Custom Website Design Basics!

Finally! As promised I'm going to start explaining the basics of writing XHTML and how to design a true custom website. But before we can get started on building a custom website, you must first learn what actually makes up a custom website behind the scenes, and actually learn how to write the code.

All websites no matter how big or small are created by writing HTML. Hypertext Markup Code. Don't let the fancy name scare you. For this first post I will briefly explain the basic structure using HTML and during the course of the next few weeks I will explain in greater detail.

Every web page is divided into two parts. The head and the body. The head section is where you write the title, information about your page so that search engines can find it, add style sheets, and write scripts.

The body part is where encloses the content, graphics and text. This is also the only part that your visitors will see when they visit your website.

I know that all this information can be overwhelming at first but with about a years worth of practice, all this will come alot more easier, plus CSS which we wont dive into untill later ion our series. Next time I will start showing you what the actual code looks like and also give you a chance to try some out for yourself. Untill then, good luck and come back soon.

Custom Website Design

For the visitors that are new to this site, I'd like to first introduce myself. About five years ago I decided that I wanted to start a business online, but didn't know a lick of XHTML, CSS or what it takes to really build a sucessful business online.

My first attempt to starting a business online was a complete flop. I used a free website builder allowed you to build a website without knowing a single bit of code. The problem was that it didnt really allow you to modify the template to sucessfully match your business. Plus it was very expensive for hosting each month. That's when i decided to buy a program that allowed you to build a program without knowing any code but used a drop and drag feature. You just pasted the graphics and text that you needed onto the page and you were done. But the problem was that the company had lousy customer service and the program had a very long learning curve.

This is when I decided to learn XHTML and CSS. It took a while to learn how to code but it was actually alot easier to learn and offered alot more freedom when it came to controlling the layout and design of my websites. It actually became alot mote enjoyable and my designs were 100 times better than they ever were before. Finally I could combine me love of designing websites with my former love of doing art.

Over the course of the next few weeks I will be showing how to design websites using raw code, how to combine it with dreamweaver and how to do proper Search Engine Optimization. I will also show you some of the work I've done in the past.

Follow me along on the journey of website design and maybe we can learn from each other. Good luck!