Coming up with a colour scheme for your website can be a daunting task especially if your website is community based therefore very important for maintaining traffic. For any beginner to web design i would recommend using online colour scheme generators until you get used to creating your own. One i recommend is Colour Scheme Designer as it produces colour co-ordinated schemes based on user selection and has the option to export the scheme in different formats.

Colour Scheme Designer

Beginners should understand that colours on the web are represented by hex codes. These are represented as a code preceded by a hash symbol '#'. For example the colour black is represented as the hex code #000000. Hex codes for colours are now inbuilt for software such as adobe photoshop, but can also be easily found online, so for any colour you wish to use on a website through the use of css can be tailored very specifically.

Flash is becoming more popular in recent years for attracting the attention of visitors. Flash is used to create interaction and animation for your website. It is ususally used for headers, banners or advertisements and instantly catches the users attention. More will come on flash in a later post.

Another language that is worth mentioning is javascript. Javascript adds functionality to a website and by this i mean creates dynamic features. This can vary anything from validation on a form to those very annoying animations that follow your cursor... you know the ones! Through the use of javascript your website is no longer a static boring canvas, but provides feedback. Another example of this is popup messages when a user tries to submit a form that has invalid data in a specific field indicating a message for proper use. It is the scripting language of the web. I will mention more on javascript in a later post but thought it would be beneficial for anyone who had heard of it but didnt know what it was or wanted to get ahead. In the next post on a beginners guide to web design we will be discussing search engines and how to get your website indexed.