Another newbie member of what seems to be quite a popular site. Haven't read much thread from this site yet. I had been blogging on and off using wordpress for the past 2 years and I have gained some understanding on how seo plays a role in making your website found on google etc...

 

I'm now interested and quite keen to become a web designer and had started reading about html, xhtml and css for the past few days. There seems to be quite a lot of information to take in.

 

I would like to focus on creating sites using wordpress especially if it requires an ample lot of pages (as a cms). Or perhaps a simple html coded sites from scratch with a separate style.css for a simple "brochure" like sites.

 

HTML/XHTML

So far, I've learned about a, b, i, ul, li,, br /, h1,2,3,4,5 and other simple stuff. What are your learning styles in grasping such a mammoth of codes? You can always get the html codes when posting on Wordpress Blog and perhaps some free online xhtml editor of some sort? What about you guys? What other shortcuts do you use to so as not to type in those codes repetitively in order to speed up things? (I'm not lazy, just curious if you have other means in doing it)

 

CSS

I think this is where Im going to struggle a lot. I can't design/create images/background images myself but I have a taste of what a well designed website is. Do you normally buy it from online photo stocks? How would you fit different images on a page and make it resize and align where you want it to be? Is this where photoshop is needed? As I don't have one at the moment. Any great books to recommend? Or software worth investing in? Photoshop???

 

 

I hope I'm welcome in this community and hoping that you guys well not be so harsh on me when I ask some stupid questions in the future.

Hi

 

I'm in the same boat buddy. I have started by getting the O'Reilly missing manuals books which explain things in a nice logical sequence that is good for beginners like us. Also if you have an iphone or ipod touch then you can download them from the app store - they are about £2.99 each (assuming you can bare to read from a small screen!) Check out HTMLDOG and W3Schools there are some great introductory tutorials there to learn the basics.

 

Hope this helps you

 

jheg.

Wondering why my post went into Marketing section? I'm not offering any services yet. Just wanting to learn from as well as make friends with both newbies and experts alike. Oh well maybe I misunderstood the terms.

 

Thanks jheg for your reply.

Welcome to both of ye

 

http://www.csszengarden.com/ is a good place to start with css. Dont forget about css reset too

http://www.csszengarden.com/ is a good place to start with css. Dont forget about css reset too

 

Thank you very much indeed nellyshark. The link seems great.

 

If I want to replace the images, I'm assuming that changing the image link on css as well as ensuring it's the same width and height will do the trick. Will it?

 

Also, if the new image I've got is a different size, how do I alter the size? Some online image resizer seems to distort the actual image.

Welcome to you.

 

I personally use Lynda you do have to pay per month but it has loads of different software video tutorials from basic HTML up to advanced scripting Photoshop etc etc. go to the main page and look at the drop down menus there are 100’s and 100’s of choices.

 

It’s a mine field in web design “stick with it” though. Good luck and don’t forget to enjoy it while you’re doing it.

 

Mikee

Welcome to you.

 

I personally use Lynda you do have to pay per month but it has loads of different software video tutorials from basic HTML up to advanced scripting Photoshop etc etc. go to the main page and look at the drop down menus there are 100’s and 100’s of choices.

 

It’s a mine field in web design “stick with it” though. Good luck and don’t forget to enjoy it while you’re doing it.

 

Mikee

 

Thank you for the link.

I would like to focus on creating sites using wordpress especially if it requires an ample lot of pages (as a cms). Or perhaps a simple html coded sites from scratch with a separate style.css for a simple "brochure" like sites.

There's a lot of competition when you start specialising in the really popular scripts like Wordpress so it pays to be flexible, one solution is to look into learning lesser known CMS's because competition is less fierce and you can often charge more for your services

 

HTML/XHTML

So far, I've learned about a, b, i, ul, li,, br /, h1,2,3,4,5 and other simple stuff. What are your learning styles in grasping such a mammoth of codes? You can always get the html codes when posting on Wordpress Blog and perhaps some free online xhtml editor of some sort? What about you guys? What other shortcuts do you use to so as not to type in those codes repetitively in order to speed up things? (I'm not lazy, just curious if you have other means in doing it)

When you've learnt to hand code you'll find that it becomes second nature. There are no shortcuts per say, but using a good code editor will help speed things up with things like "auto complete", predefined code snippets and so on.

 

CSS

I think this is where Im going to struggle a lot.

The whole web is built CSS and HTML and without knowing them both you won't get very far. Practice practice practice is the order of the day, and spending the time learning will pay off in the long run.

 

I can't design/create images/background images myself but I have a taste of what a well designed website is. Do you normally buy it from online photo stocks? How would you fit different images on a page and make it resize and align where you want it to be? Is this where photoshop is needed? As I don't have one at the moment. Any great books to recommend? Or software worth investing in? Photoshop???

Stock photos will only get you so far so being able to create miscellaneous graphics is really essential - think things like button, background gradients etc - again it's a case of opening up an image editor and practicing.

 

Fitting images into a web page? that's what HTML and CSS is for (amongst everything else!).

 

There are many software programs for graphics creation/manipulation, Photoshop is only one of many others icluding Coreldraw, Photoimpact, TheGimp, PaintshopPro, Xara, and so on...

Thank you very much indeed BlueDreamer.

 

Re: CSS, can you site some examples of less known but reliable/secure open source CMS?

 

Just wondering with the images whether you actually resize them or you alter the size via css. This may sound stupid but does this affect the site's seo at all?