The Design ∫ The Webmaster's Edge

Apr 16th

2008

The Design

Written by User Image

Bradford (Who am I?)

Posted @ 1:11 pm

The design of a site is very important. I find it most important in the beginning as you want the design to last you for some time to come. As this is the case, certain elements are very important. I wanted to create a design that incorporated certain “Web 2.0 Elements”, it had to be CSS-p, it had to be “cross-browser” (don’t want to leave anyone out) and I wanted it to be “expandable” rather than a fixed width. The resolution I use is 1680×1050 and websites designed for a fixed 800 pixel width look like there is a ton of “wasted space”. The majority of browsers on the web now run in 1024×768, so I optimized the design for 1024×768, but will work in pretty much any resolution 800 pixels or greater. I decided to not worry about ancient browsers. I included some old browsers in my testing (Internet Explorer 6, Netscape 7, Opera 8), but am not going to worry about browsers like Netscape 4 or Internet Explorer 5. I figured that if the person viewing this site is using Netscape 4, the first thing they need to do as a Webmaster is to ditch Netscape 4.

I also needed to include certain design elements that were “Ad Friendly”. To this end, I wanted the site to have the following elements:

Space for a 160×600 Ad on the left side that is within 500 pixels of the top of the page.
Space for 125×125 Ads on the right side.
A 728×90 space at the top with a “backdrop” or “border image”, but it had to work in a way in which a 468×60 ad would “fit in”.
A menu near the top.
A 300×250 box ad has to fit in a post.

I believe that my design has achieved these goals. Something I am considering is looking into “skinning” the site into different color schemes which users will be able to select from. However, this will likely be accomplished after the site goes live. So without further adieu, here’s the current design:

TOP

$Top of the Webmaster\'s Edge design$

BOTTOM

$Bottom of the Webmaster\'s Edge design$

All in all I am happy with the final product. There may be a few tweaks before the site goes live, but it shouldn’t be anything terribly drastic. Hope you enjoy it!

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