I'm not the best web designer in the world, so this tutorial isn’t going to be great. But if you’re baffled heres some short tips that might help.

Colors

I always thought that the main color of your site had a big influence on the visitor. Like each color has its separate emotion. If your website is all black it could hint that your hiding something. It also tends to looks slightly amateur. But on the other hand, if you’re trying to appeal in a younger audience and your selling something you want to look "cool", then black might be a better option. I usually have about 3 or 4 different colors, usually within a shade.

Organization

Things should be easy to find. Navigation should never be confusing. Try to make sure the labels you’re put on your links are direct or to-the-point as possible. I personally like things small. To me it’s easier to see, ironically enough, and get around.

Headers, or Labels

I always state what the user is reading or looking at boldly at the top of the page. Its not that I'm assuming they forgot what the topic was, it might just have a reassurance factor.


Thats all I've got for now, hope it helps.

nice topic
you can get more info about design stuff in this link http://www.webstyleguide.com/index.html?/contents.html its a free online book for proper web designing, it does teach you html

I feel that web designers shold give some thought and consideration to the width of the layout because people are going to have such a large range of screen sizes that what looks good at 800x600 won't look as good on a larger screen. Some designers use design diferent layouts for the different screen sizes and use javascript to direct users to the correct ones, but I feel that this is rather time-consumuing

well, you have the right to do everything on your design. but for those hightly visited site 800x600 is still a good choice coz they consider those poor web user which still use 800x600 resolution, which is dominant or sometime their main visitor

When I design a webpage (which I have done many times for me and others) I tend to optimize my page for a 56k user, and not to use to many images. Also, I make my pages easy to read for the visually handicapped.

It might be time consuming, I'll give you that, but it is one of the best ways to do a layout in my humble opinion. I think that it leads to a more professional looking site to have it customized by what resolution the person looking at the website is using.

About web layout... I design my layouts in photoshop and use it in my website...
have a look at my website... i designed completely in photoshop.... not completely exactly... the layout i mean....


My homesite

i use photoshop 7 to make layouts, like many others, which is very efficient. you dont need muich HTML knowldge to create one in PS. But you will need knowledge of PS, of course..
nice tutorial Pokona

well if you go to www.good-tutorials.com they show you how to make a basic layout

An excellent combination for producing a good website is using Adobe Photoshop and Image Ready.

For N00bs:

Adobe Photoshop- Excellent for the designing the graphics your site layout.

Adobe Image Ready- Good for slicing the design you creating using photoshop and exporting it to be a xhtml compatible page with image slices.

For more information visit: Adobe and possibly download a trial version of these software if you hav't got them already.