This takes some time and patience
1. You need to draw out on paper what you want it to look like
2. I recommend no more than 1000px wide for the bulk of users browse with 1024x768 - you may use a liquid design as larger monitors like 24" 1920px are becoming more popular
3. next select your website folder in the soutions explorer at the very top - right click and add new master page
4. Now this takes time and trial and error to get exactly right, but design with div or tables, your layout exactly (use CSS for widths, floats and styling)
5. When you have it Right decide where you want the content from each page to be displayed and add a asp:contentplaceholder to each section, name them something like "Navigation" and "Content" and "Footer" "Sidebar"
6. Then when you create a new web form (aspx page) make sure masterpage check box is checked and select Masterpage.master then the new page will automatically display each contentplaceholder -
7. When you set up your page you only place your code between the appropriate contentplaceholder start and end tags.
For a basic masterpage layout - I use 2 one for a homepage, one for a content page
my Content and Homepage Masters are the same at top and bottom, but the content masterpage has a 3 column or 2 column layout 20% 60% 20% I use the left for navigation, center for content, left for relevant links and ads
on the home page I have two column layout 40% 60% where I use divs to separate categories in the section in the 40% I usually have a large relevant pic for that section, and in the 60% I have feature divs with a headline and 2 or 3 links with a small pic to a category within that website section
check out the major news websites like foxnews or cnn they have the 40 60 and 25 50 25 setup
"Success is the Sum of Small Efforts, Repeated Day in and Day Out - Without Ceasing!"
Robert Hall
CEO and Founder
My Service Solutions, Inc.