Newbie question: Designing a website.

Let's say I DON'T want to use some cheesy template or shortcut, but actually want to design my own site by myself, writing my own code, using HTML, etc.

About how long would it take to learn these skills, asuming I know NOTHING about ANY of it?

My computer experience is putting them together and surfing the web, maybe a little photoshop work, but that's it.

btw, this will be a relatively simple site, basically just a blog and some other content.

I'd say it could take more than a year but possibly less, really depends how much time you put into it.

To not be too overwhelmed I would learn straight HTML/CSS first. Check out w3schools.com. Design a small site with that.

Once you feel comfortable with the concepts, then look at learning php and mysql (mysql is a db often used with php). Basically php is a server side language that will generate html code. You can look at the source code of a forum for example, and those tables and other elements were generated by a php script on the server.

Then there's also javascript which is client side but can add more interactivity to the site. Though I find too many people overuse it these days. You can do some good stuff with just html/css as far as the front end is concerned. I'd just learn js once you are comfortable with overall web design.

It sounds like you have the commitment... But nothing has been stated about the capabilities of the website, the number of hours per week/month you can devote to this, technology prerequisites, your artistic/design mindset, and so on.

So, no, we can't give an estimate for anything. We can, however, help as you begin detailing core requirements, design ideas, code/markup issues, etc.

10 years.

You may think that it provides simple functionality, but a blog is really not that simple to create, software-wise - at least if you want it to be useful. If you instead start out with something like drupal, the "big-picture" stuff like objects, asynchronous execution of code, concurrency, and databases will be readily apparent to you, and from there you can go as deep as you want and start messing with the underlying code or html.

Learning how to write html or code a php script that spits out some text from a file won't really help you understand a modern website, which is normally written as a multithreaded application.

The days of coding a site using just plain old HTML are long gone. A modern website, even a simple one, requires at the bare minimum the following skill sets: XHTML (or HTML5), CSS, and Javascript. Toss in some illustration and/or graphics skills if you want it to be visually appealing.

If you actually want it to do anything useful, then you're talking about also learning a scripting language (PHP, .NET, Ruby, etc..) and SQL. Which then brings in other requirements around security, frameworks, AJAX, etc. etc..

I'd estimate that to fully get up to speed from scratch requires at least 12-18 months of intense commitment.

Well I've spent the last 3 years learning / developing PHP web applications, and to be honest there is a ton more I could learn. If you only want to make static pages, something where you publish only some text, then it only takes about a week to learn the absolute basics, but anything that has you jump into the programming side will take a rather long time if you do not already know one programming language.

I can point you to some good reference material to help start you in the right direction,

- http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/ [The absolute source on the XHTML standard]
- xhtml.com [A great reference site]
- http://w3schools.com/html/default.asp [A helpful site with examples]
- http://www.quirksmode.org/ [When you want to learn why your new site dosen't play well with legacy browsers, like IE]
- http://www.w3.org/Style/Overview.html [Styling from the masters themselves]
- http://www.w3.org/WAI/ [Accessibility Guidelines, something most ignore]
- http://validator.w3.org/ [Validate your code here and make sure it's standards compliant]

Good Luck.

Honestly, sounds like you're better off just going to wordpress.com and starting a blog through their service.

Now if you're looking to turn this into a profession of sorts, I'd suggest taking some courses at a local community college that offers classes on web development and design and going from there.

Also, do you have any natural artistic ability? Because while you may figure out all the techniques for building a design, having an "eye" for proper design is something that can't really be taught (imo).

NickTheNut said:

Also, do you have any natural artistic ability? Because while you may figure out all the techniques for building a design, having an "eye" for proper design is something that can't really be taught (imo).

Click to expand...

I disagree with this, mostly because design is so subjective, and often tied to other forms of identity. Take Google's traditionally minimalist, white-background and primary-color-heavy designs. Their designers certainly know what they're doing, but they'd be laughed out of the room if they tried to pitch that sort of brand identity to Apple or Boeing. Design is a subjective expression of both "self" (the designer) and the identity of the client or project. The expression of self certainly comes from within, but "natural artistic ability" isn't necessarily required for good design. To do design, you should be a human being with ideas about what you want to design and how it should look. You also will need skills to translate your ideas into tangible form using tools. Anything else is optional.

Check out teamtreehouse.com My wife has been going through there video tutorials and they are easy to follow and informative.

CEpeep said:

I disagree with this, mostly because design is so subjective, and often tied to other forms of identity. Take Google's traditionally minimalist, white-background and primary-color-heavy designs. Their designers certainly know what they're doing, but they'd be laughed out of the room if they tried to pitch that sort of brand identity to Apple or Boeing. Design is a subjective expression of both "self" (the designer) and the identity of the client or project. The expression of self certainly comes from within, but "natural artistic ability" isn't necessarily required for good design. To do design, you should be a human being with ideas about what you want to design and how it should look. You also will need skills to translate your ideas into tangible form using tools. Anything else is optional.

Click to expand...

Your description is a bit to wishy-washy for me. To me that sounds like something someone would say that can't design. But wants to. "It's an expression of myself". What I say is that you clearly don't understand how to properly typeset, balance the layout of a print ad, or compose a photograph.

Giving someone a camera and black and white film does not make them an artist. It makes them a jack ass going around taking pictures of trees and flowers and calling it art.

