Page 1 - Setup

Before we start, please remember if you see any image that is too small to read, just click to enlarge it.

1. First of all i always start by creating a new document with dimensions around 950 x 1100 this gives us a lot of space to work with and of-course will make your site very wide. You will find that most gaming related sites tend to have a lot of information and will usually go for wider dimensions for their web sites.

2. Next we need to set a background colour, now for most gaming/clan related web sites a dark background is often used, and instead of going for a straight black, its always better to go for a very dark shade of a colour, i find that a very dark shade of blue works very well with most colour's. I am using the colour #2B2E39.

3. Now using the rectangle tool, create a box that runs all the way from the top to the bottom of your canvas, making sure you leave a bit of space each side, so that the background still shows through on the left and the right. Make sure that your box is in the middle. (You only need about 5 - 10 pixels of room each side, if you want a really wide design) This box needs to be a little bit lighter than the background, for mine i made it #3A3C44. This box will act as a container box in effect. * Its a good idea to name your layers so that you dont forget which is which, to do this you double click the name of the layer in your layers panel, an then type a new name.

4. Now inside this container box you need another box which will basically act as the content background, and will be the background box on which we will build up all of the content. This box needs to be light so that when we add text the dark text will stand out from the light background. I made this box a gray colour, #D1D2D3 The advantages of setting up your site this way is that it can be used to stretch vertically once it has been coded and made functional.