Websites such as Fotolia.com and Istockphoto.com allow you to purchase rights to numerous photos and graphics.  You can then use the photos and graphics on your site. In addition, you can google public domain images and graphics to try and find what you need that's free to use.

Image Types and Formats

Let's take a look at the characteristics of raster and vector images to help you understand them better.

Raster Images

Raster images, such as photographs, are the most commonly used type of images in website design. They don't scale well. If you try to enlarge them or shrink them, you'll typically lose some of the quality because they are made up of pixels, and those pixels get resized instead of the image as a whole. With raster images, there is only one layer, meaning the image is flat. However, they have a smaller file size than vector images, meaning they are quicker to transfer and take up less space on your web server.

Vector Images

Vector images are commonly used for print design. Vector images can be resized without losing quality. They can also be edited fairly easily because they have layers, whereas raster images are flat. You can edit the different layers to change the look of the graphic. Because they have layers, they also have a larger file size.   This can make it hard to use vector images on a website. Most graphics you create from scratch using a program such as Adobe Illustrator will be vector images. If you want to use them on your website, save them in a raster format first.

Image Formats

Remember, the larger the file size of a graphic or image, the longer it will take to load on your page.

What You Will Need for WordPress

Since the download links for these can change, you can easily google any of these programs, then install them on your computer.   You can also google other programs available online. 

The biggest decisions you will make when designing your site or decisions that will affect the look and feel of your website. Although content is very important, the way your website looks will determine whether visitors stay to look at the content – or leave your site just as quick as they can "X" out. 

That said, the two big things that will influence the way your site looks are the color and the fonts that you choose. 

We'll talk about:

• Choosing colors for your website

• The RGB color wheel

• The color models

• Creating colors using codes

• About fonts

• Web safe fonts

• Installing fonts on your computer

Let's Talk about Color

The colors you choose for your website will be based on either your own personal preferences or colors that represent your business or organization.   For that reason, we're not going to spend time telling you which colors are best to use, because every website, person, and industry is different. You'll make the color choices that represent you or your purpose the best.

The Color Wheel

When choosing colors, there are tools you can use to make sure that the colors you choose will complement each other.   Graphic design programs use a RGB (red, green, blue) color wheel to do just this.

The RGB color wheel divides colors into three groups. These three groups are:

• Primary colors which consists of the three main colors: red, green, and blue.

• Secondary colors that are the colors you get when you mix two primary colors together. For example: red plus blue equals purple. 

• Tertiary colors are colors that are created when primary colors are mixed with secondary colors. Examples of tertiary colors are cyan (blue-green) and magenta (red-purple).

The RGB color wheel is pictured below:

You can use the color wheel to choose the color scheme you will use on your website. A color scheme typically consists of two main colors.

You can choose complementary colors, or a pair of colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel, such as blue and yellow.   You can also choose analogous colors. These are colors that are grouped together on the color wheel, such as yellow and green. 

You can find a free RGB color wheel to use at http://www.colorspire.com/rgb-color-wheel/.  

There are also plenty of software programs, both free and premium, that will help you to choose your color scheme.   You can do a Google search on "create color scheme software" and see the myriad of results. 

NOTE: Since programs, associated costs, and effectiveness change at such a quick pace (much like technology), we cannot recommend any one certain program to you for this aspect of website creation. However, as you can see by the snapshot below, locating resources is as easy as bringing up your favorite search engines. We recommend reading reviews before purchasing any software program, as well as making sure your anti-virus software is up-to-date before downloading any program from new source.

About Color Models

The RGB model represents the colors that you see displayed in electronic devices like mobile phones and computer monitors. With the RGB model, it's said that you can create any color you want by using different amounts of red, green, and blue – the three colors that make up RGB. It goes without saying that since you're designing a website that will be displayed through a computer monitor or mobile device, the RGB model will be the basis for the colors in your web design.

RGB colors are represented by three numbers.   Each of these three numbers reveals how much red, blue, and green makes up the color.   The numbers go from zero to 255. Think of the numbers as coordinates on a map.   If you take 50 red, 100 green, and 75 blue, those coordinates will all intersect at a certain color. In other words, those numbers make up the color you've created.   Just for fun, that color is shown below.

The hex color color uses hex codes. The hex codes represent the colors in the RGB color model. 

Take a look at the snapshot below using the color wheel from the Colorspire site.

We've circled the RGB values in the snapshot above.

Below the RGB values is the hex code.

In a hex code, the colors – red, green, and blue, are each represented by two hexadecimals.   Those hexadecimals are combinations of 0-9 and A-F. 

Below are the hex codes for some common colors.

Color	Hex Code
White	#FFFFFF
Black	#000000
Red	#FF0000
Orange	#FFA500
Yellow	#FFFF00
Green	#008000
Blue	#0000FF
Indigo	#4B0082

Fonts are the typeface that you'll use for the text on your website. You'll have text in the body of your website, but you also may have it on graphics, logos, and other images.   As you create your website, you'll be able to determine the size and color of the font that you use. Perhaps you want to put a headline in large red font, but an article in small black. These are customizations that are easy to make to any font, no matter what type or style of font it is. 

For the most part, fonts are grouped into categories based on their style and type. You will find these categories below.

• Serif fonts are decorative. They have tails or curlicues on the edges of the letters.

• Sans-serif fonts don't have decorative edges. They have straight edges instead.   In addition, they are easier to read on electronic devices.

• Script and decorative fonts look like cursive or hand writing. They're not a good choice for content because they can be hard to read unless they're extremely large.

• Monospace fonts have letters that are all the same height and width. Monospace fonts are usually used for coding, but not for display on a website. 

Web safe fonts are fonts that are automatically installed in the majority of browsers that your visitors will use. This means you visitors will be able to view these fonts on your website without any issues. 

Let's put it another way. They are called web safe fonts because, if you use one of these fonts, you will know that the font you've chosen for the text will be the font that is displayed to your visitors.  

If you choose not to use a web safe font, and the font you choose is NOT installed on the visitor's browser, the visitor will then see the default font used for their browser.   They will not see the font you've chosen to use.   This can affect the overall experience you're trying to deliver to your visitors when you choose your fonts. For that reason, you want to always try to use web safe fonts in your style sheets and body content. 

Below is a list of some of the fonts that have been designated as web safe fonts. This means they are installed on most browsers.

Font	Font Style
Arial, Arial Helvetica, Arial Black	Sans-serif
Georgia, Times New Roman	Serif
Tahoma, Geneva	Sans-serif
Comic Sans MS	Cursive
Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua	Serif
Courier New, Lucida Console, Monaco	Monospace
Trebuchet MS, Verdana	Sans-serif

Finding Fonts to Use

Web safe fonts aside, there are thousands of fonts out there that you can use as you design your website.  You can find these fonts online and download them, usually for free.  Once you've downloaded a font, it's easy to install it on your computer so you can use it for your website.

Below is a list of some of the more reputable sites to find and download fonts:

1.        Google Fonts – www.google.com/fonts

2.       Urban Fonts – www.urbanfonts.com

3.       Fonts.com (this is not a free site)

To install the font you've downloaded on your computer, first unzip the file and save the unzipped file to a location on your computer.

Next, right click on the unzipped file. Select Copy.

Go to C:\Windows\Fonts on your computer. 

Right click on your mouse inside the Fonts directory. Select Paste to paste the file.

The font will then be installed.