Learn to Hand Code

Brief Introduction:

The 3 Different Design Methods

There are three different ways in which you can design a webpage.

Hand code the website
Use a ‘What you see is what you get’ (WYSIWYG) program.
Use a bit of both.

In this section I will be covering the hand coding method. I found it most effective to design a website using a WYSIWYG program such as Dreamweaver, Microsoft Office FrontPage (Now Sharepoint Designer 2007) etc. However it is very important to have at least some familiarity with the code that the program is generating for you. Now do not get me wrong, modern website design software writes most of the code that a basic website requires automatically. But a basic knowledge of the HTML programming language will certainly help in tasks such as creating a feedback form or survey etc. I find myself constantly switching between code views and design views when designing web pages

The Coder

A large proportion of professional web designers use WYSIWYG webdesign software and switch between using code and design within the software. However a large number of professional designers also choose to use purely code when developing. They feel that in doing so they will have much more control over the final look.
If you chose to read this section simply because you wish to learn some basic HTML in order to get a feel of what is happening behind the scenes, or because you wish to completely learn the language. Then the bellow information will help you out.

What is HTML

HTML is a programming language that was developed in the early 80’s. It is by far the easiest programming language to learn. Here is an example of some HTML code:

<html>

  <head>

  <title>Page Title</title>

  </head>

  <body>

   The content of a website that you see goes here <b>Here  is some bold text</b>

  </body>

  </html>

As you can see, the way the code is separated by tags makes it very easily understood.

Where to go from here

Step 1 - The first step as mentioned is to BRAINSTORM WEBSITE IDEAS.
Step 2 - Then you need to PICK A DOMAIN NAME which is recommended. For less than $10 the benefits of having a domain name far outweigh this initial cost.
Step 3 - Then you need to either LEARN TO HAND CODE your website or LEARN TO USE WEBDESIGN SOFTWARE to design and upload your site.
Step 4 - Now you need to GET CONNECTED WITH A WEBHOST to make your website viewable by the world.
Step 5 -Finally you need to Market and SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZE your completed website to increase the number of visitors..

Website Design Planet