Building your own website

[Eclivic]

Skip all the HTML code, First you need to find a site the is the easiest for you to use.
I use Piwigo for my Personal site because there are very great syncing plugins to add my pictures very smoothly from Lightroom, and V bulletin for my group site because its more versatile for everyone, plus I found a REALLY great theme for it.

Personal Photography Gallery from Eclivic Group ShutterMeet - The Front Page

 

[clanthar]

...DO NOT USE A DARK BACKGROUND WITH WHITE FONT! It's hell on the eye's. 90% of the time if I go to a site that uses white text on a dark background, it's closed </story>...

Without meaning to hijack or start another pointless "what is coding" argument, I'd like more information on this. I purposely used a black background w/ white text because I find that the lack of contrast when using soft/pastel is very hard on the eyes.

Low contrast is very hard to read whatever the colors. A light grey text on a pastel orange background should be a punishable offense. High contrast is necessary for reading and reading comprehension.

Reverse text (white on black) is simply unreadable. Comprehension rates drop as much as 80% when text is reversed. Decorative fonts are also functionally unreadable. Why do so many people get lost trying to find the wedding reception? Try and read the directions in a script font printed with silver ink on ivory paper!

HOWEVER (all caps also drops comprehension rates by over 50%). HOWEVER, it all depends on how much reading we're expecting.

All of these typographic crimes are OK when the amount of text is small. A headline in reverse type and using a decorative font is very appropriate. A title or very short description for a photo would be fine in grey type on a pastel background.

It's when you ask the reader to digest three or more sentences -- a paragraph -- and then heaven forbid another paragraph that you should make the text black on a light background, never use a decorative font and never use all caps. If you do those things with a paragraph or more of text you should not expect anyone to actually read it.

All of this has been carefully studied and tested and you can research it under the topic typography and reading comprehension.

Joe

P.S. In the image business however show trumps substance. If you don't look the part you're dead.

 

[H4X1MA]

...DO NOT USE A DARK BACKGROUND WITH WHITE FONT! It's hell on the eye's. 90% of the time if I go to a site that uses white text on a dark background, it's closed </story>...

Without meaning to hijack or start another pointless "what is coding" argument, I'd like more information on this. I purposely used a black background w/ white text because I find that the lack of contrast when using soft/pastel is very hard on the eyes.

light on dark seems to cause more screen burn on the eyes than using dark on white.

A good example of borderlining it would be Digital Photography Tutorials

They use white text, which is annoying, on a medium/dark grey which isn't too bad. But if I sit there and read through that site, then flip to the forums (dark on light) then my eyes will pretty much freak out for awhile. Sometimes I have even noticed seeing black horizontal lines (illusion) going across a white website after reading a black one.

You can use light on dark as long as it is not your main content area. Look at TPF for example. The header and footer are very dark, but most of the text in this area is an easy to read bold. Actually the Red "Forum" links kills my eye's against the dark background, so that is the only problem I see with TPF.

I would say that 90% of the sites that I end up working on use a #666 color code for their content font. Page headings usually match the color scheme, bold will either stay #666 or go a few shades darker towards #333. CONTENT backgrounds are typically white, or slightly offwhite. 99% of sites now use the centered template with a color wrapping the entire site (same with the cambridgecolour and TPF) that is USUALLY a very light shade of grey leaning on the blue side.

O yeah, as mentioned before I am not a designer AT ALL. I am just basing everything on what I usually see. The company I work for has a very quick turnaround time, and typically does big businesses who spare no expense on a design firm, so I've seen a lot

 

[spacefuzz]

...DO NOT USE A DARK BACKGROUND WITH WHITE FONT! It's hell on the eye's. 90% of the time if I go to a site that uses white text on a dark background, it's closed </story>...

Without meaning to hijack or start another pointless "what is coding" argument, I'd like more information on this. I purposely used a black background w/ white text because I find that the lack of contrast when using soft/pastel is very hard on the eyes.

Low contrast is very hard to read whatever the colors. A light grey text on a pastel orange background should be a punishable offense. High contrast is necessary for reading and reading comprehension.

Reverse text (white on black) is simply unreadable. Comprehension rates drop as much as 80% when text is reversed. Decorative fonts are also functionally unreadable. Why do so many people get lost trying to find the wedding reception? Try and read the directions in a script font printed with silver ink on ivory paper!

HOWEVER (all caps also drops comprehension rates by over 50%). HOWEVER, it all depends on how much reading we're expecting.

