Novice at web design

[Brokering.TV]

While I have been purchasing name for a while, I have to learn how to build sites. I think it is time...

I would appreciate everyone's help. I am looking for a logical stepwise approach towards building a basic knowledge and skill set of web design.

Assume I am starting from scratch, know absolutely nothing (which I am):
1.) What is the best step-wise approach to attack this? Where to start and then where to go from there.

2.) What are the best resources to read and research, again for a novice.

3.) What is the best way to begin learning- can I read and teach myself? Should I take classes?


Thanks for the help, I believe this is the amazing value this forum provides to its' participants.

Thanks!

P.S.- I am very committed to doing this, please only respond if you are truly willing to help, I will follow what you so. I am ready to being asap!

 

[Barrucadu]

Well, what I did (and still do, whever learning something new) was to look at things other people had made, look at the code, and guess what everything does. If I couldn't figure something out from the code, I googled for an answer.

 

[Makis.TV]

start with an open cms such as Joomla or Drupal or the famous Wordpress

 

[Dangerman]

What I did was learn basic html. First buy a nice simple text editor. I really like notetab pro because it's simple yet it can do more advanced stuff, if you want to take the time to learn what it can do. Then find some basic html tutorials, like here
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q="simple+page"+"basic+html"&meta=
It will probably only take you an hour or so to go from knowing nothing to being able to put up a simple page using basic html. Then you can take another week or so to learn more html code to add some stuff to your page. Then maybe go looking for some simple pages you see on the internet, and if you want to see how a certain thing is done, you can right click the page and click on "view source". Now that you know some html, you should recognize some of the html code and if it's a simple page most of it will make sense. Just keep learning from there. I didn't bother to learn any advanced stuff, only the most basic html, so others might have better advice.

 

[Pred]

I agree.
I'm just brushing up my skills again. Only ever been a basic html man, keep it simple.
The best resource i ever found is www.w3schools.com
All free and step by step, amazing.

 

[Brokering.TV]

Thank you so much everyone! I will start by reading and learning basic html. Again, I know NOTHINg. So even your language I can't understand. There is no way I could look at the code of a simple page and try to replicate that, especially when I don't even know the codes work. I will read the resources you have suggested and follow the steps. I am going to get something up by next week!! Thank you so much!

If anyone has anymore resouces, please fire away.

What do you guys think of the dummies books?? I own one and would like to start reading that as well.

 

[nantech1]

Learning HTML

Brokering:
One site that helped me when I was getting started in HTML was: http://www.w3schools.com/css/tryit.asp?filename=trycss_text-transform. You type in your HTML code in the left window, click a button and it's presented as it would appear in a browser on the right- instantly. Saves alot of time when trying stuff out.
Keep at it and you'll learn a great deal. Your websites will benefit.