First Published: Thursday 07 December 2006, 05:25
A question I get asked often is 'how did you learn to build websites?'
In the early days of the web there seemed to be little formal instruction and companies like Compuserve and AOL gave away free site builders. One day I realised you could open the site files in a text editor and started examining the code within.
That started a hobby which was fueled by friends and later .net magazine to which I sometimes contribute.
This is a pretty long route to learning and there's now far more in the way of books and formal assistance.
Although a knowledgeable friend is still useful many of the books available provide an excellent place to start.
The essential starting point is to understand the basic building blocks of creating a page. These days this is done with CSS and XHTML to ensure our pages are accessible to all users. Kevin's blog will give you an understanding of why this is important.
Once you know how to create a site you'll want to consider making it dynamic - powered by a database. As scary as that sounds the principles are easy to learn. Those wholly new to the topic should start with a book such as PHP and MySQL For Dummies, which caters for beginners.
For the more confident a book like Programming PHP will provide more rewarding. There's also the issue of graphics for your site. There are some excellent free sources of photos and artwork.
Not being a designer I've always been lucky enough to be able to call on talented people but if you fancy doing your own and are new to graphics an affordable package such as Paint Shop Pro will probably serve your needs. At the other end of the spectrum is Photoshop.
Another thing people ask about is the RSS feeds which allow users to get automatic updates when there's a new news story or article. RSS is a terrific development which has allowed effort free sharing of content and if you're interested in learning more I suggest a book such as Content Syndication with RSS which is what I learnt with.
If you're looking to get blogging many hosts, including ours, offer packages which support blog software. Again there are books to get you up to speed.
