Hello everyone. I am new to web design, having recently started a one evening a week college course in HTML.
I have produced my first site and would welcome some constructive criticism - http://www.hansat.co.uk

I have used a background that I found on a free background site.
What I would like is the same background but with a red line running down the left hand side of the page to make it look like a two inch margin.
I keep trying to do this unsuccessfully (I must be stupid!) by various means - tables, frames etc and have also tried saving the background with a vertical red line, as a picture. However, this makes the backsground file size about 260kb which is too much.

Any ideas? Thanks

I don't understand, there already is a red line on the left side do you mean on the right side of the page in addition to the left?

at the moment it is right over on the left - I want the line to be about two inches in to look like a two inch wide margin

Try doing this:

thank you, I will try that and let you know how I get on.

how did that code work for you? i have been where you are and if you need any help i'd be glad too. I warn you though i'm new at this too, but i have sucessfully done what you want to do and yea it is a pain in the butt

i like the site it is simple and easy to navigate. i really liked the scrolling marquee on the personals page.

I have tried the code in my as yet unpublished update and it works well.
Thank you so much for the help and advice.
I have noticed that my scrolling marquee does not work in Opera? How do I get round this?

You have to use Javascript, an applet, or Flash. The <marquee> tag only works in IE.

Try keeping the background as a table background for the left instead of the whole page. If you made the right side a plain white background, and left the left side with the redish background and a red line separating the two, you'd present a complimentary contrast and make the site a touch more attractive.

Also, move the marquis up to the top, just under the buttons. A marquis should be used to illustrate an important piece of information, and you'd never see a top story on the back page of a newspaper now would you?

Monochromatic sites work well on "Business Card" type sites, but rarely for sites with more content than one page. Also, try to stay away from using 1 color images on a monochrome site. They tend to look like stamps and get overlooked frequently because they blend in too well with the overall look.

How do i do that?

Time for you to take a crash course in frame design. I toke a look at your source code and there are too many tables there. I use tables extensivly in m designs but your'e over doing it. The left site belonges in a frame and choose a different color for the bk.