Need help for layout and website design

[centbid]

Hi,

  I build a website in PHP. Now it's time to make it look nice. I'm very poor in graphism. I want to know if there's software that I could use to build my website design (graphic and layout) and at the time is coding to my project...Or any help how to start correctly and tips how to work with .css and other file need to make the layout and graphics.

 

Thanks

[cssfreakie]

The best tips are already in the sticky of this thread. in addition:

Avoid at all times inline css, (not even for practice just don't. Learn yourself to separate concerns) and start off with a nice map structure like the following: (in the end you might want to change the location of these static files to a different domain to make pages load faster. But for now the following is nice enough.

 

index.php
[images]
    +-->image.png
[javascript]
    +-->javascript.js
[css]
    +-->stylesheet.css

 

Next thing develop locally ( i use WAMP in combination with netbeans) Don't use a wysiwyg editor they all suck and make horrific code. Just code it yourself and use something like firebug to check it out in your browser. That said develop for firebug(gecko) and adjust for others that's the fastest and cleanest way.

 

Use tables only for data, not to design your layout, as seen in pretty much 99% of all websites.

Take a minute to find out what css is all about. Targeting specific elements by using selectors id's and classes and giving them style. Keep the differences between those in mind.(id= unique, class= for a group, selector = generic

 

Also I use inkscape to design most graphics (2d vector design program) and Gimp for more advanced photo backgrounds and some other stuff but that is a bit to much to work with .

 

at last but not least, books are worth there weight in gold.. ONline tutorials are incomplete and often only cover 1 specific situation.

 

Might want to have a look at my blog, I wrote some articles on topics that show up here daily.

 

Hope this helps