Webmaster Skills

where is the best place to learn html?

[William2002]

I hired a person to design my business webpage for me and also to be the webmaster. But now I would like to take over posting the changes and additions to it, including links. Where would be the best place to learn the basics?

William

[txbakers]

Hi William, welcome to webmaster world!

Depending on the complexity of the website you have a few options available.

You can use one of the GUI tools like Dreamweaver to manage the website. Many first time web designers have been very successful with it as it is mostly a drag and drop system to building web pages. I started with Dreamweaver.

Beyond using a tool, you can modify your code using any text editor, provided you learn some basic HTML.

www.w3schools.com is a good site for learning and referencing HTML.

If the site is very complex - using database connections, javascript, shopping carts, etc. you'd be better off continuing to pay someone until you're very confident to make changes.

[William2002]

Thanks...I will go the website you suggested. Where do I learn Dreamweaver or get that tool? I'll keep you posted. Also, about a year ago, I signed up for an online course (out of California)at a cost of $10 to learn Microsoft Front Page. But the course content, course web page and course instructions didn't make much sense to me. So, I didn't learn much there, and quit.

William

[txbakers]

Dreamweaver is available from most computer retailers, online or stores. It's not cheap, but they do have academic versions (or at least they did when I was in school - it's for teachers, students, basically anyone connected to an educational environment.)

It's made by Macromedia and you can download a trial from them.

It comes with a very good tutorial, start there, and beyond that there are forums just for Dreamweaver. Our WYSIWYG forum has many topics on Dreamwever.

I've never used Front Page, but the newer version supposedly is pretty good. The older versions didn't code very nicely. Apparently you can do some good things with Front Page as well.

How was your site constructed? That may help you decide which tools to use.

These days I don't use any of the HTML writers - I do everything by hand in a text editor, but that's after years of practice. I know what to copy/paste/modify to make pages quickly.

[William2002]

Thanks Again, your comments are most helpful. I commend you for your free and timely help in this forum. You are a great help. I think I'll check out the dreamweaver tool after I have a better basic understanding of web site production.

I went to W3schools.com and the whole site is completely free except a $59 charge for a certification exam at the end, which I thought was reasonably priced. The site also has received many awards and is dedicated to staying a free site. I look forward to their tutorials and learning HTML.

My initial motivation is just to learn enough of the basics to change text, modify our contact page, and add links to my site. I'm very happy with the design.

However, very soon, I will be in charge of two more sites, (which I'm probably going to have to pay thousands of dollars to get designed), so to maintain the three sites is enough motivation for me to learn the basics (and a bit more) to avoid paying my current webmaster $120 every time I want 5 sentences changed!

William

[edited by: William2002 at 6:58 pm (utc) on Jan. 18, 2004]

[txbakers]

Glad to help, it's why we do this. I learned so much from here, it's a "pay it forward" thing.

You should go back and take out your URL from your previous post. We don't allow specific URLs to member sites as the board can fall into a "evaluate my site" or "here is a cool site" trap.

You can sticky mail your URL to other members if you want, but not on the board. Click "edit post" and you can edit it. If you don't, one of the admins will do it for you.

I wouldn't spend the money on an HTML certification. The real certification is in the site you produce. People can tell immediately if you know what you are doing, and you don't need a certificate to prove it.

Good luck with it! Your reasons are correct. Why spend so much for maintenance when it's very easy to do it yourself.

[thehittmann]

When I started web designing a few years back....5-6 years ago. I was just making little pages for myself, friends and family. little personal sites. I was doing this in front page. Then I started having a look at the code after a while and thinking what does this line do....what does this mean. I slowly progressed onto Dreamwaever and now i code 99% by hand. I use dmx for my css stuff. and all the things that I didnt know I searched for and ended up here. So I figure I just come here before I search from now on :-)

[William2002]

Didn't know about the url posting rule -- I've deleted it now. I'm understanding that to begin with, it would be good to use a program such as Front Page to do the programming, but eventually if you want lot of little custom things, its easier to just write code by hand (providing you have it memorized).