Also, your Google/Apple/Boeing scenario is really poor. Google's self image has been finely tuned and perfected, as has Apples and I'd presume Boeings as well. Who do you think they've been fine-tuned for? Themselves, and no one else, of course. No designer in their right mind would ever consider taking Google's approach to Apple or Boeing and actually expect it to work. Nor would they go to Google and say you need to design your sites like Apple, and so on and so forth.

Also it's worth noting that Google actually A/B tests the hell out of all their designs and work, down to what exact shade of blue to use for their hyperlinks is A/B tested. They compare the numbers and go with the "strongest" number. Their designers are almost more scientist then designer.

Just my .2c...

NickTheNut said:

Your description is a bit to wishy-washy for me. To me that sounds like something someone would say that can't design.

Click to expand...

That's nice. For someone who can't design, I seem to be able to find plenty of work as a designer.

CEpeep said:

That's nice. For someone who can't design, I seem to be able to find plenty of work as a designer.

Click to expand...

I realize now that sounded like I was referring to you specifically; I wasn't. Sorry for my poorly worded statement.

However, getting design work is not relevant to the discussion. I was referring to people having natural artistic ability. Not your ability to get work designing. If someone hustles enough, they can get work. Being able to do the work or not is another thread all together.

Don't get scared of all the posts here. Everyone has to start somewhere.

Get a good HTML5 / CSS3 book and make a simple website. I recommend "Head First" or "Sitepoint" books as they are fun and easy to breeze through without getting too technical. Both typically walk you though setup. It will take you less than a month to learn the basics.

Your first site you will be proud of and it will look good to you. Other developers / designers will think it sucks ass. As you gain more knowledge you will start to see ways you can improve your site. This will also give you a direction to further your study. Design, graphical or layout, client side functionality, server side coding. etc.

Now to make a blog, its going to take a bit more effort. But that is exactly how you learn, find out what you need to accomplish your goal and step up.

There are not many people that do "everything" from the ground up that encompasses the whole website in the professional world. Most people tend to specialize on one specific aspect. Websites of any size are made by teams of people. Also, nobody can make a modern website right out of the gate without touching the basics first. So go have fun, make a site, let this forum tell you how bad it is, learn from it and go do it again.

My suggestions would be to do a template first. Fool around with it so you can understand how it works. Read about the basics of HTML and CSS. The best thing to do is build a basic site and continue to revamp it. It will give you lots of practice and experience. Check out other websites and look at the code on how they do what you want to do.

Do you want to put together a website with HTML and CSS or Design one?

Design is a form of communication that requires a lot of knowledge of the core principles: line, shape, color theory, balance, unity, gestalt, dominance, etc. It's not about making pretty pictures like some of the other posters have implied, but rather communicating the desired message as effectively as possible.

Design is not art. Art is subjective wishy washy crap that expresses emotion, design has to communicate otherwise it's a failure. However, that's not to say that design can't look good. Good design should absolutely be pretty and look good, it's one of the qualities that separates it from mediocre design, or design that communicates but isn't compelling.

Getting a working knowledge of design will probably take you a year or so since there is a vast amount of knowledge to assimilate. Then you have to learn to code, since you have to understand the medium you are working with (and designing for). Then there is accessibility, user experience basics, and if you are trying to monetize your site you have to consider all the minutia that affects your conversion rate. Oh, and you have to really understand Typography, that's a big area that students that come out of design schools and self-taught designers often overlook, and when I was looking for jobs that was a skill that recruiters really wanted to see demonstrated in a portfolio.

Now, that's probably not what you had in mind, so if you just want to put a site together with HTML/CSS that should be a little easier to learn (though it's still not something that happens overnight). The guys here have provided some very good resources for that.

You'll need to put some kind of back end onto your blog, so wordpress is by far the best platform to do that with. After you have a very strong command of HTML and CSS look into very basic PHP and how to create a wordpress template. Then you'll be ready to go.

Depends on the quality you want really, websites range in quality and functionality greatly, the better you want it, the longer it's going to take.

To learn basic HTML you can do incredibly fast with some dedication, you could have a basic static blog online in a number of days or weeks with some study and practice. You'd have to edit by hand every time, and it wouldn't look very good but it would be a website and function.

To learn CSS to style your site would take about the same amount of time again, a few days or weeks to get your head around the basics and upgrade your HTML to use styles and have some more advanced effects.

The complex stuff starts when you want to make your website dynamic, if you want to write a content management system (CMS) so that you have a hidden admin page that you can use to dynamically add articles/blogs then you'll need to learn some server side coding and you'd also probably need to learn some level of database querying such as SQL, both of which can be months of learning and implementation for basic stuff.

There lots of other fluff to learn as well, SEO best practices and various security best practices, javascript for client side effects is helpful. Most of which are just benefits and not actually necessary to getting a site live and running but helpful to know in the grand scheme of things.

Thing is, if you're the only person updating your website, and the goal is to actually learn the technology you can write a flat file blog site that you have to edit the HTML to update, it's not how you'd implement a website if you were writing it for a client, but there's no reason why you can't do it as your own personal project. Writing something simple such as a flat file blog site and then upgrading as you go adding CSS effects and then later dynamic components is actually quite a good way to learn.