I know next to nothing about wed design and coding, and it's high time I start because nowadays you can't get anywhere without being able to do web design. I followed a tutorial to make the website on photoshop which was all fine and dandy but when it came to coding it was a complete fail.

So that being said, I just wanted to know how you guys got started in learning how to code and such because I know there are a lot of coders out there on this forum, hopefully I can gain a few good insights from your stories, and maybe a few absolute beginner links would be helpful too. Thanks.

I'm still a newby coder.

I started doing Xanga coding when I was 10, so I learned a lot of CSS and HTML from there.

I am still learning new codes from W3 schools

http://www.w3schools.com/

This site is so wonderful.

I don't really know anything other than Xanga coding and CSS

Yes, W3 Schools should help you a lot with coding. I also sometimes use the Tuts+ network for help on web/graphic design as well as with other syntaxes.

Try getting an existing layout and pull it apart to find out how to build it. Then you can learn how to customize the coding yourself :]

I started with neopets.com when they didn't have as many restrictions on the coding. Then I went to myspace layouts and then website templates.

I also went to lisaexplains.com. That helped and so did w3schools.com

I've learned absolutely everything by reverse engineering, and Googling for code snippits as needed. I usually don't recommend books or tutorials because most people just take them at face value and never do any experimentation (or don't do it properly).

I'd say RE is the way to go!

Thanks for the help everyone, I'll start off with w3schools. Hopefully I can have a live website up by the end of the week.

That's how I learned. It's easier this way.

Yes I would recommend going through all the html and css courses on w3schools.com. It may take a week. THEN and only then! You should go to simpler websites and figure out how they were made. Sites that people on cb have made.
Like Gabi's site, my old site that is bad need of a redesign, wefuze.com and mikeplyts.com. We all code the same way, because there arent that many ways to code. For a website though, I would give you this advice. Dont use tables, and don't use div with position absolute.

@the bold part. what are you talking about?

I was saying that those are good sites to look at the source code of to try and figure out how to make sites. I just phrased it badly.

I started on myspace then I also learned from Lissa Explains it all and a bunch of tutorials and going on people's sites and looking at the codes and stuff

oh. but uh, mikeplyts.COM is some advertising shit site, my site is mikeplyts.NET.

I'm entirely self taught. I learned nearly everything I know from either experimentation, or dissecting existing codes.

There's nothing wrong with tables or divs set to position absolute. I mean, you shouldn't do a whole layout as a table, but they're good for organizing content. Plus, my whole site is coded with divs set to position absolute. Maybe pretentious code snobs find something wrong with them, but they work perfectly for me. If you believed my site was coded the same way as yours it obviously doesn't effect the way my site looks.

When I was learning web design, I looked at your websites source code more than anywhere else. I think I do remember that your right hand column is set to absolute rather then floating.

I use Tizag for tutorials on like php, html, and css. I think it's an useful website for learning web designing.

What is this, you can't get anywhere without knowing HTML attitude? That's simply untrue!

Granted, in the late 1990's, viewing the source of a person's website was a lot easier, because everything was written from scratch. Hardly anyone used a program to write their source. And, you didn't have websites like MySpace filling the source with all their junk. Back then, Notebook was your friend. We cared about how our source looked. And, that's how we learned.

Viewing the source of a website is still an excellent tool to learn the basics of web building, especially now, CSS. Seeing all the little trs and tds in action really helps bring on that moment of "AH HAH!" when wanting to know how tables are made. Image maps, iFrames, even that code that makes your curser look like an alien, can be learned through viewing someone elses' source.

But, in today's world, the source might seem like a big bowl of spaghetti. In this case, I recommend takin' a peek at w3schools.com - an excellent webguide for, well, most everything you need to know! From HTML tutorials to server scripting, this has been, for nearly fifteen years, the one website to which I've turned. It's simple, and mantains the Notebook principle. It's the source site of today.

well paige turner is saying the true if you dont even know what is a div or table... or how to code an image you need to learn HTML

or will you learn php and how you going to show the text... forms and other stuff...

sont you see that html is almost like the principal and then comes css and other stuff for decoration and other stuff at least that's my point of view

This is really hard shit... I don't understand shit at all.

lol really? CSS and HTML are easy once you get used to it. A lot of it's self explanatory. What are you having trouble with?

