Hello everyone,

I'm posting here looking for some good counsel.

So, I've made it a personal challenge that I wanted to create a website from scratch and will learn whatever needs to be learned to make that a reality. So far, i know that I need to start learning
- HTML (first question : could I start learning with HTML5 directly?)
- CSS (second question : could I start with CSS3 directly?)
- Javascript, PHP and SQL

Have I missed an essential training here?
Do you have any good courses to recommend please? I'm thinking of getting the courses provided by Lynda.com.
Last question : if I learn and "master" these languages, will I be enough prepared to create my website?

A detail that I should mention probably, I intend to create the website with Dreamweaver CS6 afterwards.

Thanks for reading this and answering!

hello there!

 

depends on what you want to accomplish by building up your own website. if you are really going to learn all of these technologies, its gonna take you some time. althought they are all somehow about programming, each one of them is slightly different.

but if you really want to learn all of this and you are aware that it can take time(maybe months to learn enough to build a dynamic website), i would recommend you do it this way:

1. HTML

it's the core basics of website development. great resource (not only for HTML) is w3schools website http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp

you can start learning HTML5 directly, it is just a newest version of HTML. all HTML specifications are a subgroup of XML language (if you want to go deeper like leonardo dicaprio, learn XML first, you will understand HTML better). There are also older specifications like HTML4, XHTML 1.0, XHTML 1.1, but i see no use for you to learn them. future is in HTML 5, its also simplier and cleaner than previous versions.

important things to know about HTML:

what are elements and their attributes. pair and single elements. basic structure of HTML document (doctype, header, body). how to create a link (between HTML pages), how to embed an image. most common elements like H1(...H6), P, A, IMG, TABLE.

 

2. CSS

while HTML is used for definition of the website content structure, CSS is used for definition of its visual appearance. With CSS, you can define attributes like font color, backgrounds, shadows, layout, sizing and even animations.

 

you can start with learning CSS3 directly, there are just some new properties in CSS3, but basics are the same. again, start looking for knowledge at w3schools: http://w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp

 

important things to know about CSS:

css classes and IDs and difference between them. what are css properties and their values. how to assign specific CSS to HTML elements, how to include CSS files in HTML document. basic units like px,em,pt,percentage. various block models and their behavior. basic properties like font, color, background, width, height, border, float.

 

knowing HTML and CSS is a great start and as soon as you learn their basics, you are able to create a simple website that can be published on web. if you want to go further, you will need some programming skills - learn about variables and functions for start: how to define a variables, variable types, functions and their attributes, how to call a function, how to create one... PHP will be an easy language to learn the programming basics you can then use to learn other languages like javascript.

 

3. PHP and SQL

CSS and HTML (and javascript) are considered as client-side technologies. with HTML you can create a simple web document containing static articles. howewer, if you need to process data, dynamically generate content or evaluate user input, you will need a server-side technology like PHP (another server-side languages: ruby, .NET, java, python, ...). PHP document is compiled on server and sends HTML output to the client's (website visitor's) browser.

SQL is a database system to store website data like articles, users, images on the server. these data can be requested and processed by the server-side language (in your case, PHP) and then shown on the website.

 

again, look for the w3schools tutorials.

there are many important things you will need to know to create a dynamic website with PHP and SQL, so i wont mention them here, cause this is much harder then learning basics of HTML and CSS

 

4. Javascript

javascript is a client-side language. it can change the structure of an HTML document, change it's elements attributes, CSS properties etc on certain events like mouse click. there are tons of ready-made plugins and libraries for javascript, just learn the basic syntax and then look for jQuery library and its plugins, most of them are well documented and easy to use.

if you by any chance understand german, check out this course: https://iversity.org/courses/web-engineering-i-grundlagen-der-web-entwicklung

Edited October 13, 201312 yr by chutko

here you go i learn from here and is faster;p

 

http://freecourses.tutsplus.com/30-days-to-learn-html-and-css/

Start off learning HTML and CSS and make a simple web page and use .php instead of .html for the filename extension so that when you later add a little PHP the page will be ready for it.

 

When you have your simple HTML/CSS page working, add a little PHP code or javascript, probably copying a chunk of code from a tutorial and testing.

 

Code manually using Notepad (already on your computer) or Notepad++ which you can download so that you learn how to code, try to avoid Dreamweaver (unless you use the manual coding) as the coding will be done for you and you won't learn anything.

Thanks a lot for your answers everyone, mostly chutko, many thanks! Your answer really helped!