achieve, what the website will look like, and who is your audience. You also want to get things set up for the website to be hosted.
Then you design the web pages. You need knowledge of HTML and CSS, as well as graphical design. Finally, you test your site, publish it, and as get visitors to your site.
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Overview of Web Design