how to make layouts

Lots of people wonder how in the world dollers make their layouts. Well, now you'll be able to know! This tutorial will tell you all the different aspects of making layouts for your site. This is a text tutorial, which means there won't be any pictures. I can't force you make your layout a certain color or a certain way, but I can guide along the right path to a well-made layout. =)

Layouts come in all different shapes and sizes, the smallest being around 500 x 300 pixels, and the biggest being approximately 800 x 700. Big, eh? The size I like to use is around 600-700 x 400-500 pixels. Well whatever size you wish to use will be fine. The usual layouts have at least three iframes, others, sometimes, use just two. I prefer three or four, myself. There's normally a 'Menu' frame on the left, a 'content' frame in the middle, and a 'linkage' frame on the right. Sometimes there's even a frame for sisters at the bottom of the content frame. Any variation you come up with will probably be fine.

One of the most important things to remember while making a layout, is to make sure everything is positioned so that it looks good to the eye. This means, that you have to make all your frames the same distance apart, the same height and the same width (with the exception of the content frame, which is usually the biggest, or little frames for spotlights, advertisers, etc.). Otherwise, the layout will look messy and disproportioned. Also, try to make the content frame wide enough to hold your content, otherwise the visitor will have a hard time looking at your graphics and such when they have to scroll all over the place.

Nice colors that work well together is key to making your layout look good. Go here to see some of the colors that work nicely with each other. Of course there a lot more colors that you can use, those are just some guidelines.

Your background can't be too busy, or else you won't be able to see the text, so either make your background brushes sparse, or bombard it with brushes until you get a nice graphic texture. If those aren't possible, then you can change the opacity. Also, blinking/changing/moving backgrounds are completely out of the picture. They are just too busy and can't really be toned down, so just restrain yourself from making an animated background. Glitter on dolls is okay though.

That's basically all there is to making a good layout, if you think I'm missing something, please tell me about it using the suggestion form. I'll be adding things as I think of them also. Thanks for reading! =)

If this tutorial helped you in any way, linking me would be nice, but is not mandatory.