Web design by
Don Shorock

For each of eight elements, you'll choose one of about 16 million colors. We'll be mixing red, green & blue light and, for each of those, we choose a value of 0 to 255. (255³=about 16 million).

The start gradient and end gradient choose the colors behind the sidebar menu. (I think it usually looks best as a gradient, but if you make them both the same, you'll have a solid-color sidebar.)

The border chooses the color of the line between the sidebar menu and the body of the page.

The body chooses the color of the balance of the page.

Then you can choose the color for the text, the links, the visited links, and the active links (the latter being the least important). They can be different or the same as each other. Make sure these are all visible over the body of the page. If they are also visible over the sidebar menu, that's fine. If not, don't worry, these can be a different set of colors if that helps.

Black is 0 in each of the 3 (red, green & blue). White is 255 in each. While 255,0,0 gives you a bright red, you can choose something like 128,0,0 to make it a darker red. Changing to 255,128,128 would make it whiter (i.e., pink). You can play with these until you get exactly what you want.

You can also use this

When you've found the color scheme you like:

If you'd prefer not to choose your own colors, let me know and I'll choose something for you.