How did you learn web design?

Hey, we were all newbies at one time! This is a good question for everyone

I got started back in 1997. Netscape.... I think it was version 3 had just been released with a shiny new "Composer" tool. It was advertised that now anyone could make a webpage quickly and easily with Netscape Composer. Cool, I thought, so I gave it a try. My site was also filled with hideous patterned backgrounds and cheesy stock graphics and all that. It didn't take me long to get fed up with the limitations of Composer and start digging around in the code myself. I don't even know why it occurred to me to do that but for some reason I was able to figure out HTML and how it worked on my own. Then I mostly consulted coding references a lot and read site like webmonkey and web pages that suck to figure out how to do things.

Learning Javascript (which I never got too far on) was more of a process, going through tutorials and such. CSS was much like HTML - consulted a few references and I was good to go.

Started well the same as megan, but put more focus to it after college, since I had programming training and background, it was fairly easy to learn, but stil theres MUCH MUCH to learn... books keep piling up on my bookdesk at home....

I started with that same version of Netscape's Composer. Learned about code from Bulletin Boards mostly from Suzanne , and by trial and error, lots of hair pulling and cursing.

The design aspect has just been from hours and hours and hours and hours spent with ideas and Photoshop.

As time went on I stared reading sites like ALA, Zeldman, Cameron Moll, Creative Pro, and W3C schools.

I used Netscape Composer early on, too. Ah, the good old days. Or something like that.

If I remember correctly, I started with a Geocities site back in 1996. Wow, that's ten years now that I've been doing some form of web design. Of course, I don't know if you could really call it design back then, as I initially created what probably already comes to mind when thinking of mid-to-late 90's Geocities site. Yuck.

Eventually I decided to become a Computer Science major. After a few weeks in a programming class, I started teaching myself Javascript, then a few months later, Perl. It's been a roller coaster ever since.

Busy wrote: I picked up php and css quite easily but javascript i could never get into, weird i know.

Not too weird, prototyped languages aren't easy to get the hang of, Javascript is actually very powerful and versatile. Just a shame it is/was badly used by so many people. Often someone can do Javascript badly (in a very procedural way), but very few actually get the language. I still get a headache whenever thinking about the best way to do something in JavaScript.

As for how I got into design... Was doing an A-level in Computer Science, am not clever enough to go to University so entered into the school of life. Freeserve had just become big (dialup access where you only had to pay for the calls) and IE had just about won the browser wars. Got a job doing general IT stuff and built them a website too, it wasn't a very good one, to say the least. It did the job, until the company went bust that is.

Had one big Flash failure, don't want to talk about that. Then got into table based layouts (the bad old days), realised there was no need to stick to 256 colours (aka web safe palette) and found CSS at the same time.

Out of interest: The old posts of people who've been on this site for ages are quite interesting. Only the other day I was reading something ancient where Busy and mairving were talking about testing something in "Nutscrape."

And I'm still too stupid to go to Uni.

I started 11 years ago developing and animated music and art lesson site using Flash 4. It was a great site that just didn't take off (maybe before it's time???). I then got off the Flash and into html , javascript then asp. Anyway reading, then trial and error for me.

I started almost two years ago 2004...was tempted to start with personal site but decided to go with a e-commerce site....bit off way more than I could chew...but stuck with it ...HTML and CSS and lots of help from webmaster forums and lots of reading and W3schools.com for validations. I just think it is so cool that with a bit of code here and there and you can do awesome stuff...now I'm reading about SEO and SEM...there is awhole lot to doing this but hey what else is there...

Originally Posted by Busy
I picked up php and css quite easily but javascript i could never get into, weird i know.
Busy...
how can you do php if you don't know java script???????

How did you learn/find out about HTML/Web design? I started out on AOHell and figured out there was more than one way to make a page! That was in 1992.

What did you search for when trying to learn more? I read books. I still have the first book I bought, learning HTML 3. Yeah, it was a long, long time ago!

How did you find frontpage (if you use it)? I used it once. I didn't like it, it changed the code. I use DW now or just code by hand.

I started on MSN about seven years ago. Wanted a little more freedom, to do it my way. So I started looking at web sites by view source in IE.

