More and more people every day create their own web sites for blogging, business, sharing ideas, networking, helping people, and a variety of other purposes. It's no surprise that with the growing number of people creating web sites, there is a growing number of web designers.

Most people who create their own web site end up becoming a web designer in one form or another, learning the basic skills necessary to any web designer. This article is to help you discover those skills you need to design your web site, as well as show you a step-by-step process of how easy it can be.

Things you'll need:

Computer
Text Editor (Notepad for PC, TextEdit for Mac)
Web Browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox)

Optional:
WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) Editor - ex. Dreamweaver
Graphic Software - ex. Adobe Photoshop, to create your own images!

1. What is your web page about?

Before you can begin designing your site, you need to figure out what it's going to be about. Are you creating a blogging web site to share your writing? A web site for a company your created? A photography site to share your portfolio? Depending on the type of web site you want to create will determine greatly on how you will design it.

2. Follow the main web design Tips!

There are several web design tips that are important to know before you being designing your web site.

TIP #1 - Design Above the Fold! - Designing above the fold means to put the most important information from your web site at the top of the page because people are less likely to see it if they have to scroll downward.

TIP #2 - 800 X 600! Design your web pages so that the content will fit within an 800 pixel by 600 pixel box. This will ensure that it will fit on everyone's monitor, even the small prehistoric ones!

TIP #3 - Forget The TIMES! Do not use Times Roman font for you web site text! Times New Roman is font made for print materials like books. For web design, try to use a sans serif font such as Helvetica, Arial, and Verdana!

TIP #4 - Small Is Better! When adding graphics and multimedia to your web site like audio and video, the smaller the file size the better. This will reduce download times, and will keep people from pulling out their hair when your web site doesn't load fast!

TIP #5 - CSS is the way to go! CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a type of HTML coding made specifically for web site styling. Have proper knowledge of how this coding works is extremely

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