What exactly is the difference between Dreamweaver and Front page? They both write code for you? You type in WYSIWYG format and they auotmatically translate it to HTML code?

[sem4u]

I would splash the cash and buy the latest version of Dreamweaver. It is so much better than any other web site editor out there, and is surprisingly easy to get started in.

[cazgh]

I used Sams teach yourself HTML 4 in 24 hours and that got me going on the basics.

[Birdman]

I learned the basics at HTMLGoodies.com [htmlgoodies.com].

Pretty good primers for beginners.

Also see [w3.org...]

[robert adams]

Why don't people ever mention Composer?
It is a very good WYSIWYG editor. It doesn't add all the bloat that the older versions of Front Page did and it is FREE.

I use it for some things and then code by hand using 1stPage now.(also free)

luck,
robert

[SlowMove]

One fast way to put a page together is to find a site that looks good, check the page on several browsers to make sure there are no problems, make sure it validates, save it, add your own images, make a few other changes to make it your own, and you're done.

[eric996]

I agree with birdman, html goodies is a great and very useful site.

Although I'm consumed in CSS as of this moment, I do know some html.

I started out by trial and error and checking out other sites source codes to get the idea of what an html structure looks like.

Then I went and bought the book "HTML 4 For Dummies" and it cleared everything up for me. Very good book

I would suggest writing it from scratch and learning at html goodies and the w3cschools.

[benihana]

it maybe worth you checking out local colleges - i did a short evening course that taught html and progressed from there.
/and the rest is history ;)
ben

[progex]

Personally, I went to the bookstore and checked out a basic HTML book, and use the View > Source command.

[twist]

One thing you might want to try is to view the source code for you website. Look at the top of your source code and look for the word 'FrontPage'. Sites published using frontpage will leave the word FrontPage in them by default. If your site was created using FrontPage then don't pay some guy $125 to come change 5 lines. Buy FrontPage for $125 and do it yourself. It takes almost no knowledge of web design to use frontpage. Just get yourself a small html book with lots of pictures and examples to go with it.

If your site is important to your business and is more complicated than a simple 'FrontPage' creation you might want to be very careful about messing around with it. You could inadvertedly make your site unviewable or break all your links with just a touch of a key. Making advanced websites is something that people spend years of work and time to do. It's not something you can sit down and learn in your spare time in a couple of months. For example, if the site designer used a bunch of Javascript on your site then a html book will be of little help to you. If your site uses server side scripting like asp or php then unless you got a few years to spare to learn programming, forget about it. Leave it to the pros. Just my opinion.

[mep00]

It's not something you can sit down and learn in your spare time in a couple of months. If your site uses server side scripting like asp or php then unless you got a few years to spare to learn programming, forget about it.

twist-
While I think you're mostly correct, if you already have a solid foundation in programming, then you can learn most of the rest in a few month with some effort. Except for design, which requires a degree of artistic ablity, Web development is mostly base on information science theory. So if you already know the right way to think, everything else can fall into place relativly easily. I'm not saying it's trivial, but nor is it all that difficult.

Personaly, I always find the content part the hardest. (That, and pulling myself away from WebmasterWorld for long enough to apply what I've learned.:))

[txbakers]

if you already have a solid foundation in programming

Well, that's the real challenge isn't it.

I've trained people who don't have a solid foundation in programming, and it's not an easy concept to pick up.

I always start with the basics. All programming comes down to one truth:

if it's raining
then bring an umbrella
or else get wet.

If they can understand that, they can learn programming.

[edited by: JamesR at 9:03 pm (utc) on Jan. 20, 2004]

[g1smd]

"Learning HTML" at the basic end of the scale means learning what 20 different HTML tags do, and how to use them:

Title tag, Meta data, Headings, Paragraphs, Lists, Tables, Forms, Anchors, Images, and a couple of others.

[SlowMove]

In my opinion, html is just the starting point. One thing that I'm learning is that a lot of the heavy traffic sites involve a lot of programming. I'd rather have a huge terrible looking site that's database driven than spend time trying to deal with all the idiosyncracies of the various browsers. There's a lot out there: perl, php, etc.