At WebStarts our goal is make creating a great looking website easy for everyone. But we also know sometimes we just don't have the time to create that pixel perfect site. Here are five time saving web design tips that will help you design a better looking website, faster, using WebStarts.
1. Clone pages
When you create a website you're going to want some general structure so people know where to expect to find things like the navigation menu on your site. At WebStarts we give you a leg up on this structure by dividing the page into three separe parts. The header, footer, and body. However there can be a lot of page elements that exist within the body of each page and there are probably times when you want most of the body to look the same regardless of the page. An easy way to save you the time of having to create each page from scracth is to clone the page. You can clone a page in WebStarts in the page editor by clicking on File > New and then selecting the page on your website you want to clone and then clicking on Copy Page. You'll need to give your newly cloned web page a name but that's it.
2. Duplicate elements.
Just the same way you can clone pages you can clone or duplicate elements. To duplicate an element all you need to do is click on the element you want to duplicate and then click the Duplicate icon on the toolbar in the page editor.
3. Aligning elements uing the keyboard.
Once you've duplicated elements you're going to want to move them into just the right position. To do this I suggest using the keys on the keyboard. When an element is selected you can move it one pixel at a time with the arrow keys on your keyboard or ten pixels at a time by holding the shif key and pressing the arrow keys. This is a fast and easy way to to create just the right spacing and alignment between elements on your page.
4. Utlize the header and footer.
Earlier I talked about how each page is divided into three primary sections called the header, footer, and body. We talked about how cloning your pages will save you the time it takes to recreate your page structure in the body but the header and footer only need to be designed once. Any elements you drag into the header or footer appear in the same location on each page of your website. So you can put things like your logo, business, name and menu into the header and it will show up at the top of each page on your site. This is a huge time saver and it makes it easy for the people who are visiting your website to find their way around.
5. Group elements.
Earlier I talked about how you can duplicate a single element and then use the arrow keys on the keyboard to align and create space between them. In the event you're working with a set of elements, lets say for instance a box containing a few paragraphs of text and you'd like to clone all of those elements to another place on your page you may want to consider grouping elements and then duplicating them all at once. This accomplishes two things that will save you time, the first is you'll be able to copy blocks of elements that are already pixel perfect and align them all at once. The second is you'll be able to move a group of elements all at the same time. To group elements simply drag them into one another.
There you have five web design tips that will save you time and effort with WebStarts. If you haven't already signed up be sure to visit WebStarts.com and click the Get Started button to create your very own free website. online store, and blog.