KCooper

Good work, mate Kyle

With regards to getting a job in web design, you would be a lot better off spending those 3 years developing your skills, putting together a solid portfolio and actively seeking a job/going it freelance. Plus you won't end up with a load of debt in 3 years time. On the other hand, I went to uni, and had an awesome time and wouldn't change it for the world. I can't say it particularly gave me a big advantage when going for website design jobs (though, to be fair, it wasn't a website design qualification) but I learnt a lot from the experience. Going to university is an experience in and of itself, in many ways the academic side of it was only a small part of it for me. Kyle

I'm 24. Left uni with a HND and a BSc, started getting into web design just about a year ago. I'm learning something new every day - a big part of the appeal of this job Kyle

I'm just gonna say the same; use a thicker font! lol... But it is an improvement over the original, and thats always a good thing. Just keep working on it Kyle

Welcome!

I generally go with 960px width. And as mentioned, height isn't so much of an issue so long as the content is good. Plus, these days with all the jquery sliders and things you can use, you can fit a lot of information into a smaller space anyway.

Welcome! :-) Kyle

Paper to sketch. Photoshop for the design. Notepad+ for the coding. Kyle

As alzer said. Practice, practice, practice! With each website you create, your skills will improve. These great sites that you see, are usually the result of many months and years of, ultimately, practice. Kyle

I've seen junior web designer vacancies asking for 2 years+ experience. I think if you are unable to get employed without the formal experience, then gaining experience working with an experienced web designer/developer/company would be a great idea. Excluding the valuable experience, it also shows willing and initiative, that you are happy (or at least will settle :-P) for working for less or no money, to progress your career. KDK, that looks pretty interesting. I'm currently looking for my first official web design job, I'll have to check that site out... Kyle

All you need to do is sign up for a FREE (or paid, if you wish) cushycms account. Then add the class of "cushycms" to any div container you want to be editable from within the cushy cms. So, it will require some editing of the html files, but not much.

Welcome! Kyle

I've used cushycms on a clients website before. Its pretty good to add the ability for basic page editing. Theres a video on the website, give that a watch. Its only about 5 minutes long, but it explains pretty much everything you'll need to know about how to use it. Kyle

Try putting a CSS reset in first. Google for it, eric meyers is a popular one. Kyle

Its probably because your using absolute positioning for everything. You could easily create a page with that specification using relative positioning and floats. It might take an extra push to grasp them, but it'll be worth it in the long run, trust me. Just google HTML and CSS floats, there is a veritable plethora of tutorials available! Kyle

I like 4 and 5 the best, mate.

Good stuff! :-)

Hi mate, I see andy got there first regarding what files you need to edit. I have honestly found editing the comments section to be the most difficult part of the whole wordpress site integration so far. I've made a start on my new blog page, but I've only got the comments section half set up so far. Once you start getting into it, it isn't TOO bad, but it took me ages to get started lol

No mac or indeed apple product in sight with me either

Welcome!

Pfffft, bloody amateurs

Agreed. Concentrate mainly on maths and english, as good grades in these will give you a solid foundation to move on to pretty much anything. Other than that, IT would be a good one to go for seeing as you are looking to move into the world of Information Technology. Personally, IT GCSE in school (though, it was 8 year ago that I did my GCSE's so it may have changed...) was largely pointless, but it will look good on your record if you decide to take it further, at a-level perhaps, or in uni. But really, concentrate on getting the best grades that you can in the core subjects, as once you move beyond GCSE, and closer to the real world, these are the only ones that will carry much weight. In a positive light, its fantastic that you are aleady putting together a web design portfolio. That is a serious advantage that you will have when looking to get your first job, whether or not you decide to go to uni first. Keep working on the portfolio. Regarding a uni course, it really depends. You could take a graphics-based course, which would improve your ability to design websites, or a more programming based course, which would improve your ability to code the websites. Either way, you will realistically need some competencies in both. Kyle

I'm just in the process of integrating my portfolio site redesign into WordPress. My first foray into it, and its been a slightly more difficult curve than I had originally expected to be honest, but its been good! You seem to be going about it the correct way. Create a .php page, with the 'template name' piece of code at the top. Then go into the admin, create a page, and select the 'template' name template from the right hand side. There are 2 options from here. You can either simply make a static page, coding everything as if the CMS-side didn't exist, or create a page that actually interacts with the CMS side of wordpress. For this you need to insert "the loop". Its really worth reading into this, as it is the fundamental thing that makes WordPress tick. You can see my site in my footer (currently in development) and it has both of the above pages in use. If you need any help just message me, mate, I'm literally in the middle of doing all this for the first time myself, so any issues I've had to overcome are still fresh in my head Oh, and regarding the main navigation, I simply hard coded it into the header.php file. I figured that I wouldn't be updating it any time soon, so it would be fine just to code it in by hand. Kyle

I'm not exactly experienced with the level of development that would go into a social networking site, but as mentioned above, your probably looking at at least the £5000+ mark, thats probably being fairly conservative, and just for the starting point. With the position that facebook currently holds, it seems almost unfathomable to find someone who could even remotely compete with them, but of course thats in no way saying that if you have an idea, don't bother. Its always worth a shot if you definately feel your ideas are unique or tap into a missing (and actually desired) niche. If they don't, however, its probably not worth going ahead with. I think its important to remember however, that though one person did indeed originally start coding up facebook, the social networking site has changed quite considerably since its origins. I highly doubt that he is and has been the only one coding up the site since those days. He may well have planted the seeds, but I'm sure a whole other team of talented (and well paid!) developers have enabled it to grow. Kyle

As already mentioned, go with Photoshop (not cheap) or GIMP (free!). Kyle