After I had sort-of figured it out started using Coffee Cup, still do. But only as a alternative to notepad, I do all my coding by hand. Basic unflattering html was what I used for a long time, funny I still have a site coded that way, does better than the others, no doc-type or anything just a header, body, and all sorts of just make it work html.

I started using another program lately TopStyle Pro 3, lets me view results in both IE, and FF on the desktop. Also checks html, and style locally without having to resort to the web. Still learn something new everyday, I guess there is really no end to it.

made a site for my dojo. I used a front page template

Then I wanted to make it look better, started using macromedia, dwelved in HTML and CSS more. Discovered photoshop and little by little I became a designer.

I had a vision, that I would be rich , and the only way to do it was with a website selling a product.

Last week, I decided to go for it. Didn't know anything about anything, (still don't), but I typed in google "how do I make my own website" sure enough, had pleanty of info. I tested and bought, Macromedia Studio MX, came with Dreamweaver MX, Flash MX, Freehand MX, Extension Manager and Fireworks MX. I was quite pissed off when I opened it to find I had no Idea what the hell I was doing. I got a friend, he said he did, sure enough, he was full of it. Then I got another friend, sure enough, anotehr blow arse. Well, we all went through this stage of learning for a couple days, and then another friend suggested to use Microsoft Frontpage. I didn't have money to buy the new version, so I used a friends older version 2002. Anyway, this was promosing, it would let me do stuff just like in MS word. No coding at all, was a dream . Now I find how much I really do know (zip).

Thanks to some of the guys here, Davy, Busy, and Jeeves, I have learn loads of new stuff only in days. I don't think I would've been able to do this without them. So thank you all.

Oh, I found this site because I finally found out what a webmaster was about 4 days ago , so I typed "webmaster" in google, and here I am....Thank god for this forum.

My friend John was bragging about his website on geocities back when I was 10. Not to be outdone, I made my first crap site there too. Then I moved to freewebs and another free host. Then I bought the domain, don't laugh -dirt4fun.com- and put some crappy bs info about rally cars and stuff on there. Then I bought MXfury.com and used PHPNuke for that baby. After those total failers, I bought articlez.com, used echoarticles to create a free web content site. Then about 6 months later I sold it. December of 2004.

I can't even remember how I figured out HTML and CSS. I didn't buy a book about it or read about it online. I just looked at source codes and changed them around.

You can thank my friend John for introducing me to FrontPage

I posted something like this in the Intro area.
Anyway, I started somewhere back in, I think, 1993 by doing the 'view' + 'source'. (same as everyone else it seems)
I think I also initially used Communicator to make websites, but wanted the WYSIWYG programs, so I found Hotdog. My learning of HTML has been through trial and error and going to help sites (or forums )

I never really DID anything, because I didn't need to. I think my first sites were on Angelfire, though I never used their editor.
Around 2001, someone at work needed help with the intranet website, and was impressed that I could do the work by using TextEditor. So, I became the sites new 'janitor'. While there I delt with Unix, PERL, and javascript. (UNIX because the site was located on one; PERL, because of translating form data, and Javascript for Formmail)

I once lamented to a friend about possibly loosing my job. He suggested I program the entire site in C and then they would NEED me

Well that never happened (don't know C ) and I moved on. I am now the 'janitor' for my Dad's Ham Club website.

Still learning.
Got html down, i think i'll have xhtml down by tonight--not much difference come to find out. Looking into php and css (groan) soon, and i suppose java script will be after that.

Got started with bravenet for my first plugin site 3 years ago.
At that point, the wizard was doing it all for me. All my sites were built when
I bought them, but knowing how to change things has sure come in handy.
Self-teaching, thank God for friends, video professor and "view source".

Either way, by the looks of this thread, my knowledge is way behind all of you, lol.
I'll definitely be back to glean more knowledge and insight.

dont remember how I got interested in it, but i looked at a web site, and then bought a "HTML 4.0 for Dummies" book, then "Javascript", and learned a lot (or a little) of CSS, and voila!

