Hey Tyler. I also use DW3 and have the CS3 Creative Suite from Adobe. What I find works for me is to have a graphical vision of what you would like your site to look like. Of course the first thing you should worry about is content, but after you have that the image, or aesthetic value of your site is important as that is the first impression someone gets when they land on your site. Do you have any background in graphics? Sometimes all that is needed is the right color scheme which you can easily do in DW3 by utilizing background colors. Also, a nice graphical header would be nice as well...do you have a graphics program like Photo shop or the free GIMP program? And then of course, how you layout site out is extremely important as well for surfers to instantly see the written content you have. Take a look at a bunch of sites you like and try and recreate them with the tools you have. This doesn't mean ripping off their design, but get a close approximation of what you like about their site and "borrow" the layout. I do that all the time to get new ideas that I then transform into something of my own. Like anything else in life, you need a reference point before you can create something unique. When I was learning to pay guitar in my early teens I spent years listening to and copying all my fav players and now I have my own way of approaching my instrument. I don't sound like BB King, Steve Vai or Eddie Van Halen, but they informed my playing big time and as I got more into guitar I gradually found my voice...the same with web design. When I first started out designing sits for clients I just looked at the nice sites and figured out what to do. The great thing about DW3 is that it has a WYSIWYG functionality that, if you are not comfortable with code, then you can just place images and content visually in DW3...which I think you can already do if you are using the Lynda tutorials. I hope thsi helps a little. Good luck and all the best.
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