What is a layout of a website? - Part 1
Yesterday I read a question of a WA member asking what a layout, columns etc are.
So I decided to make a few tutorials about terms of website design. Today Lesson 1
Layout
That’s the way your website page is structured.
Normally you have a Header, a Content area, Footer
On certain pages you may have one (left or right) or even two sidebars (left and right or both left, or both right)
Normally the width of the layout is 1050 pixels. For some themes you can increase or decrease this width. Some themes are also responsive –they adapt the width to the width of the screen.
Header
That is the space where you will put the name of your website, your tagline (a slogan or a supplementary information about the content), an illustration (photo or logo).
The header height should not be to big, otherwise your content moves down after the fold. The header contains normally also one or even 2 menus.
Content Area
This is the space where you put your normal content of your page or post.
The width can be different (full page or with sidebar(s)), the height is infinite, but should not exceed 3 or 4 letter size pages. This is for the comfort of browsing. In some themes the header and footer can be fixed, so that only the content area moves up and down.
You can also do this by modifying the stylesheetCSS as follow:
#header, #footer{
position:fixed;
z-index:1000;
}
Footer
The footer is the space ant the bottom of your website. Some themes allow footer widgets, with the same functions as for the sidebars. You can normally add also a footer menu; and using for less important pages as privacy police, general conditions, etc.
It can also contain normal text as copyright information.
Sidebar
The sidebar is the space left and/or right of the content area. You must normally use widgets to put content in the sidebar. Usually you find there a sidebar menu, a list of your latest posts or comments, but you can also put photos, banners, videos, calendars, news feed etc. You can find a lot of customized widget plugins.
Recent Comments
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Hi Guy! How kind of you to lay everything out in laymen's terms! You are always so helpful and we all thank you for that!
lol seems a bit advanced for me will perhaps come back to this, as for a widget the only one I can think of is the ones you get in a can
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This is great. Thank you for sharing.