Self learning web development

Html (Hyper text markup language) is rising in popularity tremendously over the years. With start ups like google blogspot, wordpress, everyone seems to be getting well versed in html coding. Now, even individuals that are not trained in IT industry know all about html and they might even be much pro then those who are in IT. Many years back, when you tell people “Yes,. i know html”, they will say “wow, that’s cool” Now, they will say “So what? i know html too”. It’s so common.

Hiring a teacher? No way! A waste of money!

You have no experience in design and developing an website and you wanted to find a good teacher and learn from them. If that is so, “Google” is always your best teacher! There’s no need to search for teacher just to learn html. If you are doing so, you are just wasting your money. Rather, it’s even better to buy research books then to hire a teacher. I self-learn html around 5 years back, by researching in google, looking at tutorials etc. You just need to have the correct attitude. Well, from my experience, i can say that i learn much more in html from myself then in school. In fact, when my school teaches html, i already know most about html. So, teaching yourself html is really simple. The same thing applies to learning other programming languages like php. The most your teacher teaches you is the syntax of the programming language and how to use certain things like while loop, for loop etc. In programming, logic is the most important thing that you must have. 

What i need to start developing websites?

For a start, you just need to have certain software. For coding editing, use either notepad or dreamweaver. For designing, photoshop is the best. Now, head to w3schools.com and learn all the html tags. Learn how to create a table, how to set colors, how to use layers etc. You may not have any idea what i am talking about, but if you really take your time to learn from w3school, you will find it very familiar. I learn my html from w3school as well. The best way to learn html is by doing projects. For a start, you might find it’s difficult to remember certain tags and need reference. Refering is perfectly ok and even experienced html programmers sometimes need reference. After a certain period of time, let’s say you have successfully develop 4 to 5 websites, those html tags just come to your mind directly. You will get faster and faster in writing your code.

I mastered html, what is the next thing?

Now that you can develop html websites, the next thing you need to do is to brush up on the quality of your code. Many people make this mistake. They develop websites just to make it work and they don’t care about the quality of them. “I write the code, yea, it’s working, everything is presentable, that’s it” - This is not the correct way. As a good html coder, you need to make your code looks neat. This is for search engine purposes as well. Search engine spiders will find it difficult to index your site if your code is messy. Another very important factor to consider is the loading speed of the site as well. Using table codes in layout is slower than using div layers. That is because more code is need to be written in tables than in layers. The number, the size, and the format of images are important as well. For example, using jpeg for photos, or using gif for solid colors. A good web designer/developer will take all these things into account.

Advanced programming

After you mastered html (which probaby won’t take long), it’s good to start learning server scripting language like php, python, asp.net, perl etc. For me, i chose php. This languages enables you to write interactive websites that require uses of database etc. If you are serious about being a web developer, it is a must that you must be skilled in one of those languages. You won’t get far with just html. Html is just a basic and the simplest language. I will not be going more in depth into php because as for now, i am not a very good php programmer. Like html, there are good and bad coding as well. However, php is more complex, as it interact with the database. You have to code it in such a way that the script is secured, the server  load is fast and many other factors. Currently, I am still learning in process.

As you can read from this post, it’s just give you an introduction on how you can self learn how to develop a website. I will be writing a post purely on how to design a website in photoshop in one of my next few post. If there’s any web designer who are interested in contributing some post, please drop me an email. Credits will be given.

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