I was wondering if anyone could help me get the exact proportions of a basic website theme design for Visual Site Designer. I would like to create my own and would like to see the product as I expect it should look rather than be [ahem] surprised. The pixel size would be fine.

Also, would I have to do something special to be sure that if I lengthen the page from within VSD, that I don't get something weird [like repeating the header or something]?

I would at some point, like to see the "styles" within the program retain their original sizing. Adding them to even medium sized graphics seems to make them enlarge to the point where they don't look very good at all. They seem to be set by default to enlarge to match the object.

Hi tsturqill, I made my site from scratch with the vsd did not use one of the canned themes. My home pg and all pgs have been 1000 pixels wide from the start. Now my home pg is 900 pixels tall and has been various lengths. My background image has evolved over time, started out with clouds and then made paint brush brushing up the color in the background but that was a 2 meg file size so now I just use the gradient background on the pg properties settings.
In creating your own theme I recommend to just go with the VSD features it has a large variety of highly diversified and up to date bells and whistles that will facilitate the rapid and easy development of a fabulous web site design. Later you can venture into doing more sophisticated things after having learned how to do the basics.
Creating your own site theme is under the basics category. There is a link to my site on my name tag below.

Since VSD sites are static (they don't resize according to the browser), it's best to keep them at dimensions that won't cause a horizontal scroll on most screens. Something around 960 or 980 px wide (a little under 1000px). The length can be anything you want, but plan for what's best for your content. Decide if a new page makes more sense than a long scroll.

If you don't want to have a header repeat when or if you need to lengthen a page, then you need to design your background image so it can repeat seamlessly. In the example below, I've made the bottom blue section much longer than it needs to be to fill the page length. If I need to extend a page, the blue color will continue, and if the page is long enough to cause the background to repeat, the blue at the top of the page will blend to allow some more length before the stripe pattern starts to show.


I think the Styles are best kept to smaller graphics like buttons. They would be visually overwhelming as backgrounds, for instance.