It's also very important to visit some sites of your own site-subject, for links and of course design inspiration. But don't copy to much, be original. Gather material like links, pictures, animations, downloads and information. The best is to construct it all by yourself, if that is possible. But the most important things are what you want to tell and what unique vision is never shown. Make it your story and don't copy someone else.
If you gather all your components, you need a program language like HTML, JavaScript or Flash to give it shape (Flash is a more graphic interface). When you think your site is ready, put it on the Internet and test all functions, like links, downloads, pictures, guest books and sub sites. Ask your (girl)friends for there opinions. If it's ready for a bigger audience, you need to "Submit" to some search engines.
Image Web - Format
Most data in a web page is not the program language itself, but the pictures and animations.
If you want a fast, quick-loading page (some people will skip a slow site), you need special
web formats for your pictures. Images must have small data & high quality as much as possible.
For this purpose you can use three special Web Formats : Interlaced GIF, Progressive JPEG & PNG (8 & 24 bits).
The latest commercial Graphic software supports those formats and they are still in progress. I Think
Photoshop 7 has now the best Web-Format (save for web). The files are very small and the quality is still good.
Interlaced GIF & Progressive JPEG is common standard now on the Web. PNG is new and a good quality format
replacement for GIF (see my test) : The amount of data is much smaller, but it has the same quality.
For photos it's better to choose JPEG, but for drawing pictures (logos, maps & graphics) GIF & PNG8 are better.
PNG24 is no option because it's much to big for web use. It needs some experience before you choose the right format.
How to work with Web-Format (work with the compare windows)
JPEG (Progressive) : Don't choose under quality 5. Data will be small, but with bad quality.
Use dither and a little blur for photo's. It gives a good result, try it out.
GIF & PNG8 (Interlaced) : Use Transparency, it will reduce the data. Always use a large amount of colors if possible.
Sometimes use a little blur & Transparency to the background color, experiment with those parameters.
Example : Compare Test
For this compare test I took a picture and saved it in different formats :
PNG24 / 145 Kb. PNG8 / 53 Kb. GIF / 62 Kb. JPEG / 38 Kb.
Conclusion : JPEG is the smallest, but with too much quality loss. PNG24 is much to big for
a graphic file. GIF & PNG8 (256 colors) are the best choice here.
PNG8 is smaller, but not supported with older browsers. So choose GIF if you want to have the most certainty !
Books I can recommend maybe also available in English, but these are in Dutch :
