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Responsive Design

Nowadays you need to design your website to display differently depending on what device its being viewed on.

Screen Displays can be measured in pixels - width by height. Desktops will typically be over 1,000 wide whereas a mobile phone might be more like 320 pixels wide. The physical difference in size is quite a bit and whereas a desktop can display quite a lot of text across it, on a mobile you would want to only show small chunks of text at a time so that people can manage to read it. So what needs to happen is you need to have a so-called "responsive" design which will detect the resolution and physical width of the device on which the user is viewing your website and display the content appropriately.

(If you want to find out more about the different display sizes currently being used, use these links but you do not need to as I really want to keep things simple for you ! http://gs.statcounter.com/#resolution-na-monthly-200903-201401

and 

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/03/21/responsive-web-design-with-physical-units/)

What I recommend is that you make use of a Responsive Web Template.

There is quite a bit of coding behind a responsive web site design and really I'd recommend you dont start to try and do this yourself. (If you want to try this then good luck with it but this is not the blog for you !)

So make use of the following templates which I have found useful. So far there are not many templates out there. They seem to be based around a so called skeleton template which breaks the screen up into either a width of combinations of up to 12 columns.

Comparison : Using a Web Hosting Service or Using a Free Blogging Service

.htaccess files

Graphics

HTML and CSS - Designing your Website

W3 Schools useful etc
also forums for Expression Web

SEO

Do It Yourself Web Design

Welcome to My Blog - I imagine if you have found this blog then you are :

• Making plans to design your own website, or,
• Have already designed your own site and you are looking for some hints and tips to improve your site.

Posts on here might also help to empower you if you are a business owner paying for web design :

• Do you want to find out more about what your web design company are talking to you about ? 
• Regain control of those discussions where words such as css, SEO and html are flying around! 
• Dont worry its not difficult.  
• Sometimes an expert will make a better job of design, but not always, and it always helps to know what you should expect from a company or when writing up a contract for web design.

However the main target audience of this blog are DO IT YOURSELF WEB DESIGNERS ! 

Welcome to the CLUB ! THE DIY WEB DESIGN CLUB !  

You have now taken the first step towards creating your own presence on the internet !

I have been designing websites for quite a few years now and would like to let you into the secret of how easy it is really (and money saving !) to take control of your own website and design it yourself.

Each posting on here will deal with a different issue and I will recommend the order you read them.

I have built up my skills by attending some courses and also by reading extensively on the internet and creating my own websites. I hope to pass on some of the most important lessons I have learned. I will also aim to recommend free software if at all possible, so that your first foray into designing your own website will be more of an investment of your time rather than your money !

We are in this together ! Let me know if you have found any useful tips which you think I should add.

Keywords that might help define this blog are : web design, css, SEO, do it yourself, design your own, create, how to, money saving, save money, hosting, html, text, blog, website