Web Design For Idiots

In the past I have had a blog with colours I loved but they weren’t the greatest (or kindest) choices for readers of my site. Even the people who really did like me found it hard on the eyes to look at my site, let alone read it. Try looking at your site from a short distance away, in a darkened room and you will get some idea of how much eye strain is a factor in the design.

This doesn’t mean you can never use bright, bold or dark colours in your websites. You can use them in creating a splash page. A splash page can give your site a grand entrance, a dazzling front door.

But, not everyone likes this plan. Splash pages used to be infamous for being full of long loading animations and scripts. They often had nothing useful to add to the site. Waiting for them to load was annoying. So, if you do decide to go with it, make sure you have three things:

• no scripts or images so it can load right away (no delay),
• very simple to use and easy to find navigation
• enough information about your site to lure people to click through to it.

I think the best way to do it is just using a background colour, no images. Pick your colour: deep red, full black, sunshine yellow and add a table of contents to your site. List all the important categories if you have a blog. This gives you a functional splash page (your grand entrance using the colour you love) and readers can go directly to whatever part of your site they like, so it’s not useless. It has function and because no one has to spend time reading there you can make the colour as eye popping or dramatic as you like.

Make sure the navigation and index  links are clear and don’t disappear into your background. Always check the links you have in this index to keep it current and useful. If any single page moves make sure you reflect changes to your splash page right away. Never let it sink into link rot.

It’s very easy to change your background colour, just look for this code (below in graphic) and change the hexidecimal code to the one you want.

Want to know who is offering this awesome content? Here it is! Canadian writer, sometime artist, exploring around the Internet since 1996. Read more from this author

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 4th, 2009 at 8:56 am and is filed under Super NOOB!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.