St. Edward’s University offers free web design workshops monthly for students, faculty and staff. Our web workshops together fulfill the requirements for the Web Essentials IT Circuit program for certification. Below are a few resources that will help get anyone started learning web design, from basic coding to those looking to enter the web design industry. For our computer workshops, we teach web design using Adobe Dreamweaver CS5. Adobe offers many video tutorials about using Dreamweaver on their Getting Started page. This is a good place to start if you’ll also be using Dreamweaver as your editor of choice.
For Everyone:
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international group of web professionals; their mission is to create web standards and best practices for web design. All of our web-related computer workshops at St. Edward’s are taught in accordance with W3C standards. The W3C’s Validator is the best tool on the web to ensure that your website meets W3C standards. Like a teacher with a red pen in hand, the Validator will find every error and show you what line the error was found so you can correct it.
Learning (X)HTML and CSS - my favorite tutorial sites:
These websites offer easy and free tutorials and/or digestible articles that you can work through, which is a great way to lay a strong foundation for your future design endeavors.
- HTML Dog
- W3Schools
- Google Code University - video tutorials right from Google!
- Sitepoint
- About.com’s web design page answers questions from basic to advanced.
Tools to make life easier:
- CSS Typeset is a gem of a tool that allows designers to test out text formatting (font, colors, spacing) before committing it to code. The site will even provide the CSS code of your preview text for you!
- <html>ipsum gives you popular elements pre-filled with lorem ipsum text so you can get your HTML down even if your content isn’t ready.
- If you’d like to include a great-looking image gallery viewer/slideshow, check out Lightbox 2 and Nivo Slider.
- Are you stumped about what colors or color scheme to use on your site? There are several websites that allow users to explore and test colors and find an attractive scheme to utilize on the web such as Well Styled and ColorCombos. Visit Aviva for more color resources.
- Check out my SEO page to learn how to optimize your site for search and your targeted audiences.
(Free) Online Website Builders/Hosts:
- Wix.com - build your own Flash website without learning Flash
- Webs.com - similar to Wix, you can build your own site using their pre-made templates
- Google Sites/Wikis - If you have a Google account, you can build a fast & simple website
- Cargo Collective - make an easy, attractive design/art portfolio site
- Carbonmade - another place to make a simple & professional design/art portfolio site
Search Engine Journal provides an excellent list of 50 questions to evaluate the quality of your website. While this is aimed at company sites, many of these issues apply to smaller sites as well. And finally, Snap2Objects offers a massive list of 85+ Free Killer Resources Every Designer Should Know.
For Aspiring Designers:
A List Apart is a well-known resource for web designers, web content writers and anyone involved in creating websites with a focus on best practices and web standards. Webmaster World is a forum for web designers to discuss anything and everything web design. While this forum is aimed at professionals, there’s a lot to be learned in the questions and discussions they raise.
More helpful design sites:
- DesignReviver
- WebWorkerDaily
- W3Conversions has a knockout list of educational resources from beginner to advanced.
- Smashing Magazine has a wealth of information about web design and style. They never cease to amaze me with their amount of resources and inspiration.
Design:
- Fluid, Fixed, Elastic? Find out what these terms mean regarding webpage layout.
- Grunge design offers a “handmade” look to a website’s design.
- Vintage design
- Minimalism
Questions for Megan? Just Ask!
