When you are designing your webpage/site/element/what-have-you, never ever ever START designing in an HTML editor. You START in a graphics editor, such as Photoshop or GIMP. The biggest rookie mistake is starting a design in Notepad or DreamWeaver, uploading, testing, uploading, more testing, rinse and repeat 100 or so times before you finally *headdesk*. Good grief. I did that so many times when I first started out, and all my webpages looked like crap.

So, let’s start from the beginning. There are 2 basic phases for building a webpage: designing and coding.

Just as if you were drawing, you sketch first. You find the lines, decide where elements will go, and you make the lines thicker and more permanent.   You decide if you want to ink it, or paint it, etc, when all those lines are in the right place. All of that is the designing phase. Think of the coding phase as framing and matting that piece of art you just completed so that you can display it in a gallery (the internet).  You don’t start sketching on the wall of that gallery, because ONLY FINISHED PIECES are displayed in the gallery.  Still with me here?

Now, AS you design your webpage in your graphics editor, what you need to do is keep in mind your coding skills as you build.  THINK in the terms of the coding you will be doing, and don’t design past your skill set unless you are willing to do the research to find out how to do a certain thing, or can find someone to do it for you.  The easiest way to do this is to think in terms of square or rectangular shapes.  The more irregular your design, obviously the harder it will be.

But I’m getting a little off-track here. Lesson number one for you beginner webdesigners is always start in a graphics editor, not an HTML editor.