I am poet at heart and so i was looking around a place to publish my poems. But while searching i thought why not create my own, but i din't knew how to create them. While digging for free servers i came to geocities.com a yahoo website. Where i created my new user id and started building a website through there page builder, which is just a drag and drop. I worked on it more then 6 months and then figured out that there is something like code in the world of webdesigning - lolz. So now i started configuring and figuring few codes and digging the site for the help regarding the code. My best tool has been google, to let me search whatever i wanted to.

After about 1 year I got almost fine with codes and designing a html page, then i started taking linkware websets for my site and edit it to my needs. Then with the help of a friend I created a domain and purchased 100 Mb space. Working after 3 months on that server I guess I learned it properly. Now I have 500 MB space and running very fine.

I learn website design on my own. I started with HTML, very basic personal homepage. Then I decided I should try to make some money off the internet. I learnt PHP/MySQL by downloading free scripts and playing with them.
I never bought a book to learn web design. Rather, I had a hands-on approach where I was looking at code written in free scripts and changing them to suit my needs. I also used the web to find any answers to my programming questions.

After a few years of web design, I still don't own any web design/programming books. Everything you need is readily available on the net.

I was made redundant, had a PC at home that hubby used for his work and my uncle gave me a disc that had pagemill on, played around with it, made a site for hubby's boss and he liked it, then did one for a friend and decided that I could build them and hubby could sell them so we started our own company - that was 6½ years ago and now we employ two people as well. So I taught myself and three other people

I learnt web designing by myself. I wanted to do something interesting by myself and studied html and javascript with tutorials. Now I can easily make websites but I'm not and expert. I can understand Php but can't program. I want to learn php and mysql but university doesn't let me. Well It's easy, I just need to give it some time.

pepealayo wrote: I want to learn php and mysql but university doesn't let me.

Why won't they let you? Not forcing you to use MS are they? *yuk*

They're probably using something really outdated. Or only traditional languages like C and all that. I think they're using Java for first-year courses at the university I work for. It seems that there is some reluctance among the hard core CSS types to really embrace (or even give credit to!) web languages.

Well, I don't study informatics or computing in the university, I study education (math and physics).
My second career will be something related to computing.

You can download the PHP/MYSQL/Apache bundle and install on your own PC/laptop (even works on windows), most come with installers these days, not that you really need them but apart from the price - free, it cant be beat.

I learnt web design through just messing around with dreamweaver and having a read through some of there manuals etc. same with frontpage.

thats ok jowilker, if you read enough of the old and new posts here youll definitely get the hang of it... Although if its really hard then get an HTML beginners book or HTML for dummies, experiment on them and eventually you'll learn. I say this because theres this one student of ours in an outreach program I had last year which was 61 years old, she doesnt even know how to use a mouse and a keyboard... we had a one on one for 3-days, gave her a crash course guide, now she gets the hang of it making single pages, the original purpose of hers is that she could talk the same language as her grandson...

Yeah the good old Netscape Composer, I rememeber when I start doing it web design I start it with Yahoo builder, and after a time I start it with Netscape I was want to learn a better way then yahoo.

I made my first website about three years ago for the company that just hired me. In 4 years I did three complete redesigns and finally settled on foxiv.com as it is today. There are still modifications that I want to do such as adding breadcrumbs... but I am pretty happy with it and our search rank has drastically improved because of it.

I was raised on DreamWeaver. The only thing that might make me leave it is if I start programming in ASP with microsoft visual studio .NET

Me, i must have started when i was around 13, i had begged my dad to give me his credit card for me to buy hosting, and i didnt know much about hosts, anyway, i was really interested first in html, i didnt know there was programs out there that you could use to design your site quickly. the site i had ade, was completely pointless, now that i look back at it, it was a site, all about me, with about the only visitor being me to it obviously, then i learnt more about the web.

A year later, i decided to make another site, this was when i was 14, i had made a website based on a film, again it didnt get any visitors simply because i didnt know how to boost its popularity, and i had all of these useless banners around on the site which didnt do my site any good, so that was another lot of money gone down the drain, for nothing.

Then a year later i learnt about php... i bought a fat book just on php and a seperate book on SQL, i wanted to make an online game this time, but it didnt work at all, simply because i was too lazy.

