Resources for taking an existing design template and putting it into a masterpage?

Question

I am not a designer, so I took a design template from http://www.opendesigns.org/ and was successful in implementing the design in one page, but when I tried to put it into a masterpage, it came out funny looking, so I was curious if there were any resources/tutorials on taking design templates and putting them in masterpages.

Answer 1

A master page is just HTML / ASP with a placeholder for the content.

As long as everything is well-formed, it should display as normal.

When I am building a master page, I build my design, then copy and paste into the master page and insert the placeholder where I need it.

Answer 2

some of what you say is quite confusing, i think you need to be clearer. A master page is a template for layout on your site or subsite, you would never serve a master page as content, you would always use the master page as a basis for a content page, the master page allows you to define a set of placeholders and, in principle, a global definition of the skeleton of your pages, for the area within which the master page will be used. Its usual to place site wide (or sub site wide - depends what you are doing) content onto the master page itself, things like menus, banners etc. And then let the pages that use the master page define what is held in the content placeholders that will be specific to the page instances.

when you say you put the design in a page, was it pure html ? or was it an aspx ? you arent clear on how you got from

1) design template to "page" (please explain html or aspx)

2) how you took your page and "put it in" your master page (i think if you explain, it might be easier to help)