Hello,
I'm under very hard pressure to complete designing of a basic company website.
Are there any tips and tricks that will help me finish the job very quickly?
I don't know if some people use any specific software to get it done very fast or maybe shortcut keys or different designing standards or maybe some css/html templates? I really don't know what is the answer.
Please help me.
Thanks
These are the things that will give you the most bang for the buck. Rest is user preference imo.
EDIT to add.
Look at this article on css grid frameworks.
If you aren't a designer by training, and don't need something totally unique, you could also get an existing design as a starting point.
See oswd.org for some examples.
Follow this formula:
Use Dreamweaver or something similar to create your HTML (everyone will hate me for this, but it often helps to "borrow" someone elses code and cut and paste till you get something similar to what you want)
Remember you can get 30 day trial versions of things like Dreamweaver and Photoshop and there are plenty of tutorials to help you start using them in an hour or so.
Use a Content Management System like, fo example, Drupal or DotNetNuke if you dont want to start from scratch.
Those will give you professional looking results in no time and provide all the content management infrastructure out of the box. So you dont have to necessarily be the webadmin yourself.
At the same time these frameworks are flexible enough to allow any kind of stylistic modification to suit your needs.
Expression Engine is great if you're building a slightly larger site. Checkout EE's Embed ability. It saves hours when developing.
Online website builders are quick, easy, and pretty (and free):
Google has something called sites, but it is limited in what it can do and is not that easy to use.
Yahoo has a downloadable tool called Sitebuilder, but last I checked it could only be used on Yahoo hosted sites (without modification). Difficult to use as well.
I think MS also has a tool, no experience there (shudder).
If you want to host your own with a tool/CMS that will do it all for you, the best for now is Concrete5 (though I have not yet checked out Bildy).
You'll be all up and running in a jiffy.
Don't waste time on Joomla/Drupal - you will spend as much time learning it as you would learning any new programming language.
In a short while, Siteroller should launch (right now its just some lorum ipsum pages - but there's big stuff a foot). When that happens, it will be the best all round solution - bar none - so check back if you have the same requirements later.
Balsamic was mentioned before - tools such as it are excellent for getting ideas on paper, but don't actually work as sites. I highly recommend Pencil as being better for the task (though it does require an install.)
If you care to build your own, start with a template. oswd.org is a bit of a waste of time, but check out free-css and Templates Exchange
Good Luck
Depending on what you're trying to achieve, Expression Engine is decent for a small site and Joomla is pretty good for small to mid size. There are tons of templates to pick from too.
The fastest way to create a web site is to use a host service like Weebly. You can literally create a site in minutes by clicking on a few templates. Many ISPs also host pages, check with your ISP.
I will also have to second the CMS solution. With a content management solution, you worry more about the presentation layout first, then the content second. As already given, there are several Content management solutions out there, including Sharepoint, Wordpress, Drupal, DotNetNuke, and Sitecore.
You design how the pages should be laid out by creating templates, then add these templates with content. You will have a very scalable site that is easy to build.