Complete Newb To Site-building/hosting

#1

Hello,

I am a young college student and have not had the opportunity as of yet to take classes or get help from people who build sites nor have knowledge in anything for what I just got my self into. I can usually learn things fairly quick, however i do not even know where to begin with this. I just signed up for a dreamhost account due to getting a fairly decent membership deal. I am very interested intrying to create a website but dont know anything about where to start… I am not even slightly familar with FTP or how to start a webpage. So any tips on how to get started or what ftp or program to use would be greatly appreciated. I couldn’t really find any previous threads for a complete new guy like myself. I feel similar to some highschool student that doesn’t know how to read or write: Embarrassed

So any informations will be greatly appreciated! THankyou Kindly in advance!

I am a newby at building sites, and totally lost… Let the learning begin… :\

#2

G’day and welcome, dgmason. :slight_smile:
A good place to start: the Getting Started guide in DreamHost’s Knowledge Base.
If you have specific problems, feel free to post them in these forums.
All the best,
marsbar

#3

Welcome and congratulations on giving it a try.

There are a couple “introduction to making web sites” sites I can recommend. HTML Goodies and Wired Magazine’s Web Monkey (they no longer add to the site, but some of the tutorials are really good) were very useful to me when I was learning.

Most importantly, I advise you to have fun with it. If something doesn’t work like you want it to, don’t freak out… just delete it and try it again! Good luck!

#4

Sorry, I forgot to come back here and check the forums i posted in, ahha!, Well thanks for the advice, looking at the listed websites right now… im sure you all will see more of me in here asking about this or that… THanks and anyone feel free to say or suggest something again to a complete newb as myself… thankyou!

I am a newby at building sites, and totally lost… Let the learning begin… :\

#5

Hi,

I remember I had written an html tutorial that might help you understand the basics.

http://swtravel.free.fr/html/

It shows you, with some comments, different html codings and their results. You can change some parameters of the codings and you will find at the end of each level, the complete html code that you can (copy and) paste to your own local html file and test with your browser.
It is bilingual but you can select English (Sorry for the mistakes with English, it’s not my language).
Good luck, Enjoy !

#6

Hey dgmason,
I’m in the same boat you are. I just signed up, not knowing much at all about building a website, but I’m excited about learning and usually quick about it. I’m currently checking out the links the other posters have left, but I was wondering how your progress has been. Have you found any other good beginner’s type sites or how to’s. What software are you using to do all this? Well, it’s off to more reading for me and if I run across any good sites, I’ll post them for you as well. Good luck!

#7

Another great place to start is w3schools go through their overview of xhtml and css (dhtml/html are both old and don’t need to be used if you’re just starting out, might as well get to the newest most up to date stuff, learn good coding from the start). After that, I suggest going to a well made site to look at their code and their css side by side to understand the fundimentals. I’d suggest checking out http://csszengarden.com, and http://alistapart.com and the references that they list to learn what good coding is, that way you don’t develop any bad habits from the beginning (which are hard to fix, I’ll tell you).

Satyagraha

#8

Personally, I would suggest investing a small chunk of the literature available from O’Reilly.com. Their books on HTML, XML, Javascript, CSS, and PHP are all pretty much excellent; the Javascript reference leaves a bit to be desired IMHO but they’re all well above average in terms of getting you moving quickly.

Please feel free to completely disregard this recommendation if:
A) You’re enough of a newbie that even mildly technical books make you pee yourself in fright
B) Ya aint got about $60-$150 to spend on books
C) either of the above.

#9