Yeah, it can't be that hard. Don't give up mang.


Try looking at other sites' source codes, and then look at the stuff in W3 Schools (or whatever site you're using to learn), then see which properties and stuff they used and look it up on the site you're using to learn to see what it does and how it works.

Well, what program do you guys use to write codes? Just notepad? I know there's like TextMate and Dreamweaver, but I don't think I need any of that stuff yet, since I can't even get the codes down.

I think what I'm confused by is all the tags and uh... padding stuff... which tag goes first and how do you know which tag to write in...
Also CSS to an extent because I don't know how to tag the rest of the body in accordance to the CSS. I read it, but I can't follow it.

Am I making sense? All this HTML CSS shit is turning my brain into mush.

No, I code by, um, "memory".



Hold on, let me link you to a site that might help you out.



EDIT:
alright, try checking this and this for HTML structure. Now, just learn the CSS stuff and do what you can by defining different tags and classes/id's.

I feel really really really dumb. How can I not get this. -_____-

Most people don't get it.

It took me a couple years to really understand coding, so don't worry if you don't get it right away. I usually don't use any special programs to code, it's more of test-until-it-looks-right sort of thing for me d: Usually taking apart someone else's coding and messing around with it a bit helps me learn what the code affects, and from tehre I build my own codes. Just keep trying ^___^

i do only website layouts and designs, simple to complicated, and i'd hate to break this to you but you won't learn web design by asking around others nor will you master it in a few months, first it takes years to learn, and there's NO LEVEL OF MASTERY in web design, every year, new stuff comes out, new software, programs, codes, scripts, techniques, and who knows what else, what i did was start reading good site tutorials and experimenting slowing with small codes, then they got bigger, i started making templates, then i added on features like images, animations, css scripts, javascripts, etc. etc.

and i started 2 years ago. an i'm still very new to all this.

It takes time. Practice makes perfect. So what are you using to learn? Did you use w3schools.com?

Like I said I just started here and went through all 43 pages. I read 5 pages a day and made sure I soaked it in. And I tried using every code as I went. I then did the same thing in css. I am now fluent in html/css and I can just sit down and type up a whole site and then make the images and put it all together. Then I troubleshoot until it has the result I want. Then when I actually got a website I learnt about php includes. That way the content on every page is different but if you want to edit the navigation it changes it for every page and it makes every page the same. It makes life a lot easier. Also i put every page in its own folder for organization and so it makes the page website.com/contact instead of website.com/contact.php



New web technologies come out all the time, but just html doesn't change a ton.

I guess I am a fast learner. Cause I mastered coding in a month. Since then, which must have been 2 years ago I have been working on graphic design.

I don't know. You guys make it seem way more complicated than it needs to be. He's just trying to learn css and html right?

Yeash.

Web design/coding/development are all very very broad terms. You have to pick a place to start then work from there. Ask yourself a these questions first:

- What do I want to do? Do I want to do it all or just one specific thing?
- Where do I want to start? Myspace? Xanga? Personal websites?
- How much do I want to learn? Do I want to stick to the basics or work my way up to the most complicated things?
- Do I have the proper tools? (An image editor & coding software)
- Should I get a mentor?

From my experience it's best to start small then move on to a the harder things. At first I started hacking away at the hard stuff and ended up screwing myself over. Myspace and Xanga are great places to start but when you move on to working on a website you'll have to learn how to properly validate things because Myspace and Xanga aren't so strict about their HTML & CSS like it should be. (Trust me I learned that the hard way it's a little hard to break your bad coding habits once you start them) I suggest starting with your own website and keep it simple. When you work with HTML & CSS do all the HTML first then do the CSS/styling. Leave out all the flashy designs first and just do the "blueprints". Before you even start decide on how you want things to lay out. I'm sure tons of people probably already suggested w3schools to you which is great because it's one of the best resources out there. Don't worry about memorizing every code I've been using HTML and CSS for the past 5 years and I haven't even memorized everything.

Uh I'm starting to blab so I guess I'll just cut myself off here. Feel free to message me if you have questions or anything.