Web Design The Winter Away

EVERYONE has a story to tell, and the Web is a great place to tell it. For little or no cost you can post your thoughts, start a social movement, or create and promote a business out of thin air. Designing a Web page is a great way to exercise your creativity and become acquainted with the nuts and bolts behind the virtual world we increasingly inhabit each and every day. It's also a productive way to pass long winter days indoors.

Establishing a presence on the Web can be as easy as joining a social networking site -- Facebook or Myspace, for example -- and sharing your life with friends and family. Another option is writing your own blog, like RuggedReviews.com The Blog. Both options cost nothing and can provide the means to expand your circle of friends in the outside world.

For the more ambitious -- even those who don't want to learn complicated computer programming languages -- there are Web design services that offer preformed templates. All you have to do is pick a design and plug in your text and photos and upload your siteto a host.

If you want to be really creative -- and you don't mind having to learn a little about what makes a good Web site and how to upload it to a host server yourself -- you can purchase an open-ended Web design program.

I never designed a Web site from top-to-bottom before I created RuggedReviews.com, but I was determined to learn at least the basics. To create a site from scratch without having to learn html -- the programming language of the Web -- I decided to purchase a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Web design program.

WYSIWYG programs are very similar to working with a standard word processing program. Wherever you put your text and photos is where they should actually appear when the site is uploaded to the Web. I say "should" because not all WYSIWYG programs are created equal. The first program I tried was a nightmare. I'd put titles, text boxes, graphics and photos in the composition window, then check the design on a page that replicated the way the items would appear on the Web only to find the elements shifted all over the place. I fought the faulty program for weeks before giving up. I was so disappointed it took me a while after that to take up designing RuggedReviews.com again.

The second time I approached the project, I researched WYSIWYG programs exhaustively and all paths led to the SiteSpinner Web design software. Right out of the box, the experience was better. The program installed easily on my computer. When I opened it, I saw that the composing screen was well organized and featured easy to recognize controls for adding text, photos and tables. Three of the most-used design elements.

It took me about a day of playing with the program to fully understand the controls. Once I got started designing and writing RuggedReviews.com, I didn't want to take a break.

The biggest challenges to designing a Web page from scratch are making sure:

1) You not only can write but you enjoy writing. If you don't, the experience will get old fast.

2) You enjoy creating and processing original artwork for the Web. If you don't, this will become tedious, too. Web sites depend heavily on visual content. I shoot my own photos and use Adobe PhotoShop Elements to process them. Especially valuable is Adobe PhotoShop Elements' "Save for the Web" feature that makes it a cinch to get the best quality with the lowest amount of memory-consuming kilobytes.

3) You are dedicated to editing, maintaining, updating and promoting the site (especially if it's business related). This is critical. A Web site will die quickly if viewers visit and there's nothing new to see.

4) You like to learn. The Web is rapidly evolving. You have to evolve with it or get left in the dust.

If you have enthusiasm for all of these critical Web skills, you'll enjoy designing your own Web site on a WYSIWYG program like SiteSpinner. After the initial build, probably the most intimidating process is uploading your masterpiece to the Web. SiteSpinner has a very basic publishing tool. If you place your site on their host server, it should be a snap. I placed mine on HostMonster.com and hit a few snags, but HostMonster's and SiteSpinner's expert service reps addressed my questions and had me up and running in no time.

RuggedReviews.com isn't a perfect Web site -- yet. But I'm learning more about designing and operating a Web site every day, and the challenge scratches my brain and expands my horizons. Can't ask for more than that from a hobby.