DH Templates

Designing a website for an organization...?

I know that you can buy web design programs to make your own graphics, customize fonts/etc. and put all of the pages together. And I know that you can make layouts for websites like Xanga and Myspace. But the organization needing a website definitely won't be a blog, and it already has a domain name reserved. But if I weren't willing to buy a program, but I want to be able to make the design myself (without templates like Freewebs). So where should I go? I know how to use basic CSS. Would there be basic html codes (for a whole website) that I could edit and customize, or something? Any advice is helpful. (Yeah, why they are asking a teenage girl with minimal web design knowledge to design their website is beyond me.) ...but how do you connect the codes to the actual URL?

Public Comments

1. You can just type the HTML codes in with Notepad. That's how I do most of my stuff. Go to http://www.w3schools.com/ and look at some of their tutorials. You will be on your way.
2. the gimp or photoshop, notepad, and a few web browsers to test it in.
3. save yourself time and stress by using a CMS based off php/mysql Once installed it should have most features any website would need and can be updated dynamic instead of static html pages. Most php scripts are easy to install and allows for CSS editing to alter the templates while leaving the core functionality intact. check out the links for a few decent scripts that are free
4. It would by far be recommended to use hand coding, using WYSIWYG editors without knowing the standards, generally leads to incorrect usage of elements and attributes, and quite a few bad practices. Most serious web designers spend most time hand coding as well. WYSIWYG is really only useful if you havn't got a CMS in place, and you just need to publish something in a hurry. CMS solutions is not really the best option, i know there are "web design" companies who offer to setup these systems, but their services is usually useless. w3schools and brugbart would be a good place to go, when looking for online Tutorials and References.
5. I'm not trying to be nasty, but unfortunately for you, they will get what they pay for. If they had any sense they would engage a professional web designer/developer.
6. Download a few (free) programs to make your work easier: Gimp, for graphics. http://www.gimp.org/ Notepad Plus, for the pages. http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm XAMPP, so you have a web server on your computer, to see what you're doing. http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html Learn HTML and more CSS at a site like w3schools. The URL is tied to the physical server that the files that make up the site are located on. when you connect to that server, if you don't specify a file, you normally get the default file, usually index.html or index.php (if you're using php to generate the pages). See if there's anything at http://www.opensourcecms.com/ you can use or adapt.