Now im 16 and finally i know what im doing, well atleast i think i do anyway, i created a site called PaqizeUK.com i chose a bad domain for the service i offer which is free file hosting, but i guess i got to live with it for now, or I might buy another domain and point it to the same site, my aims are to earn money from the web and increase my knowledge on PHP as i go. Mabey in a couple years time, ill have a good amou8nt of visitors and can setup a nice membership system. But not yet.

I started in about 1997. Started with some stupid Geocities page, then went to a stupid Tripod page...then went in with a friend to get some real hosting. Started using an html editor called HTMLPad..then went to HTML-kit. It's been a slow climb ever since.

Started off in about 1997 when i first went to do my A-levels - got a fortunecity account and started by using the homepage builder on there when I in class. Eventually my grandad got a computer at home with the internet (56k ahhh) and i started to use the built-in HTML editor on fortunecity. I didn't realise at that point i could use notepad offline then just connect to upload my pages, so i spent a lot of money on internet calls while i edited it lol.

I remember wanting to know how to make links change colour when you mouseover them and saw it on the microsoft site so i viewed source and figured out what made it happen, then gradually learnt more stuff like that. It wasn't until about 2001 that I really decided it was what i wanted to do - i was working in some office and they had photoshop 4.0 and frontpage and i just used that to create sites for them and stuff and eventually i got dreamweave r 2 and as i upgraded photoshop and dreamweaver gradually i was improving all the time and eventually made sites that i was happy with

I made my first website at 13...and pretty much taught myself how to do it, along with the help of an HTML beginners book. It was a Hanson site. hahaha. I'm sure you all remember their song "MmmBop."

I learned HTML the good ole' fashioned way: porn. I was living with 5 male roomies at the time and one was always looking for the quick buck. I wanted to learn, so I started coding (no pics of me, it was back in the day when you could "borrow" content). Those guys eventually turned me into a gamer, which is how I learned computer hardware, and then one of their friends got me a job programming in VB and SQL. Years later, I figured I'd give this whole webmaster thing a shot again, so here I am.

I learned when I was fifteen years old... I just bought an easy web design book for kids, and it actually was great. It felt awesome to teach myself and see the rewards later on. It makes you proud of yourself.

My first site was on the pop group Hanson How embarassing! haha

Hi,
I started my web design on nearly 2000 just by learning on internet.I daily browse websites that teach abt website design.I usually headed over to w3schools.com.It has major contribution for me.Still i recommend to my juniors.W3schools.com is a professional website for learning web technology.

I was introduced to Dreamweaver and Photoshop in 2000. It took a lot of playing around, and reading tutorials until I got a basic understanding of the tools and what I could do with them. Then, it was just a matter of working with them every day. I'm by far no expert in them, but I'm comfortable and learn something new all the time. Especially with Photoshop. It's a very complex, but powerful tool.

i started with html by right clicking and hitting view source then copying the code and butchering it to figure out what certain things did and how i could control them. i dont have the patience for books even though i have a php/mysql/apache book a c++ book and two java books, i mainly use them for reference.

after html i got into php/mysql and css by my friend and i having to make a final project for one of my classes 2 years ago, then this past year i took a c++ class and a qbasic class. this year im taking a j# and a c# class.

but i made websites for myself and have had the opertunity to make several for money courtesy of craigslist.

i started when i was 12 and im just shy of 18 now. can't wait to know what the future holds.

-drew

I amde my first site in I think 1998or 1999. I used notepad offline. First I hit view source on an already built site and cut/pasted the whole thing on my notepad offline and began messing with it to learn how the tags worked. Eventually I could make my own, including http://www.aaronsfreebies.com which appears rouph around the edges but was my first site designed from scratch. Now I am building slightly better looking sites. It is an exciting process.

I am self taught and started with Yahoo site builder then moved on to Notepad and finally to DW

Im self-taught as well. There are so many resources online that help!

w3schools was a big help for html.

As for server-side programming, I was able to learn on my own by doing most a social networking website (am I allowed to post a link on here?). The site took 4 months to develop and was quite large with quite a bit of functionality.

