To most people the process of building a web siteremains somewhat of a mystery. This confusion probablystems from the fact that there is a cornucopia of websites on the Internet. Even with wide variety ofsites, every single one can be divided into twosections: front-end and back-end. The front-end is the first thing that it is designed.It encompasses the look and feel of a web site. Thisis probably the most established part of the web siteproduction process. Design has been around sinceGuttenberg printed his first bible. Much of what hasbeen used in print media (especially art magazines)has transferred to the web.Most well thought out web sites start off withsketches on paper. We like using the big huge box ofcrayons, the one with the crayon sharpener built in.Most of the colors in the "big box" are pleasing tothe eye and are web friendly. If you use begin payingattention to sites you'll notice that only a fewcolors are actually used, 256 to be exact. Only about100 of those won't give you a headache when you lookat them. On request we will give these early designsto a client that wants to control the look and feel oftheir site. The site, of course, never ends up lookinglike the early designs. The same idea and concept isthere but because of restrictions colors and wholeimages are lost.This brings us to the next part of the front-end, theactual site creation. This is what many people view asthe most important, which is what separates aprofessional looking site from an amateur one.The images are created using products from across theboard. Mainly, designers stick to industry standardslike Photoshop and Illustrator. After getting thebasic image in terms of proportions and size thedesigner should create the static HTML page.This is the basic page you would see if you viewed thepage source. This is one of the most rewarding, mosthated and most tedious part of the web design process.Each browser displays a page differently. Since mostusers either use Internet Explorer 4+ or Netscape 4.5we cater to those two. Sometimes we build a differentsite for each, trying to maintain the same layout.That concludes the front-end section. Personal sitesand some small business sites stop here. While thismaybe acceptable today, tomorrow any web site hopingto attract and keep visitors is going to have a strongback-end.There are many sites and website designers that offerpremade templates, these have the entire graphicallayout that a page needs. For those with little or no experience with websitedesign software, templates have quickly become apractical solution to professional website design.Most of the top end sites offer a huge selection ofvery impressive, easy-to-edit website templates. Allyou have to do is check your email containing the linkto download the .zip file. The html in these templatesis compatible with Adobe GoLive, MacromediaDreamweaver and Microsoft Frontpage. The majoradvantage is the price, they run anywhere from $20 to$70. Another great advantage is you don't have to hirea web designer, who usually takes 1 to 2 weeks toproduce a page of such high quality. Webmasters,either novice or expert, can easily save thousands ofdollars on design fees by using website templates. There are also some exception sites, such as http://www.web-site-templates.orgthat provide packages of templates atone price, instead of providing a different price foreach template.
