Learning Web page Design

By: Stefan Mischook

You can learn how to build websites quickly … if you know the right approach. First, my top 3 web design learning tips:

1. Start with the basics
2. Learn HTML and CSS Code!
3. Start building small websites right away – you learn best by doing!

… OK, back to the article:

Start with the basics

I have found over the years, that people run into trouble learning web design when the try to start on step 5, rather than starting with step 1. Like a house with no foundation, you are asking for trouble if you don’t spend a little time establishing a good understanding of the fundamentals.

… The good thing though, is that learning these basics isn’t that hard and it doesn’t take long.

So, what are the basics of web design?

It is probably easier to just list some of them here:

• urls / domains / links
• hosting
• request / response cycle, browser page parsing

If any of the above is nerd gibbers (gibbers = Speak rapidly and unintelligibly) for you, then you need to learn this stuff, because it is fundamental to how the Web works and web design.

If you don’t know and understand this, and you decide jump ahead and use a web design program like Dreamweaver or Web Expression, I can almost guarantee that you will be running into problems that you would have avoided otherwise.

… I’ve seen it time and time again.

Learn HTML and CSS Code!

You may already know that every single web page on the Web is built using two simple written languages: HTML and CSS.

You can write HTML and CSS using a simple text editor that every computer has. That means you can create any website without needing a special web design program like a Dreamweaver or Web Expression.

… But to write HTML and CSS code, you need to understand the rules of the languages.

While you click the program’s buttons, web design software can hide much of the code from you, as it writes the CSS and HTML. The problem is that these programs (thought good, ) are not perfect and you will need to get into the code (from time to time) and fix things. If you don’t understand the code, this is going to be trouble for you!

You can think of web design software like power tools; they can speed up the process, but you still need to know what you are doing. Maybe 10 years ago you could get away with not understand the code behind web pages, but those days are long gone, as the proper structure and use of HTML and CSS can have a big impact on things you might not consider … things like:

• how easy your website is to update.
• how search engine friendly your site is.
• how fast your pages load.

Understanding the basics of HTML and CSS will allow you to configure your websites for the above and much more.

Start building small websites right away – you learn best by doing!

To best way to learn anything is to just do it. So, when I teach web design and web programming, I get people creating web pages and websites as soon as possible.

… In fact, in my beginners web design video course, we start building a web site within first 20 minutes!

So whether you learn web design with KillerSites or using some other method (… for whatever crazy reason!) I strongly suggest that you get excited about creating pages right away.

Yes, you will make mistakes and be frustrated a little at first … that’s the nature of the web design game. But soon you will develop what I like to call your ‘nerd eyes’ … and all that gibberish, will magically transform itself into something that really is very easy to read and understand – you will know web design.