Web Design
Good web design is a blend of beauty and functionality.
A website should look attractive, and draw the user in with its visual quality. After all, the internet is largely a visual medium.
Graphics should complement the text, not distract from it. Colours should be chosen with care, and used to create the underlying ‘mood’ of the site. There should be unity and balance between various page elements, so that the page feels in harmony, not in discord.
The design should allow text-size to be increased without breaking the design of the page.
Content Management Systems
When you want to make changes to your website, the traditional way is to phone or email your web designer and explain the updates needed. You then wait for it to be done and hand over the money. If you change your mind you will have to go through the process all over again.
With a Content Management System (CMS) you can make all your website updates yourself. Just enter your password, and change text, add images, even add new pages to your site.
I recommend ExpressionEngine or WordPress depending on your particular needs and circumstances. ExpressionEngine is one of the most powerful Content Management Systems available, and can be fully customised.
Contact me if you want to find out more about how a Content Management System can help you maintain your site.
Separation of Content and Presentation
Badly designed websites use HTML tags to determine colour, font and other apects of the design. These HTML tags are often used for each new paragraph, and significantly increase the size of the HTML file - and therefore make the page take a longer time to open in a web browser. The big problem comes when changes need to be made. Font tags have to be changed on every paragraph of every page of the entire website, which can take hours, or days of work on a large site.
Using Cascading Style Sheets [CSS] removes all this presentational mark-up from the HTML file. The colour, fonts & other stylistic aspects of the site, as well as all positioning and layout, are handled by an external CSS file. The HTML stays clean, and changes to presentation are much simpler. A simple change to the CSS file will change the presentation of every paragraph on every page of the entire website.
The aim is to completely separate the textual content of the website from the rules that determine how that content should be presented.