This short guide will teach you the concepts of how to design a web page in a few simple steps.

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The first thing you need to design a web page is an idea. There are many great sources to inspire ideas, such as magazines, television, even other web pages can help you form some ideas for your web page.

Your idea will evolve into a source of information or entertainment for visitors to your web page. The success of your web page is very much dependent upon the quality of the information you are delivering to your visitors, but how you package that information is also very important.

Here are some places to start looking for ideas for your web page:

Most Internet users consume information in small bites and depend heavily on visual elements to help them expedite the consumption of that information. For this reason it's important to package your information in an attractive easy to understand flow accompanied by visual elements that compliment the information.

Next you'll need to come up with a theme for your web page. A theme will help your visitors understand what the web page is about. The theme includes the subject matter, color scheme, whether or not the page will have photos, graphics or other visual elements etc. Without a theme the web page will just be a jumble of words that may or may not be meaningful to your visitors.

After you decide on the theme for your web page you're ready to start the design. The design phase is where you decide on the layout to organize the information on the page, enhance the look of the web page using colors and graphic elements and determine the flow of the information.

A strong design combined with quality information is the key to a successful web page.

Now that you understand the thought process that goes into web page design you now need to choose a software package to help you design it as well as chose a hosting company to publish your web page so that visitors can find it on the World Wide Web. You also need to decide on a domain name for the web page.

The software most web designers choose to use is Adobe Dreamweaver for the layout combined with Adobe Photoshop or Adobe FireworksFireworks for the design. There are some open source web design software available but they typically offer limited support and are not as robust as the software offered by Adobe. The downside to Adobe software is that it's quite expensive. You might find a pretty good deal on Ebay but that can be time consuming and frustrating.

You'll need a good source for stock photography to avoid any problems with copyright infringement so check out istockphoto or shutterstock for great value.

There are many great web design books and web design videos to guide you through the specifics of how to design a web page so I won't go into detail about that here. You can find books on how to design a web page at Amazon and other online outlets or you can visit your local book store to find some.

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