I think I have finally worked out SEO....

I have been redesigning free templates however I think I am nearly ready to create my own using notepad.

The thing I am not clear on is <div>. To get the desired width do you just make one for content (id="content") and one for sidebar (id="sidebar") and use CSS to enter the width of each?

Also in the html, would the above look like this:

or this:

And are you meant to put a <div> around everything? (e.g. <div id="container">)

I would appreciate any help.

Thanks

 

It all depends on how you style the div (set the width,etc.). You can do this:

<div id="main">
	<div id="LeftContent">
		main site content
	</div>
	<div id="SideBar">
		Left sidebar content
	</div>
</div>

#main { width: 770px; }
#LeftContent { width: 500px; }
#SideBar { width: 270px; }

Code (markup):

This will make the whole page locked in at 770px (small enough to not scroll in 800 resolution browsers), and it will define your main left-side content area with a slim 270-pixel width sidebar.