All of these typographic crimes are OK when the amount of text is small. A headline in reverse type and using a decorative font is very appropriate. A title or very short description for a photo would be fine in grey type on a pastel background.

It's when you ask the reader to digest three or more sentences -- a paragraph -- and then heaven forbid another paragraph that you should make the text black on a light background, never use a decorative font and never use all caps. If you do those things with a paragraph or more of text you should not expect anyone to actually read it.

All of this has been carefully studied and tested and you can research it under the topic typography and reading comprehension.

Joe

P.S. In the image business however show trumps substance. If you don't look the part you're dead.

hmm interesting information. When I was a draftsman for years using autocad we would always invert the screens for black background / white text lines because it actually seemed to reduce stress on our eyes. I will look into your links though, cool stuff.
Aside from the text though, I find photographs usually look better on black as opposed to white/pastel, so for a photo site wouldnt you care more about presenting your pictures?

 

[CCericola]

I like your argument, simply stating that HTML and CSS can be called coding because it is ... wrong. They're both markup languages and neither is used actually perform any logic. You in fact, cannot write scripts with HTML and CSS - they're not scripting languages... they're markup languages. These markup languages are simply parsed by a "real" piece of coding and then rendered determined on said code. Scripts are the next step up, and tend to make wanna-be programmers feel like they're coding. You can do some need stuff with javascript, but it doesn't come anywhere near attaining the term "coding"

... A few little Web developers get all huffy and pretentious and think they know enough to throw their limited knowledge around. You guys just keep on using your terms like you know what they mean and you'll keep on fooling the general public. My little plug was simply to put KmH in his place since he was being a pretentious ass to the OP. Just to let him know that there were those of us here that can see though his crap sometimes.

You know what's funny? YOU'RE the one who said writing HTML and CSS is scripting!

Writing HTML, CSS, and Javascript is not "coding" either ... it's scripting.

So make up your mind, stop being a smart ass please, and try it on someone who doesn't actually work in IT... Word "coding" is commonly used for writing HTML & CSS among web designers and I don't see anything wrong about it. Nobody is saying "coding HTML" means "I'm creating the logic of the website!!".....

I'm not sure what kind of IT you work in but if I ever utter the words "code" and "html" in the same sentence around my husband and his developer colleagues I get read the riot act. He has told me over and over HTML, CSS and Javascript is not been nor will ever be coding. Now I just talk about "coding in HTML" to mess with him.

Ok, back to the OP's question. Templates are fine for just starting out. For some color ideas and color harmony. Check out the Pantone website. They have some great palletes to choose from. Now these are mainly for print and you don't need to pay attention to the PMS names but it will give you an idea of what colors look good together based on what designers learn in color theory classes and experience. It is a handy tool when you are unsure of what you want to use.

 

[RubyGloom]

Thanks everyone for the advice!

 

[H4X1MA]

Without meaning to hijack or start another pointless "what is coding" argument, I'd like more information on this. I purposely used a black background w/ white text because I find that the lack of contrast when using soft/pastel is very hard on the eyes.

Low contrast is very hard to read whatever the colors. A light grey text on a pastel orange background should be a punishable offense. High contrast is necessary for reading and reading comprehension.

Reverse text (white on black) is simply unreadable. Comprehension rates drop as much as 80% when text is reversed. Decorative fonts are also functionally unreadable. Why do so many people get lost trying to find the wedding reception? Try and read the directions in a script font printed with silver ink on ivory paper!

HOWEVER (all caps also drops comprehension rates by over 50%). HOWEVER, it all depends on how much reading we're expecting.

All of these typographic crimes are OK when the amount of text is small. A headline in reverse type and using a decorative font is very appropriate. A title or very short description for a photo would be fine in grey type on a pastel background.

It's when you ask the reader to digest three or more sentences -- a paragraph -- and then heaven forbid another paragraph that you should make the text black on a light background, never use a decorative font and never use all caps. If you do those things with a paragraph or more of text you should not expect anyone to actually read it.

All of this has been carefully studied and tested and you can research it under the topic typography and reading comprehension.

Joe

P.S. In the image business however show trumps substance. If you don't look the part you're dead.

hmm interesting information. When I was a draftsman for years using autocad we would always invert the screens for black background / white text lines because it actually seemed to reduce stress on our eyes. I will look into your links though, cool stuff.
Aside from the text though, I find photographs usually look better on black as opposed to white/pastel, so for a photo site wouldnt you care more about presenting your pictures?

