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The front-end is the first thing that it is designed. It encompasses the look andfeel of a web site. This is probably the most established part of the web siteproduction process. Design has been around since Guttenberg printed his first bible.Much of what has been used in print media (especially art magazines) has transferredto the web.
Most well thought out web sites start off with sketches on paper. We like using thebig huge box of crayons, the one with the crayon sharpener built in. Most of thecolors in the "big box" are pleasing to the eye and are web friendly. If you usebegin paying attention to sites you'll notice that only a few colors are actuallyused, 256 to be exact. Only about 100 of those won't give you a headache when youlook at them. On request we will give these early designs to a client that wants tocontrol the look and feel of their site. The site, of course, never ends up lookinglike the early designs. The same idea and concept is there but because ofrestrictions colors and whole images are lost.
This brings us to the next part of the front-end, the actual site creation. This iswhat many people view as the most important, which is what separates a professionallooking site from an amateur one.
The images are created using products from across the board. Mainly, designers stickto industry standards like Photoshop and Illustrator. After getting the basic imagein terms of proportions and size the designer should create the static HTML page.
This is the basic page you would see if you viewed the page source. This is one ofthe most rewarding, most hated and most tedious parts of the web design process.Each browser displays a page differently. Since most users either use InternetExplorer 4+ or Netscape 4.5 we cater to those two. Sometimes we build a differentsite for each, trying to maintain the same layout.
That concludes the front-end section. Personal sites and some small business sitesstop here. While this may be acceptable today, tomorrow any web site hoping toattract and keep visitors is going to have a strong back-end.
There are many sites and website designers that offer premade templates; these havethe entire graphical layout that a page needs.
For those with little or no experience with website design software, templates havequickly become a practical solution to professional website design. Most of the topend sites offer a huge selection of very impressive, easy-to-edit website templates.All you have to do is check your email containing the link to download the .zipfile. The html in these templates is compatible with Adobe GoLive, MacromediaDreamweaver and Microsoft Frontpage. The major advantage is the price, they runanywhere from $20 to $70. Another great advantage is you don't have to hire a webdesigner, who usually takes 1 to 2 weeks to produce a page of such high quality.Webmasters, either novice or expert, can easily save thousands of dollars on designfees by using website templates.
