Hello Webmaster-Talk. I'm a new member here as you can see, and I need loads of web design help.

Well first off, here's my situation... For the longest time I have been wanting to create a professional looking Xbox 360 website. Similar to www.TeamXbox.com and how they have all the nice graphics and what not. They are my biggest influence.

I have always been more of an expert on forums though and it's only about a year now that I have been trying to create websites. I am actually very good at adding content and making things unique. My main problem is I don't have too much knowledge of how to make such a website.

Sure, I can make basic halfassed HTML websites but they just don't have the potential to get anywhere. For example, yesterday I decided to start writing one just so I could see what my content would look like on the web. It's so basic though, and about the best I can do. (Without the main banner and some more images I to be added/the content.) Here, let me give you a screenshot of the site (with nothing on it... I just want you to see how lame the layout is).

Click here for the screen of just the basic layout. Not content, no images, rough color scheme...

So yeah, that's basically the best layout I can make using Notepad and Core FTP Lite (and GIMP or Photoshop for images). And since it's so bad I just make them so I can see what all of my content I write looks like on the web that I have stored on my computer.

Don't get my wrong though, I'm a very fast learner and very dedicated to all of what I do. I have a vBulletin forum that grew to 50,000+ posts and 2,000+ members in just about 4 months. That's because it was all I did for the first 4 months to get it to grow. So I'm not just some random guy that wants to create another old boring website. I actually believe with the right layout, graphics, and of course unique content I can have a very large Xbox 360 site/community too.

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Now, my questions to some may sound incredibly sad, but I'm trying to learn and really want to know how to make such nice websites.

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-What do you is think every program needed to make such a site as www.TeamXbox.com? I know Photoshop, an FTP program... what else? Dreamweaver (which I know not much about)?

-How is such a site made? I know it can't be all HTML. Does it use Java, CSS, etc. or is it really all pure HTML?

-Is there any websites or tutorials that you know of that can get me started on such a project? Also, is there any people you know that can help/would want to help do it with me? Basically I want to have a great website like TeamXbox, but I can only do so much such as the content, domain, ideas, forum, and everything else. What I'm lacking is to be able to make a design and whatever other visual affects on code writing is done.

Thanks

You have Photoshop and a text editor.. that's all you REALLY need to build a web site. Dreamweaver is a TOOL, nothing more, it won't make you a better site. Left on it's own, DW creates horrible code, you're better off sticking with hand coding in Notepad.

Your example site has some nice graphics AND it's mostly done with HTML and CSS and NOT a mess of tables. Your basic 3-column layout could certainly work to do something similar, it would just need some adjusting.

Alright, here's another question, just picked from random out of my million questions.

You see how my navbar(s) are just some boring tables with one flat color (#999999 I think)? How does TeamXbox get theirs to be almost like an image, but it's really not, because if you copy it or anything you can't.

Is it done by making a CSS file for the navbar?

They do indeed use css for their menu. The css code is in their style sheet. They have set a height and width for each link and they have gave each link a background image which makes it look like they are buttons when they are just text links with rollover effects. This is very easy to do with css.

Right. That metallic effect IS an image, but it's set as a background in CSs as Crandall has noted. That is also why you don't see just an image in the HTML code.