Two sites from a newbie....

[allthewhile]

Hey,

I'm new here, so I hope I'm following all of the unwritten rules with this post.

I have two sites that I'd like you to look at.

www.duboisacademy.org

I'm content with the main page, and most of the content pages, however I have a hard time visualizing design for the layout of the pages that don't have a lot of text on them. For example, compare

this page:

layout looks decent

with

ugly layout

In other words, I have no ability to layout a page that has a mixture of text and images.

Help, ideas, would be nice. Also, I use .shtml. I find that it works easily right now to update the entire site that way, as I haven't been able to get around to learning css.

Check out the layout of my personal site. Yes, it is mainly a stupid blog but I like to use it as a personal journal for myself and my extended family.

[xarst]

I suggest you to make a table with two columns, one for the images and the rest for the text.
I've also seen this in Opera. (look at attachment). I don't have any idea of why is it, but it is a link. (you pass the mouse and it does the hover). Maybe the "pros" like transio know it. But don't get mad if he wants to have the have the "true-word". (do you like my english?? ;-)).
Transio: don't get mad with me! The beginners would be never be pros if it wasn't for people like you, really.

IHopeIWasOfHelp!

[xarst]

Oh! I forget to tell you something about CSS.
It's the best! You can have a maybe 3-5KB size file have all the setting on your page, and if you want to change you design, you just modify that file, and all gets right!
I learned CSS by getting a sample CSS and alter the values. Later you learn how to use classes (that are like: .toptable, every class can be asigned to almost every item on a page, and you can modify any aspect of it). Finally, as you get used to it, you learn how to make a CSS draw the whole page insted of only the links and text.

Find some good tutorial on Google and learn it.

[allthewhile]

I do plan to learn css when I get some time in the future. Using server side includes completes much of the problem of changing the layout quickly for me at the moment. I however, lack an artists skill, and need some help with the layout that I showed you.

Thanks for all your suggestions.