If you are starting your own website, you may wonder how to begin to get the look that you want, particularly if you don’t have graphics design experience or the budget to hire a designer. But today’s world of website hosting doesn’t require HTML skills for creating a nice looking site. In fact, you can find a number of online image makers that are free to use and have large libraries of images and fonts, allowing you to start designing your website as soon as your domain registration is complete.

Here are a few of the many free online image creators that you might want to have fun with while you get started with web hosting.

Background Generators

When it’s time for your debut in the world of website hosting, you may want your site, or some of the elements in it to have something a little more interesting than a solid block of color as a background. There, you can select the colors for the gradient, the size of the block, and click the “generate” button.

Gradients like the ones you can make at dynamicdrive.com are used as button backgrounds, and to create shadows or other visual effects. You can easily preview your gradient before saving, making it easy to get it just right with a minimum of effort.

Logos and Buttons

Cooltext.com (http://www.cooltext.com) is a site that lets you make professional looking buttons and logos for your website quickly, making the job of website hosting easier. You simply click on the style of logo you want – anything from simple and classic to wild and glowing – and add the text that you would like. Once you choose the style you want, you can customize not only the text, but also the colors, fonts, and background colors. There are enough combinations to choose from that you should have no trouble getting the exact look you want, and when you have it like you want it, you can preview and save it. When your image is done, you will need to save it to your computer and upload it to your website. CoolText doesn’t have linking to the images you make.

CoolText also has a button generator that you use in much the same way, specifying the button shape, colors, text, font, and other characteristics. You get a preview, and once you have it just so, you can render the button and download it to your computer. Be warned, however, making buttons and logos can be addictive!

Another button generator, this one available at buttongenerator dot com, has plenty of other free button designs. While you can join the site to gain access to more buttons, try out the free options first, because there are many to choose from. The site also has a menu generator that you can use to make a menu for your site. Again, it’s just a matter of selecting style and text. You can choose a simple button editor that lets you select the basics, or a more advanced editor that lets you select things like mouse-over color and add icons to the buttons. It’s a lot of fun, but if you create a button you like on the free generator, be sure and save it right away, because they are deleted from the site soon after you make them.

Simple Animation

For simple, animated buttons, Animation Online has a very simple interface. You simply choose the style and text. The selection isn’t extensive, but for simple animated buttons, it’s a snap to use.

Favicons

Have you ever wondered how to create those tiny images that appear next to the URL in your browser? They’re called favicons, and they’re 16 x 16 pixels squares and you can make your own for free at HTML Kit. You can create your own favicon with a 16 x 16 source image from your hard drive, which should be either a .gif or a .jpg file. Alternately, you can create a favicon from your Twitter profile picture.

When you first set up your website hosting account, you may wonder what you’ve got yourself in for. There are so many beautiful websites out there, and how do people make them? Sure, a lot of people spend a lot of money hiring professional web designers. The day may come when you want to do that, but you can create a really nice, professional looking website using graphics created for free on these internet graphics generators. You’ve got your URL and you’ve finished your domain registration: now it’s time to have fun designing your site!