Web site creation for beginners?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am interested in learning how to create web sites.

I am an artist and would love to create virtual galleries and web sites with interesting graphics.

Any ideas on where to begin? I have fairly basic computer skills but I learn fast!

2

It depends on how much of a hurry you’re in. If you want to rush into things (which I really don’t recommend), you can get something up quick with a program like Dreamweaver or (ick) FrontPage. (FWIW, FP has an easier learning curve, but doesn’t give you as much control as Dreamweaver.)

If you have a little more time, pick up a good HTML book. I’d recommend the O’Reilly series, but it may be a better reference (which I use it for) than a book to learn from. Flip through it, see if you like it.

If you have a little more time, learn Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as well. It’ll give you much greater control over layout than plain HTML will (well, arguably anything can be done with enough nested tables, but that’s hardly the elegant solution), which may be useful if you’re making your site “artsy.”

Of course all of this is fairly useless unless you have your graphics to put on the site. Do you have or use Photoshop or Illustrator? If not, pick up a copy and familiarize yourself with it (again, books - Adobe’s “Classroom in a book” series is quite good to learn from). Then make your graphics, save 'em as gifs or jpegs (or ping, if you’re not terribly concerned with “old-browser” compatibility) and you’re set.

Oh, you’ll also need a webhost. I recommend Dixiesys, personally, but there’s a lot of webhost threads floating around (including an active one in GQ, right now, IIRC).

3

Everything he said :slight_smile:

4

There is software that can make a gallery website for you. Anyway, read around the web, try download.com & input ‘html’ in the search box for programs that might be useful. html.com has services & info.

5

Use CSS and XHTML. If you don’t know, take the time to learn. The trouble you go through now will save you huge amounts of time later. If you want to change your layout, with CSS, all you need to do is to edit one file, and that’s it. With the old way of mucking with tables and whatnot in HTML, you need to go through every single one of your webpages and change them, which can easily lead to mistakes.

6
      • You definitely want to consider a general web-programming textbook that has basic examples and explanations of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML and DHTML. If you know nothing, buy this first.
  • A big reference book on HTML is nice to have also. Don’t buy any of the little, thin “web-whatever for dummies” type books. A big boring book from Wrox or O’Reilly costs twice what a “Dummies” book does, but is far more than twice as useful.
    …
  • If you want to do lots of cool stuff on web pages, Javascript is your best (free!) choice. Complicated stuff is, well, -complicated to create, but much of what you see in Flash and Shockwave can be done with simple Javascript, at least in IE6.
7

Try htmlgoodies.com. Lots of basics, and not just for html.

8

wades in and contradicts half the thread

You will want to learn HTML. It probably the easiest “language” around. You don’t need big fat books and stuff to start off, you don’t need a web-host to start off. To get started with HTML all you need is a browser and a text editor. You can view your creations on your own computer, and don’t need a web-host until you want to show them to the world.

http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/kids/
is for kids, but very very good and easy to follow.
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/frontdoor/beginners.html
is for beginners, also very good and quite easy to follow.

Learn HTML, it takes a half an hour of learning to be able to make a basic page. When you know the basics you can then choose what other knowledge you want to add to that. You can deepen your HTML knowledge, learn CSS, learn Javascript, learn PHP etc.
However, having the HTML lets you decide if you want to do that, or if you want to just pop in free code snippets from the web. Knowing HTML will also enable you to use the various editors like dreamweaver etc.

If you learn HTML you get loads of choices about where you want to go, and what you want to do, it is the first building block for webdev.

As an artist I imagine you might want to get into flash at a later point, but that is truely another thread :slight_smile: