This is a rough draft and a continued piece of work!


For most people just surfing the internet or learning new programs on their home computer can be a task. Most people would love to design a website or start a small business online, but feel they lack the tools. There are some great "do it yourself" free website design and hosting businesses out there, but that is far from learning how to build and host a true website.

I got into the web businesses a few years ago as a general manager of a sports card forum much like USFK Forums but for sport card fanatics. I was always good at computers, but was never good at being a website admin or developing my own website. After almost two years of learning the behind the scenes of running a website I decided to develop my own business. This was not easy because I had no schooling in web design, web hosting or web business. I learned everything hands on and by asking a lot of questions.

Most people learn how to build websites for three reasons. Either to start a small businesses in web design (building websites for businesses), to build a website to make money off it (MySpace, YouTube, etc) or to have fun building personal sites for friends and family to enjoy (like a blog or image gallery).

Below are my prioritized list of key things to learn. You can either go to a book store and buy a book (what I always do) or find some tutorials on the web. Call me old school, but I prefer the book method, but also use the tutorials online. Most of the books out there come with a DVD and/or a link to their website with useful scripts.

There are also TONS of off the shelf software. You can usually find a script to do just about anything from $50 to several thousand dollars. But that wouldn't be as fun as creating a website from scratch, now would it?

Here is my checklist of things you should learn about if you are serious about learning how to build websites.

1. Learn HTML
HTML is the building block of Web design. More advanced users use the basic framework of HTML and use CSS, PHP, Javascript and other scripts to embed into HTML. You must have a basic knowledge of HTML before learning anything else. Sure, you can use Frontpage, Dreamweaver or other "What-you-see-is-what-you-get" editors, but without basic knowledge of HTML if will be begging for help later.

2. Learn CSS
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It is a powerful way to keep an entire website standard and to easily make changes later on. CSS will replace most of your HTML code when it comes to tables, text and other core code. I am just learning this know! Don't make the same mistake I did by avoiding this. It is a simple tool and will save you time later.

3. PHP
If you plan on making advanced/dynamic websites you will need to learn PHP and eventually MySQL or another database script (see #4). This is another program your humble author is now learning. It is open source and FREE! Just go to php.org.

4. MySQL
MySQL is an open-source (free) program used to create and manage databases. If you plan on making sites with members or tracking data this is a must to learn.

To be continued...

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Mike,

Nice beginners guide on what to learn. There are a few points you make that I'd like to add to if you don't mind.

While I do like books for learning, I found a website that has been invaluable for my development as a web designer. http://www.communitymx.com You would have to spend $1000's to get all the same information in books and if you join (the only website like this I've ever paid for) you can download all the tutorials in pdf format and print them. For anyone, beginner to pro who want's to learn new things, this is the first place I send everyone now to learn.

While it is fun to create a website from scratch, sometimes that just isn't an option. As of yet I haven't found a single script costing money that doesn't have a Free GPL counterpart that usually works better anyway. CMS, Forums, Galleries, Commerce, Project Management, Bug Tracking, ISP management, Databases, Languages, Server Software, Editors, Email clients/Servers, etc. All of those things can be done perfectly well for free.

Most web scripts like some that I've listed use a templating system, the choice for the webmaster is to either build their own template (hard but may be worth it, don't try until you have an advanced understanding of HTML), Buy a template from someone who makes them, or use a free template (opendesigns.org is a great place)

I have to add an X in front of the HTML. If you are learning how to make websites now, don't waste anytime at all with learning plain HTML, there are coding practices you will have to unlearn to move forward. You can do all the same things in XHTML but it will work in the future.

As far as editors are concerned, there are a lot out there ranging from notepad to having debuggers for scripts built in. After trying many different programs I've found my prefered editor using a program called Eclipse with a few pulgins. Notepad++ is also great.

CSS is essential. I would go so far as to tell every new web designer to always use a linked style sheet and to never code into the main XHTML files any style information (Fonts, Sizes, Colors, Line Thickness, Region Sizes, etc) put all of these things in the style sheets.


These things that Mike and I have listed here are what I wish I had read when I first started down the road of learning web design. It's a lot of fun and can be really worth it, but you have to be willing to spend hours troubleshooting. I spent 2 weeks once trying to make a part of a template move correctly using XHTML/CSS, I finally got it but it required some crazy code. Just saying this because there will be times you'll run up against some problems that will stump you, keep at it and you'll eventually figure it out.