# Web Design



## Greg (Sep 8, 2007)

Where would be a good place (or book) to go to learn web design?


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## jbergsing (Sep 9, 2007)

This *LINK* might help you.


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## buddy (Sep 9, 2007)

Hi Greg,
I'm not sure what type of web site you want to create. A good program that does not require knowing html is Serif Web Plus or Page Plus. Web Plus will have more whistles and bells than Page Plus for creating web sites. With Page Plus you can create web sites but it's a desktop publisher. There is a free version on Web Plus but of course it's not going to be as good as the one you buy but it will give you a feel for it. It is very easy to use and there is tutorials with the version that you buy, I'm not sure if the free version has tutorials or not. Here are a couple of sites I've created with Web Plus or Page Plus. My resume site, Calvinism Web Ring site.

Another good program is XOOPS. 

"XOOPS is a program that allows administrators to easily create dynamic websites with great content and many outstanding features. It is an ideal tool for developing small to large dynamic community websites, intra company portals, corporate portals, weblogs and much more. It can be installed on an Internet host with a PHP-capable web server (e.g., Apache) and a database (e.g., MySQL)."

XOOPS is harder to use than the Serif programs, but you can do a lot more with a web site with XOOPS. With XOOPS there are a lot of themes you can choose from as to how you want your site to look or you can create your own theme. Most themes you have to edit to put your site name in it. There is an XOOPS for dummies web site where you can learn about it. With XOOPS you install modules for whatever you want on your site. You can look at some of the XOOPS sites I have made: Covenant of Grace Church, RITE, Doctrines of Grace. With the Doctrines of Grace site I have different themes you can choose from, you can see them on the left side. I have several modules installed on the site. I have a download module with a lot of my pastors sermons. I have a blog module installed that tartanarmy is using, I have a blog feed module with several reformed blogs in it. There is a photo gallery module installed and some other modules. The best thing about XOOPS is it's free. I'm not sure if this is the kind of stuff you are looking for, I thought I would let you know about it in case you are interested.


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## jlim (Sep 22, 2007)

If you want to learn to design website from scratch, the best place to learn is from WWW Consortium itself (World Wide Web Consortium), you can start by learning HTML from Dave Raggett's Introduction to HTML.

However if you want to use a program to create website, then the best program would be Adobe Dreamweaver (formerly Macromedia Dreamweaver). You must also learn to edit image or picture, the best program will be Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Freehand (formerly Macromedia Freehand). And if you want a better website, you have to learn Adobe Flash Pro (formerly Macromedia Flash).

You can learn all this by buying book such as "Creative Suite 3 Integration: Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Dreamweaver, Flash Pro, Acrobat, Bridge and Version Cue" written by Keith Martin.

Or, if you want to use program that already installed in many notebook and PCs, then you can use Microsoft FrontPage. Even Microsoft Word also can be saved as HTML. In this case, you can just look for FrontPage book. 

However, today there are many ready scripts to be used, so that with a little effort you can have a website. If you want to have a portal website or CMS website, then you can look for Joomla, Mambo, XOOPS, PHP-Nuke, Post-NUke. Drupal. If you want a blog website, you can look for Wordpress, Pivot, b2evolution. If you want a forum website, you can look for phpBB, SMF. If you want e-commerce site, then you can look for osCommerce, phpShop. And there are many more scripts, including for advertising, poll/survey, gallery, faq, wiki, etc.


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## SoldierOfTheRock (Sep 22, 2007)

Greg, if you want a good book to learn html and CSS and eventually xhtml you should look into "Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML" It can be found here:

O'Reilly Media -- Bookstore: Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML

I would not buy it from there, but rather look around the internet to find it cheaper than the MSRP.

Anyway, it is a good book, I used it to teach myself HTML and CSS for my college practica and my church website. Lots of pictures and great examples. They provide an entertaining way to teach and give you reasons for the different techniques they suggest. I have recommended to all my web authoring friends.

Just take a look at it next time you are in Barnes and Noble or Borders. I find most others to be quite boring.

As someone else mentioned, the World Wide Web Consortium is a great place to mess around and to use the validator. It will check your code for HTML standards.

Also, make sure to check your work in multiple browsers! They are all different for some reason, even when dealing with the strictest standards.


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## Greg (Sep 22, 2007)

Thanks everyone for your replies. Allow me to ask another question. Can one earn a decent living doing this type of work? This was actually why I asked the original question. I'm looking for the possibility of maybe doing something else occupationally speaking. Though I'm not the most computer literate person, I have always liked computers and don't mind putting in the time and effort to learn a new skill.


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## Semper Fidelis (Sep 22, 2007)

Yes, it's possible to earn a decent living doing web design. Keep in mind, however, that the skill is becoming more of a commodity than it once was. Straight HTML page coders are becoming rarer these days and the real lucrative aspect of web design is found in the programming aspect.

If you really like that "direction" of employment then you probably ought to consider learning some programming languages as well as basic web design.

People always think the stuff I do for web sites right now on a hobby basis is fairly complex but it probably falls into the intermediate skill level among web designers. I'm not very artistic when it comes to design and I don't really do my own PHP, ASP, or other type of programming. I could learn that skill if I desired but it's a matter of time.

I do know what I'd be looking for in a web programmer. In fact, we recently hired two contractors to support my unit. If you are an American Citizen in Okinawa, Japan who has web programming skills then you're virtually assured a job here.


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