I recently graduated with a BSc in Computer Science, and I thought I really enjoyed the aspects of machine learning, information retrieval and such topics. So I scoured the .edu websites looking for course projects (both undergrad and graduate) and try to do them. I ended up learning python in a week, and learning lisp right now (although that's taking a lot longer than I expected).

Anyway, yeah.. for those of you out there that want to learn. Always pick something that you think you cannot achieve. Say a site that's a little "too big" for you... whatever skill level you're at now, you're bound to improve if you keep an open mind and keep feeding your willingness to learn and take risks.

(admins/mods: may I talk about my newest project (and include a link) here? if not please edit the following out, I'm really sorry for the bother.)

My current project is a social bookmarking service for deals that you find online. I've built it with the intention of it working on almost any product page you can find on the web (anything that has a product title of some sort, and a price). The site allows you to store these good deals in one convenient location where you can organize and tag accordingly. Think of it as a virtual shopping cart that transcends all websites, kinda. The link for my site Dealclips, if I may post on here, is http://dealclips.com

Great question. I got volunteered by one of my co-workers at IBM,
to take over a web site on the company's intranet. That was 10 years ago.
I've never been certified for web mastering nor have I taken any classes for things such as web design, javascript use, HTML, or shopping carts...

I'm pretty much an old hacker from the 1980's and have probably developed some bad habits over the years. That's why I came here. I want to sharpen my skills and trade ideas with other web masters. I currently manage 5 web sites and get paid for only two.. I may need help making THAT better too!
I look forward to the discussions here. I hope I can contribute something as often as possible. With my lack of education, it will be difficult.. but that's the challenge I made for myself.. so.. hello everyone!

shobuz99

I guess everyone here started off pretty much the same. I remember I had jus bought my first computer and had made an online friend: this really nerdy, though quite good-looking girl and she had made her own webpage. I thought it was the coolest thing someone could have!!

Next thing I know, I'm on Geocities creating my first webpage. HTML came easily enough.

I missed out on the Netscape Composer (still knoe people who use it though). I received one of these promotional CD's that come with some magazine I can't even remember, and on that CD was this awesome HTML editor called Allaire Homesite (I think it was version 3 or something). It was awesome!! Pure code, no extra junk.

I still make all my website using HomeSite!!

Guys.. glad to be here. Anything anyone might need, I'll be more than plasead to pitch in with whatever. Greetings to all from Chile.

I probably the one know least about the website tech in this forum. I’m a medical student and prior to that and still my main focus is on hardware aspect of the IT industry. When I get into medical school I happened to joint an institution, which for doctors. I was randomly asked to develop a website for that institution. I could not say “no” then they will think I don’t know much about computers., so I said yes.

I kind of knew where to start reading and I got many friends who are into web development.. I gave it a crack, harassed my mates over msn, fixed the website, it was crap. This all happened 5yrs ago.
Learned html by online tutorials, utilized java scripts to spice it up. I would laugh at my first website now, well u need to start your work some where.

Now I host about 10 websites, using CMS to spice my sites. Still keeping my interest with the hardware development and study my medical books just before my exams and when I fed up with my PC.

My advice to newbies is
You need to start somewhere, so do not put down by comments by others.
Most of the excellent Webmaster made a crap website when they were new to this.
Keep updating your self and do not stop your learning just with website related work, everything that you learn in relation to PC will help you some where along the lines.
Learning my problem solving is the best way to come up. If you do not have any problems try to solve others.

Cool guys, I let u all breath now.

Hi to all in the forum. Just joined as I need to improve my skills more. I learned web design some years ago (2000 maybe) after realising I hated my engineering job and wanted to change. I learned HTML using one of those Learn HTML in 24 Hours Books, and it worked great. Of course, after that I moved on to Javascript and that was about it for a couple of years. I decided to jack my job in and go back to University to study a MSc in Computing. This taught me PHP and MySQL. Last year I setup my own business and am now quite experienced in online development. I use Open Source software mainly.

