My first website

Quasar

New Member
Hello everyone, this is my first post.

I am high school junior and I have never even really had the desire to learn how to build a website until recently. I live in a rural area and my high school doesn't offer a basic web design course like some do. I already know what college I want to go too and I know that i want to major in Information systems. Part of the curriculum is for me to take two web designs courses with options of takes more as electives if I desire.

I have been reading every single html tutorial that I can find and I feel like I have a general understanding of it. I am not an expert mind you but generally when I pull up a websites source code, I can pretty much tell what all the tags are and what they are doing with a few exceptions. One html tag that I do not feel very comfortable with is the <meta> tag. I know that is stands for Metadata but I am just not sure quit what it is for and how or if I should use it. I also don't really understand Cascading Style Sheets but based on what I have read, I don't really have to use them.

I know that most professional web designers don't need anything to create a website except for notepad but I don't think I am at that level. I have downloaded a free program called kompozer and have been playing around with it. However, I have just learned that I can get Adobe Dreamweaver at a discounted price. My mother works for a Major University whose offers web design courses. They allow faculty to purchase licenses to software that they hold a license for with great discount. I think my Mom said that she can get Dreamweaver from her work for around $40. However, being that I have never used it, I am not sure if it will do me any more good than Kompozer even if it is at a huge discount. So do you guys think I should get it? Is it much better than Kompozer?

Anyway I have tried learning programing languages in the past such as C++ and Java but the problem I ran into was that it was hard for me a apply what I had learned because I really didn't have project in mind to use the C++ or Java. This time I have my website idea and have a general idea of its content. I have even found a website with a similar theme to what I want that I can use as a guide. So I'll be hanging around, mainly reading topics and trying to learn as much as possible and maybe even asking a few questions too. I hope to give myself a leg up when I get to college and be a little bit ahead of the game.

I look forward to the process. :)
 

naveen

New Member
Hi.. I am working in web designing for few months now.

I have read tutorials for html and css from www.w3schools.com, its very helpful. You already know html, css is very wasy to learn, it will just take few hours to completely learn basics of css.

<meta> tag is for providing information about the web page metadata is data about data, its important because lot of search engine use this tag to get inforamtion about web page. for example -

<meta author="author_name" date="26-04-12">
will give the info. that this page is written by author_name and last modified on date 26-04-12.

I suggest you to learn css and then jquery to completely design any static web page you want. Then you can get into dynamic pages(PHP, J2EE etc).

Dreamweaver is good i have not used kompozer, but with dreamweaver is very famous for web designing it has lot of features.

Good luck..
 

CaldwellYSR

Member
I also don't really understand Cascading Style Sheets but based on what I have read, I don't really have to use them.

Incorrect. I don't know where you read that but check when what you're reading was written. This is 2012 and if you want styles you must use CSS. I sincerely hope you're not using tables for your layout. Make sure any tutorial you're reading was written in the past couple years or so.

As for kompozer, I've never used it so I don't know... as long as it's not a WYSIWYG editor (aka as long as you're writing code and not dragging around images and stuff) then it should be fine. My favorite editor is Aptana Studio, it has almost all of the good things about Dreamweaver and you don't have to worry about the stupid design view. Plus Aptana is completely free.

All that being said, welcome to the community and good luck with you're learning :)
 

Quasar

New Member
Incorrect. I don't know where you read that but check when what you're reading was written. This is 2012 and if you want styles you must use CSS. I sincerely hope you're not using tables for your layout. Make sure any tutorial you're reading was written in the past couple years or so.

As for kompozer, I've never used it so I don't know... as long as it's not a WYSIWYG editor (aka as long as you're writing code and not dragging around images and stuff) then it should be fine. My favorite editor is Aptana Studio, it has almost all of the good things about Dreamweaver and you don't have to worry about the stupid design view. Plus Aptana is completely free.

All that being said, welcome to the community and good luck with you're learning :)

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I don't want one of those drag and drop programs either. I want something that will help make the learning process a bit easier yet still lets me have control and still is actually helping me learn. This isn't a school project, this is just for trying to learn who to build a web page.

I have heard of Aptana Studio, I ran across it when I was looking for software. I also heard a few good things about it. I might give it a try before putting $40 down on dreamweaver. As I stated I live in very rural area and while my local phone company does offer DSL, it is not very good and is crazy expensive, $45 a month for only slightly faster than dial up internet. My mother got internet with our cell phone company. It is a lot faster and cheaper. The only drawback is that we have a data limit so I have to pick and choose what I download...can't download tons of software at once. But I'll download Aptana next month.

I joined another forum before this, a big general computer forum that has a programing web design section in it. I started asking my questions there but the people there acted very snooty. They told me all I needed to make a website was a graphics program..they recommend Gimp, and notepad and for not to bother with any of this software. But I am just a beginner and don't think I am read for that hard core of a challenge yet.

and Naveen, thanks for your kind words and encouragements and thanks for the info on the <meta? tag. That must be why none of the html tutorials I have read have covered it.
 