I know what you are saying with the photo's looking better on a black background. I think best practice would probably be to have thumbnails that were on your normal background, and then have the overlay, kind of like flickr does. Either that or just use dark boxes around your images to seperate the image from the text.

 

[clanthar]

hmm interesting information. When I was a draftsman for years using autocad we would always invert the screens for black background / white text lines because it actually seemed to reduce stress on our eyes. I will look into your links though, cool stuff.
Aside from the text though, I find photographs usually look better on black as opposed to white/pastel, so for a photo site wouldnt you care more about presenting your pictures?

A dark background enhances the apparent color saturation and contrast in a photo. I agree that especially on an electronic display photos look best on a dark background. I wouldn't use black however; black is too harsh. A charcoal grey and/or very dark grey is ideal for photo display.

Again, a few lines of text, headlines etc. are fine as reverse text. Paragraphs are a no no unless of course you don't want them read. (We do have a grand tradition of text publication that's not meant to ever be read -- that's what a contract lawyer is for.)

So a good designer figures out how to structure the website to display the photos on dark grey and then any substantial amount of text as black on white or a light color. That's a form supports function argument. Again as I noted in the image business form trumps function.

Here's a link to consider: Core PR Skills :: Discover the impact of reverse type on reader comprehension

I just typed reverse text reading comprehension into Google.

Joe

 

[spacefuzz]

hmm interesting information. When I was a draftsman for years using autocad we would always invert the screens for black background / white text lines because it actually seemed to reduce stress on our eyes. I will look into your links though, cool stuff.
Aside from the text though, I find photographs usually look better on black as opposed to white/pastel, so for a photo site wouldnt you care more about presenting your pictures?

A dark background enhances the apparent color saturation and contrast in a photo. I agree that especially on an electronic display photos look best on a dark background. I wouldn't use black however; black is too harsh. A charcoal grey and/or very dark grey is ideal for photo display.

Again, a few lines of text, headlines etc. are fine as reverse text. Paragraphs are a no no unless of course you don't want them read. (We do have a grand tradition of text publication that's not meant to ever be read -- that's what a contract lawyer is for.)

So a good designer figures out how to structure the website to display the photos on dark grey and then any substantial amount of text as black on white or a light color. That's a form supports function argument. Again as I noted in the image business form trumps function.

Here's a link to consider: Core PR Skills :: Discover the impact of reverse type on reader comprehension

I just typed reverse text reading comprehension into Google.

Joe

awesome thanks for the info

 

[Tomasko]

I'm not sure what kind of IT you work in but if I ever utter the words "code" and "html" in the same sentence around my husband and his developer colleagues I get read the riot act. He has told me over and over HTML, CSS and Javascript is not been nor will ever be coding. Now I just talk about "coding in HTML" to mess with him.

I'm a professional programmer/developer and one of my fields of interest is programming websites/portals/eshops...
You know, from my point of view there's a slight difference between coding and actual programming. (at least from what I understand and what I was thought) I've never said, that writing html involves the writing of the actual logic of the website, because that's simply not true. Coding may mean "writing a code" and that can pretty much apply to writing HTML as well.
What does your husband call the act of writing HTML?

I understand you in US may call it a little bit differently, but hey.. in Europe we have football, yet you in US call that a "soccer"

Here's a nice article I've just found on the topic coding/html...
Just a short part:

It is reasonable to say that HTML markup is code (and writing HTML markup is coding), provided that people understand that it is comparable to using coded notations when talking or writing. Think about the use of product codes, or using special code books when sending telegraphs, so that short coded presentations stand for long statements, or using colors as codes so that red means "stop" or "warning" or "hot". It's a matter of using some notational system which has been specifically agreed upon. (Actually, natural languages are not completely different from codes; they too are based on agreements, just more vague and implicit.)

And full version: Programs vs. markup

 

[H4X1MA]

I'm not sure what kind of IT you work in but if I ever utter the words "code" and "html" in the same sentence around my husband and his developer colleagues I get read the riot act. He has told me over and over HTML, CSS and Javascript is not been nor will ever be coding. Now I just talk about "coding in HTML" to mess with him.

I'm a professional programmer/developer and one of my fields of interest is programming websites/portals/eshops...
You know, from my point of view there's a slight difference between coding and actual programming. (at least from what I understand and what I was thought) I've never said, that writing html involves the writing of the actual logic of the website, because that's simply not true. Coding may mean "writing a code" and that can pretty much apply to writing HTML as well.
What does your husband call the act of writing HTML?

