Starting a website

Once you have a few dolls that you are proud of, you probably want to show them off to your friends, other dollers, maybe even the world. There are some easy ways to do that online, such as a photobucket account, online profile or an account at deviantART. All you have to do is create an account and upload your dolls in an easy way, and people can see all your hard work in an organised way.

Why go the extra step and create a website?

Because it will help you gain skill and knowledge you get to use in non-dolling life as well. Many graphic artists or designers also have a good understanding of coding. So if your pixeling ever leads to an interest in graphic design in general, knowing a bit about websites will help you along.

First you need to know that building a website can be easy, free and fun. To make a site you need notepad (part of any windows pc) or a similar easy editor, some free webspace such as on webs.com and some dolls. You can also use the built-in wizard program to help you build a website, or the templates that webs.com offers. But by building your site by yourself you will have more control over how it will look. And it won't take more effort to write the code yourself.

But where do you start?

A typical dolls site has at least 3 pages.
1. a homepage: the first page you see when you get to the site.
2. a dolls page: where the dolls are shown.
3. a links page or an about page: Linking to other sites is a nice gesture, and an about page is a nice way to introduce yourself.

Get some actual paper and a pen/pencil and think about the layout and what you want on each page.

The homepage: you need a link to the dolls page and a link to your links/about page. That is called 'navigation'. You need to put that somewhere were people can easily find it. You also need a place where you show your latest news or updates, or latest dolls. And a nice header or logo. In total you need 3 blocks, of different sizes. So on your paper, draw where you want the header/logo, where the box with navigation should go and where you want the main text.

Does that look right to you? Can you use the same layout for your dolls and links/about page?

Make the header/logo. Pick your favourite doll, or make one that suits your layout theme or colour. If you want to make a piratey website, make a pirate doll. Or if your colour scheme is pink, make a cute pink doll. You can choose to make a header image, with your site's name on it as well. Or just a smaller logo-like image.

You can also write the text you want on the homepage, and on any other page. Make sure you also link back to basemakers' sites under or near the dolls, so document where you got the bases from.

If you have all these things done, you can start coding or making the website in a wizard-program. You can take a look at Lissa Explains or Flaming Pixel's tutorials, or follow Glam's HTML workshop tutorial.

And some other things you could consider is if you want to have a counter on your site, to see how many visitors you get. Or think about adding a contest, or dollmaker or anything you think your site needs.

I have made 2 layouts with lots of helpful comments in the code. You can use these layouts as a starting point for your own site. Click on preview to see the layout, and click on download to get the zipfile with all the files you need for a website. These layouts are only to be used for dolls and/or art sites for non-commercial purposes.

Layout 1 - Preview - Download
Layout 2 - Preview - Download