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CaldwellYSR

Member
I joined another forum before this, a big general computer forum that has a programing web design section in it. I started asking my questions there but the people there acted very snooty. They told me all I needed to make a website was a graphics program..they recommend Gimp, and notepad and for not to bother with any of this software. But I am just a beginner and don't think I am read for that hard core of a challenge yet.

Nobody really uses notepad. I don't think there are any serious web designers that don't use software with some kind of tag completion and/or code assist. They just cut down on the time it takes to code.

I'm interested to know what tutorials you're learning from too. If you don't mind sharing of course ;)
 

Quasar

New Member
Nobody really uses notepad. I don't think there are any serious web designers that don't use software with some kind of tag completion and/or code assist. They just cut down on the time it takes to code.

I'm interested to know what tutorials you're learning from too. If you don't mind sharing of course ;)

Well I have used several..I have used a few at w3schools.com I also used pagetutor.com a lot...those are the big two I have had a look at few others as well. I am currently going through a website template creation tutorial at http://www.building-a-web-site.com/.

In all honesty, the art aspect of this is probably going to be the most difficult for me as I am not very artistic. But the design I have in mind doesn't involve me creating much art...just modifying photos. I still do have create a logo but I am just going to keep it simple for now.
 

CaldwellYSR

Member
I would suggest looking into Nettuts+. They have one of the best basics tutorials out there. I don't want to offend you or anything but both of the ones you talked about (pagetutor.com and the building-a-web-site) look really old and outdated. I'd hate for you to learn antiquated html and put yourself into bad habits from the start.
 

Quasar

New Member
I would suggest looking into Nettuts+. They have one of the best basics tutorials out there. I don't want to offend you or anything but both of the ones you talked about (pagetutor.com and the building-a-web-site) look really old and outdated. I'd hate for you to learn antiquated html and put yourself into bad habits from the start.

No offense taken at all. I don't know enough yet to know that those tutorials were out dated. So I greatly appreciate the heads up. I have booked the tutorial you recommended and will start going through it tonight.
 

Quasar

New Member
CaldwellYSR,

Can you recommend a tutorial that is not a video. I will still keep that tutorial book marked for when I get to a hot spot or something but again I have limited data with my internet and watching those tutorials will really eat up my data limit.
 

CaldwellYSR

Member
I learned html and css basics from w3schools. After getting the basic basic basics from there I just started googling specific things that I needed to know. When I wanted to figure out how to make a 2 or 3 column layout I googled it and found articles about divs and things like that. The link I gave you before (video link) is the best I've found that goes from the complete beginning.
 

anna

New Member
Nobody really uses notepad. I don't think there are any serious web designers that don't use software with some kind of tag completion and/or code assist. They just cut down on the time it takes to code.

I'm interested to know what tutorials you're learning from too. If you don't mind sharing of course ;)

I use DW and notepad at work and just TextEdit at home...
 

CaldwellYSR

Member
I use DW and notepad at work and just TextEdit at home...

DW has code assist ;) I could see making small changes in notepad or textedit (or gedit for awesome linux ppls) but I couldn't see actually trying to make a full site that way. If you do that then more power to you :p
 

Lizyd Design

New Member
Dreamweaver is very good :) But you don't need it. Try design a site on something free for now, Kompozer does more or less everything Dreamweaver can do, at a basic level. I highly recommend you learn CSS, it's not that different to html in terms of learning difficulty. While we're on the point of reading tutorials, try learn some basic SEO, this is more or less what meta tags are used for. Good luck man, I wish you all the best in your web design escapades. :)
 

redig

New Member
My work is all done in Photoshop and Programmer's Notepad. I got Dreamweaver early on in learning web design and haven't touched it since my first project. I like to build the code from the ground up and know exactly what's gone into it.

I'm not a high volume designer, but the knowledge I've gained from adding every single line of code has helped me tremendously.

Read tutorials. Some good links have been given. w3schools.com is terrific. I still go there for reference.

Build a basic site. Start with the the bare minimum to make a valid site.

Make it into something. Add complexity one step at a time by using Google to learn (e.g. "How to make a navigation bar"). If you can come up with an idea in Photoshop/Gimp/etc., you can try to recreate it in HTML and CSS (and yes, CSS is vital).
 

Matt F

New Member
Hi, I'm pretty new to web design, but my impression is that things are much easier these days than a few days ago. From my understanding, CSS is for front end designing and can help in faster page loading. I'm a real Wordpress freak and have found I can handle 90% of what clients throw at me. I have a lot to learn too but there are so many tricks and short cuts these days I outsource any real tricky stuff.

P.S Feel free to correct or weigh in on my comments :)
 
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Phreaddee

Super Moderator
Staff member
notepad, aptana, dreamweaver... they are all the same to me.
I really only have 2 requirements with my code editor
1. lots of screen real estate,
2. Ability to customise the syntax highlighting

if its got that I can get down and do my thing.

try not to underestimate css and its ability. it is deceptively simple at first.
learn it well, and thorough.
 

benjamin.morgan

New Member
Definitely don't use pagetutor. They teach you html without closing tags and uppercase tags. I personally preferred just w3schools when I first started in HTML/CSS. For other languages I used other sites. http://tizag.com is good as well though.
 
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