Website creation

How can I make a website like this one? It's the the best I've seen, it's crisp and clear with small type that is incredible and the gradation of the pages and setup is fantastic. The color and tone of the entire site is outstanding.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1030&message=31028430&changemode=1

Curt

That site is a forum. It's part of that big web site.

The first question you have to ask yourself is what do I want my website to do. The second is how do you want users to navigate your site. Then you can figure out what you want your website to look like.

If you like the layout of the linked web site, you can probably set yourself up with one of the big blogging services and make a website that has that look.

I bet a lot of time and many people were involved in the dpreview site, not to mention the cost.

If you want a website where you have "custom wishes" like this, engage a webdesigner. If you dont feel you have the time to read up on the area yourself. Wedesigning is not wysiwyg even though many softwares keep telling us so.

Just to get small type to be readable and clear is a huge topic itself. After CS5 was launced I tried to make a few small micro-sites with Flash Catalyst. I designed the website in Photoshop or Illustrator with each transition in a separate layer. Then I opened it in Catalyst and defined menues and transistions. In Flash you can use all kinds of fonts from your system and scale them as you want, but it the results can quickly be unreadable in the final site. I wanted a modern look with small pixel-fonts. And these fonts come in sizes customized for a particular size. In a font family one can find fonts suitable for heghts of exactly 6, 8, 10 and 12 pixels. Any scaling of these fonts will look odd. A font customized for 6 pixels will look strange when stretched to 7.

I recently installed clear type tuning and it was eye opening. I make fonts and designs in Fontographer and it's a job creating just one, it would be a like a scribe in a cell to make a complete font set with numbers.

Once in a while I see something on the web that's visually exciting, often it's the same old boring stuff. Can't have candy all the time though.

Curt said:

I bet a lot of time and many people were involved in the dpreview site, not to mention the cost.

Click to expand...

You bet they do, but they are a commercial site and they do it to make money. The question is how much effort (and money) do you want to put into your own web site to share (or sell) your photographs with the rest of the world.

If you find a web site you like, email the owner and ask questions. Most everyone will answer your questions.