I understand you in US may call it a little bit differently, but hey.. in Europe we have football, yet you in US call that a "soccer"

Here's a nice article I've just found on the topic coding/html...
Just a short part:

It is reasonable to say that HTML markup is code (and writing HTML markup is coding), provided that people understand that it is comparable to using coded notations when talking or writing. Think about the use of product codes, or using special code books when sending telegraphs, so that short coded presentations stand for long statements, or using colors as codes so that red means "stop" or "warning" or "hot". It's a matter of using some notational system which has been specifically agreed upon. (Actually, natural languages are not completely different from codes; they too are based on agreements, just more vague and implicit.)

And full version: Programs vs. markup

You're pretty much correct here. Coding is just writing out anything, usually it will just mean something other than what it looks like. Think of a cryptogram, you may write out dhfkksj djksldfk slldk sksj, but you are still coding the crytogram (and no that jibberish doesn't mean anything). I've never heard it called anything else, I guess programming maybe? But I think calling HTML programming would be worse than calling it scripting (IMO).

 

[dakkon76]

Like I said, the ones that know a little think they know a lot. Sounds like Christina's husband actually has a job as a "real life" programmer and not a "weekend Web designer". The very word "code" carries with it the assumption that it must be deciphered in order to become usable. That's not to say it must be compiled, but it must at least be capable of carrying out logical operations.

I would challenge either of you two to come up with some actual definitions and usages for the terms "markup language", "scripting language", "writing code", and "programming" and then compare and contrast them and explain what was incorrect about my initial post - with something more substantial than "according to my group of friends". I'm guessing you don't hang out with the "real" group too much though, as you'd had already been laughed at by the likes of a real programmer. Whenever you have to say something like "you're pretty much correct" ... it reads "I don't know any better, so I'll agree."

Anyway, my original point was not to sound like a no-it all, but simply to illuminate to KmH that he was just as uninformed as the OP was, and that maybe he shouldn't be throwing so much attitude around. Clearly my point missed it's mark by a longshot.

 

[JG_Coleman]

Anyway, my original point was not to sound like a no-it all, but simply to illuminate to KmH that he was just as uninformed as the OP was, and that maybe he shouldn't be throwing so much attitude around. Clearly my point missed it's mark by a longshot.

Well, in truth, your point was missed because it didn't really have anything to do with what KmH was clearly intending to say. His argument was that a few minor tweaks to a template doesn't generally constitute "building" a website (please... let's not get into a technical discussion about what "building" means). The word "code" was just incidental in his post. His entire "argument" was two short sentences... I don't think he was concerned about being technically precise with his use of the word "code", nor is the technical definition of "code" relevant at all to the simple comment he was making.

Yet somehow half this thread has now turned into a semantic debate over the definition of "coding", "scripting", and "programming" (*YAWN*).

 

[Tomasko]

Like I said, the ones that know a little think they know a lot. Sounds like Christina's husband actually has a job as a "real life" programmer and not a "weekend Web designer". The very word "code" carries with it the assumption that it must be deciphered in order to become usable. That's not to say it must be compiled, but it must at least be capable of carrying out logical operations.

I would challenge either of you two to come up with some actual definitions and usages for the terms "markup language", "scripting language", "writing code", and "programming" and then compare and contrast them and explain what was incorrect about my initial post - with something more substantial than "according to my group of friends". I'm guessing you don't hang out with the "real" group too much though, as you'd had already been laughed at by the likes of a real programmer. Whenever you have to say something like "you're pretty much correct" ... it reads "I don't know any better, so I'll agree."

Anyway, my original point was not to sound like a no-it all, but simply to illuminate to KmH that he was just as uninformed as the OP was, and that maybe he shouldn't be throwing so much attitude around. Clearly my point missed it's mark by a longshot.

Yea, I'm a "weekend web designer" and H4X1MA too, because we don't agree with you Ok, keep saying that to yourself. You just made my day...
I would argue about the word "code" too, but it has nothing to do with OP's original question and as I see from these pages, it would have been waste of time anyway.
You're the pro, we're amateurs.

(OP, sorry for the offtopic, this is my last post in this thread)

 

[noodles]

just use one of these: Photographer Website Design - A Photo Folio

For a starting out new photographer that isn't getting paid.. $1000 setup fee is pretty hefty...