I learned off the www and still have much to learn I still work html old shcool..

from a net magzine

Wow some of you guys learned your stuff before I was born... Well if you must know, I'm still rather young if that wasn't a given, but I played a 'game' I'm sure we have all heard of called Neopets! There are things called guilds where you could design your own layouts and such, I basically started from there. I think the best help site I used when I was learning HTML and such was http://lissaexplains.com "HTML website for kids." Which what I was/am so yea! Here I am with my own domain now... Time flys I guess... I still feel very young surrounded by you people >_>

What i did first was to read an html tutorial. A long one....
Then started using frontpage but never looking at the code it produced, with time i learned most of the html elements and starting to code websites with notepad.
Then learned some basic photoshop without tutorials or help from other people, it took me about 10 hours to discover how layers, selections, and other tools work . I remember i woke up one day and decided to learn ps, i was on comp from 9 am to about 6pm that day, just testing tools

Then read php tutorials, but never really made any complex script so i forgot almost everything.
I learned CSS watching the stylesheet files of templates or other websites and the formatting they produced. Sometimes checking for elements or properties at w3schools.com

I couldnt stand computers at school and college, mind you the computers were a bit prehistoric and not many of them when I was there.

I used to work as a salesman for a car sales magazine and I got the chance to sell Glass's Traderdesk which is a web solution for car deals in the UK.

I then moved to Spain and began selling a Real estate software solution for estate agents. From there I learnt how to put the webkits in, I started working for a real estate company inputting links alday everyday - and I quickly learnt html, php abit of .asp - like you I am completely lost with javascript but there is so much to learn and copy as well on script sites that its so easy to get what you need. Sites like this that you can learn from others and pick up tips to help you improve, improve, improve.

I have been doing this for a few years now and I cant see myself going back to sales...

I am self taught. Homesite was my first web design software

Hi Davsan, this is what I did after college (when I was in college I didn't really feel my Course is right for me, but I finished it anyway) Try and do it for yourself, it might work for you (it worked 100% of the time)

First before you sleep, put a piece of paper and a pen ready beside you. Consciously remember that when you wake up the first thing you should do is write. Then when you wake up, write the top ten things you want to really do, or loved doing, you'll see that the first one you write is the difficult one since thats the one you should be doing on the first place... your fall-back is number 2 and 3 respectively.

Pursuing a dream is not a walk in the park, always remember that the greater dreams always have the greatest struggle, but since you are doing what you love to do (that means even if you dont get paid for it, you will still do it anyway), everything else will follow, like money or success... It's already a success when youre doing what you love doing...

Like alot of you I am completely self taught. It started about 1997 and has been a 10 year journey through books, forums and tutorial sites.

I tend to learn new skills on a need to know basis and learn fastest when i'm ripping apart and modifying others examples.

In 2000 I discovered the wonders of open source php projects such as oscommerce and since then my time has been mailny devoted to developing commercial e-commerce soultions.

I am always on the lookout to expand my knowledge which is why I come here

I too use Macromedia Dreamweaver MX to design my websites. I am not an expert, but still knows the do's and don'ts. I've not even explored the Macromedia Dreamweaver MX fully except the basic tools.

I started playing with geocities back in 1999 I thought it was so cool to build a page that can be seen by the whole world. I didn't really understand the code behind the page,but i was happy to have created something.
Few months later I come across a book called "HTML for Dummys" and it explained HTML so clearly, and have been building websotes since.
now for php
in most cases I can understand what the code is doing but so far have been unable to write anything in it. I would love to be able to write/create a simple php/mysql script. Can anyone recommend any newbie friendly PHP tutorial site?

i downloaded some books for free from some sites that provide links for free books like http://freebookie.blogspot.com . after it i read them and using trial and error method designed a simple website

web design and compter work sortof came natural to me. at age 6 i was your regular computer wiz, and age 8 i started programming in rpg toolkit and my sister got me an aol homepage and i wondered how to make a login sytem. age 9 i userd lissaexplains.com to make a login form that would email me the persons desired username and info. obviously it didnt work as a login. age 11 i got my first subdomain and used it for pretty much nothing until me and my friend tried making a gaming website with the site builder. I knew so much for my age at the tme and we had a site displaying a few digital pictures of us playing halo. during my whole life there was something burning to create, to make a functional site. age 12 i figured out key aspects in the web world. what a dns is. what a webhost is. ftp, html. i still knew now php. age 13 i started building a site i had brainstormed over the summer, wellcanyousing.com (currently being redone) i went into it knowing no php at all, but slowly i learned and created a sucessful site until my host cut and run (why i have to redo the site) i also went in not knowing what a query was or even how to use $array['username']. i started using flash when i was 9 and by age 13 i created the audio player widgets for my site aswell as a webcam input and audio input tools to be used on the new site. I am now 14 and working on nationalization of my product in localized communities around the world. i have big expectations for myself.

