the magician

Thanks guys, you make good points. I want to be a designer, not developer, though there is some overlap there. Since I'm coding my online portfolio, maybe that is enough to show that I can.

I've seen other people redesign sites like IMDB and Facebook, I'm wondering if I could do the same for a local business website and add it as a concept in my portfolio. Do I need to ask them for permission? And also, because I'm just starting out, is it ok if all my portfolio projects are fictitious as long as I state so? I kinda just made up companies, created logos for them and created their site layout which I filled with Lorem Ipsum text. How important is it that I code them as demos?

Thanks, both of you. Off to look up tutorials and read about different CMS's then.

Let's say I design a website in Photoshop - for example, something like this http://www.awesem.co.uk/ - would using WordPress or another CMS to build/code it be easier and better than doing it from scratch using HTML/CSS/etc? I'm kind of confused on how it works because I don't want my website to look like existing themes created by others, and I keep thinking that if I use a CMS it wouldn't look like what I originally designed. Or is there so much flexibility in CMSs that I can selectively use it for the parts of my site that need it? Also, do you guys use frameworks such as Bootstrap to help you develop a site? There are so many tools out there that I don't know how to move on to the building stage by putting everything I've learned together.