What's the easiest way to learn how to build my own website?

w3Schools is a great place to start. I knew absolutely nothing about coding when I started putting together my site and they have been an invaluable reference tool.

I’m a pretty big fan of using books instead of piecing things together from random tutorials. This is the book I would get if I were you. I have read it and it is good for people starting from scratch.

Try this too . . . HTML for Dummies

You can also look into building a website using Drupal which can save a ton of time while offering a lot of features.. www.drupal.org

I taught myself from W3Schools and random tutorial websites.

The key it to have a goal. You will be forced to learn everything you need to know to build the website. You can’t learn webdesign without having a website to build in my opinion.

Just start doing it. I bought a domain, server space, and installed Drupal and just started playing with it one day. I don’t know what your starting point is though. I studied C and java a long time ago, and consider html to be pretty basic stuff. If it is new to you, then webmonkey.com is a good place to start. There is so much info on the internet available to you to do basic things. Think of something you’d like to do, then just search and read around until you figure it out.

Another helpful system to get used to is the 960 grid system: www.960.gs This can save a lot of time too.

If you design and code from scratch, it take a lot longer. These tools can get you rolling in no time. If you don’t care about custom design, just install Drupal, pick a theme and get to customizing! Otherwise, you’re in the for the long haul if you want a custom design. That’s opening a whole new can of worms because you’re then introducing CSS, themes, photoshop, etc.

Hi Lilakess,

I taught myself and eventually worked professionally as a designer. I’m not sure how skilled you are, so I’m going to start at the absolute basics. I started off in the “old days” when HTML was pretty much it, and you can still start there too.

On your computer, open Notepad and create a new file called “index.html”. Then go to w3schools.com and read their lesson on HTML – http://w3schools.com/html/default.asp
Copy and paste, or type in your own version, of the code presented in that lesson into your index.html file and save.

Now go to where you saved that file, and open it in your web browser. You might be able to Right Click > Open With Internet Explorer. Congratulations! You have now made your first very simple website.

Then main thing you should learn is CSS, Cascading Style Sheets. The HTML code describes what the content on your web page is – such as a heading and a paragraph, but CSS tells the web browser where to put those headings and paragraphs, and what they should look like.

There are many templates on the web for basic CSS layouts – just google “css layouts”. Copy and paste the code into your index.html file and then open it in your web browser, and you’ll begin to see how it all fits in together.

All of this will teach you the very basics of coding from scratch, and from there you can look into getting a domain name so you can put your pages onto the web, and begin playing with different types of web design such as using a Content Management System (like Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress)

Best of luck!

For the very basics and to set up one for free (until you have assessed the effectiveness for why you are setting it up) start on Google sites. Doesn’t cost anything, pages are unlimited and it’s great way to get your feet wet w/o investing $$$. Once you like the design and feedback is positive… You can advance your skills in Html. The tutorial is online with it. Wikispaces.com is a similar concept.

try youtube.com they teach EVERYTHING!