[Young Spartan]

Okay, so you want to make a website, right?

Well, all of us (even the expert web designers) have at one point wanted to make a website but just didn't know how. Well, this will boost you far past where most "noobies" end up (geocities).

Instead of running around asking professionals "What is a good site to make a site?" (we've all said it), just read along.

Okay, so you want to know what site to make good websites, right? Wrong. What you want to know, is how to make websites, to be generalized. Web design is not done from www.geocities.com, www.freewebs.com or www.angelfire.com! You may not believe me now, but I assure you. These websites give you small, uncooperative amounts of web hosting space, and a little program that builds pages for you, kind of like a front end to HTML. May look neat now, but starting there is digging a hole for yourself, most of us did, but I'm trying to save you from it.

So, what do you do? First of all, I will explain the options and which is best.

1. Free website creator, websites.
2. WYSIWYG Editors
3. Manual coding/programming

#1 - As discussed above, this is the least expensive, least satisfying solution. Highly not recommended.
#2 - WYSIWYG Editors, they are great if you know nothing of coding and have a due date... but if you don't, it is much more beneficial to you to not run this course. I know you may feel like you have a due date in anticipation to get a site up, but don't fall for it.
#3 - Programming. Learning the languages on your own instead of using graphical front ends to HTML is so much better! But, you don't think you can do it? Well, if you know how to type, surf the internet and read - you should be able to get this if you have an open mind and a bit of patience, it is actually rather simple.

So, what does it take? Many people prefer learning HTML through viewing sources, some like tutorials and some like books. I'm a book guy, but that doesn't mean you are or have to be. None of these are right or wrong. Personally, I used all three a lot, but I prefered to start by reading a book.

All you really need to do is find a good book, read it, then go from there. This is a guaranteed working solution, you can use others but being this is targeted for the newer programmers, I think it would be best to follow through completely.

So, what book? Where? To find a book you have of course, programming books (Programming Books) thread thanks to S2F, or you could take my recommendation:

Sams Teach Yourself HTML & XHTML in 24 Hours

Not only does this book give you a quick start in web design, it covers the grounds of the up and coming web standard compliant XHTML which will likely be essential to web designers in the near future. I program all of my web structural coding in XHTML, personally.

So, after this book, I do what? www.Google.com remains to be the best place on the internet. Search for HTML Tutorials and when you see something neat on a site, view the source to see if you can figure it out.

Let me mention that this is not all you need to know to do web design, it can very well do web design all by itself, but there are never ending possibilities when it comes to web design and no one person can or ever will know all of it.

I hope this is useful to you,
Yuneek