Wireframing, HTML, and the Semantics of it All
Wireframing
Do not be afraid to look to other sites that might be doing similar things to take inspiration from how they are laid out. The sleeker the UX the longer people will stay on the site, so make it as easy to understand what you are trying to convey. To that end, know what you are trying to do with the site before you setout to make it. At the wireframe stage, few details. This is a blue sky spitball stage, so keep it lean and big picture. Contantly ask if the user will be able to easily use it.Keep it simple and obvious. Nothing is worse than getting frustrated at a website that is layed out poorly.Once there turn the wireframe into a prototype and then tweak and fill in fronm there. Clarity, Simplicity, Confidence.
HTML
A lot more of the responsibility of the structuring, and certainly more of the meta data is put on the writer of the code when writing in HTML rather than markdown. It has helped me with markdown having a very basic understanding of HTML, and has made me appreciate the efficiencies that Markdown affords.
Semantics
There are different ways to get the ‘same’ result in code, like manually changing the size, boldness, and margin space of a paragraph element to make it a heading 1 element. There is not real benefit for this though aside from tossing the semantics aside. In fact, tossing this aside could change if these elements would be on search engine’s radars whne they are scouring your website.