i love to create and web design is like a window that i can output all of my artwork. i'm not good at drawing (well not as good as most artists) but i am very ccreative. php programming is like creating a world. i love figuring things out and its exiting. i love programming. i hide my skills from my friends cuz i'm afraid of.... you know. i love skateboarding and do that with my friends. when i get home i let my mind wander and i create. but none of my friends know of my skill and nither do my parents... i plan on teling them when i hit big. i beleive god gave me this gift for a reason and i see my self slowly rising to the top. and when you are on top of the world... you can do anything...

sorry but i needed to post my life story somewhere...

-ajp

I did a couple of courses 10 years + ago and I also taught my self certain things of web design.

I started out with the wysiwyg builders and added custom codes in paragraphs to start, then changed to html and started out with editing simple areas of already made templates.

I want to know some php too, what's the easiest way to learn that?

Well...

I used to have a friend that would constantly make me practice my html and css....i thought it was stupid at first but then i realized its potential...

Although I had a lot of technical and programming knowledge, I'd never seen the internet or web, until a friend offered me a job building web pages as a contractor. I was thrown into the deep end.

I picked up things pretty quick. I got the idea of editing HTML using a text editor, then for a while I used hotdog. Later down the track I would use Netscape Communicator, or try anything I could find, but I usually end up with a text editor at some stage. I thought HTML was trivial to learn, and so most of my time was working with graphics programs such as Adobe Photoshop, but I'd also try loads of graphics editing programs, mostly free, to make the images I needed.

But in summary, I was well and truly churning out web pages after about a week on the job.

I´ve been teaching myself web design for a year now. It´s fun and I really enjoy it.

Been a graphic designer for over 25 years. Company I worked for as an art director was a textile manufacturer that went out of business and job went overseas. However, that allowed me to return to school and finish my degree. While I was there I took a Certified Internet Webmaster courses from Prosoft Corporation. Since then, I knew I needed to be in web design, and have been doing it ever since (about 4 - 5 years now). Now when I want to learn something I basically self teach - I buy all the books I can (through the company I currently work for ), and I subscribe to Lynda's Online Training Library, and of course visit a lot of Webmaster forums. I started learning web design using Dreamweaver and currently use Dreamweaver CS3, but I wish I had started learning by hand coding. I've learned hand coding now, but when I'm in a rush, I still turn on Dreamweaver. Never used FrontPage as my Instructor I had in the web courses told me that FrontPage wrote too much unnecessary code - don't know if it's true, but that's what she said, so I've stayed away from it.

well you people ahve got so much more than me, i feel shy posting about my knowledge:D

i tought myself everything i know. i have spent years on the net cus im disabled and cant walk, so ive put all of those years to good use, and tought myself web design, graphic design and now teaching myself seo and internet marketing.

shoot... I got started back in 95-96 doing basic html in notepad for assignments in my html class in highschool. from there I went to an online college for dreamweave and internet marketing. Besides that I have learned everything off a website called w3schools and I have created over 100 websites (mostly for friends and family and family friends)

:jump:

trial & error, lots of patience, google and coffe worked for me.
adobe CS3 helps aswell

I learned everything on my own.That's why my site is soooo simple...That's the best i can do..

Self taught HTML - started with Frontpage, then moved into Dreamweaver. Have recently gotten into Flash and PHP.

Mostly self-taught, apart from some basic html when I left the forces.
It's the best way, paying someone to teach you is usually bs unless it's tricky server biz or the like.

Largely self -taught. I did take some classes, but found that learning on my own is much more fun.

I haven't learned web desing so well yet.. But I'm looking tutorials on net and training to come better.. I wish I will be able to design my websites myself in future...

Trial and Error

Many trials. Many errors.

yes!!
W3schools.com is really great site