Christinejames

Sounds good - I will have a look at that and suss it out. Also checked your website- you have made some beautiful, clean and crisp sites! Wish I could do the same some day, but currently my life (and family) are encouraging me to stick with law! Do you charge by the project?

These seem great. Once I've learnt a bit about the basics i'm going to buy "Principles of Beautiful Web Design"

Thanks Pete and Mike, I've got my first two books on HTML, XHTML, CSS and Javascript. Just finished the chapter on basic formatting, now moving on to inserting links. Web building/design is something I have always been interested so i'm going to take my time to learn it, but you're absolutely right in terms of not getting it done any time soon so I may need to find someone who can build one for me based on existing models! I've just looked at the source code of Facebook and i'm literally like "What the H!!!" but I still think it'll be fun to learn! I don't need or want something as sophisticated as Facebook as i'm looking for a niche social networking site, plus i'd not even bother trying to compete with Facey B, (i'm looking for something more akin to a dating site format) but I want it to be more customisable than those template based ones. Do you guys do web design for a living?

Hey everyone, thank you so much for your replies! I really appreciate it! Fran, in response to your question, the social networking element is essential as I need members to be able to sign in and engage with the website for my idea to work MikeChipShop, Jamesosix and Renaissance-Design: I see where you are coming from. But the reason I want to learn it thoroughly is because I want to be in control of my site- there's no use in having it created for me and not knowing how to use it because i'll have to go to the developer any time i want to make a change! And I don't know any web designers to go into partnership with I'm not afraid of a challenge and am happy to put the hours in to learn it (I just finished my law degree from Cambridge Uni which has pretty much prepared me to take on anything ). I just need some guidance as to the best place to learn about it? I understand that there's some open source software called Drupal which has the capacity to build a social network - but there's no point in even trying to use that if I don't understand the list of things MikeChipShop and Renaissance-Design have listed. Thanks again for your replies

Dear Super Duper Web Designers.... I am a complete and utter novice in website building. I have no experience whatsoever. I want to make a niche social network. I have looked at the websites with templates like ning.com but I want a fully customisable one. I am happy to take a course to learn website design but there is so much about this on the internet that I don't know where to begin. I have a domain name and I have a (rubbish) free web host that came with it. This is the extent of my website design/building knowledge . Where can I learn to create my own website? Even better, i'd love my own mentor or tutor to teach me this stuff... :tv (2):