# Setting up my first site



## tbiggs (Jan 26, 2007)

Hey everyone,

I need a little bit of guidance in setting up a website. Questions are below.

1. When designing my site what is the best page resolution to setup? 800x600 or greater? And do you set your page resolution to exactly that size or a little less? I want to avoid anyone having to scroll the page and I want the design to encompass the whole viewing area.

2. When buying hosting space do I need to be concerned about what system server I upload to. Linux or Windows? I plan on having a friend do some PHP coding to integrate a shopping cart at a later date, but not right now.

3. I created a coming soon page in photoshop and sliced it in Image Ready and did a save as optimized "html with images file". Can I upload that once I get hosting or do I have to bring that file into a program like dreamweaver and make it a webpage. This is just a still image I am wanting to upload to my domain.

Thanks in advance for any help.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> 1. When designing my site what is the best page resolution to setup? 800x600 or greater? And do you set your page resolution to exactly that size or a little less? I want to avoid anyone having to scroll the page and I want the design to encompass the whole viewing area.


For the maximum amount of customer useability, you'll probably want to design for 800x600. That is, to make the site not have scrollbars at that resolution.

You would probably want your site to be smaller to account for the pixels taken up by vertical scrollbars. 728 is a safe pixel width.

Some people prefer to design their sites with a "fluid" width so that it can be viewed easily by customers with small and big monitors.



> 2. When buying hosting space do I need to be concerned about what system server I upload to. Linux or Windows? I plan on having a friend do some PHP coding to integrate a shopping cart at a later date, but not right now.


Generally, if you're going to be doing PHP scripting, you want to look for a linux server.



> 3. I created a coming soon page in photoshop and sliced it in Image Ready and did a save as optimized "html with images file". Can I upload that once I get hosting or do I have to bring that file into a program like dreamweaver and make it a webpage. This is just a still image I am wanting to upload to my domain.


Yes, you can upload that file once you get hosting. The HTML file that was included can just be renamed index.html and uploaded to your hosting account.


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## tbiggs (Jan 26, 2007)

Thanks Rodney! I have a couple questions to your response.



Rodney said:


> Some people prefer to design their sites with a "fluid" width so that it can be viewed easily by customers with small and big monitors.
> 
> Yes, you can upload that file once you get hosting. The HTML file that was included can just be renamed index.html and uploaded to your hosting account.


What do you mean by "fluid width"?

Why does it have to be renamed index.html? Sorry if this is a stupid question.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> What do you mean by "fluid width"?


Fluid width means that when the person resizes their browser, the page will grown and shrink with it.

Fixed width means that you set the width of your webpage to a specific amount of pixels and no matter how someone resizes their browser, your site stays the same width.



> Why does it have to be renamed index.html? Sorry if this is a stupid question.


Web servers are usually setup so that when you type in www.example.com, you are actually viewing an "index" file in the example.com/ directory on the server. so if you type in t-shirtforums.com, you're actually viewing t-shirtforums.com/index.php but the index.php doesn't need to show up in the browser window since it's the default index file.

The index file is usually index.html, but it can also be index.php, index.asp, index.shtml home.html depending on how the server is setup.

But index.html is pretty standard to work with all servers.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

Here is some related reading material on fluid width vs fixed width designs:

Screen Resolution and Page Layout (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

Resolution vs. browser size vs. fixed or adaptive width | 456 Berea Street


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