Just did a bit of Googling on how best to learn to develop a website and figure here is as good a place as any to "dump" the results so I have easy access to them in the future. The order of learning seems to be generally agreed upon at least to start with:
1. HTML (Hypertext Markup Language - a language used to format a website, eg use a table here);
2. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets - used to set up overall formatting for things like bold text)
Note: a) No, I don't really get the difference between HTML and CSS just yet;
b)Yes, it is still recommended to learn a bit about them even if you end up using a Content Management System like WordPress or a WYSIWYG editor like Dreamweaver that takes care of most of the details for you - eg I suspect if I knew a bit of HTML, I could have indented these notes!
3. Javascript, PHP (both programming languages that allow a page to be dynamic, ie respond to the person using it. Javascript runs within the browser on your PC, whereas PHP runs on the server, ie the machine that sends the website to your PC)
This page, The Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Own Website, gives an overview of the whole process and links to other useful tutorials and resources.
Lots of people mention Code Academy, which is an interactive online tutorial site covering such things as HTML, CSS, jQuery, Javascript, Python and Ruby. W3Schools also rates a lot of mentions, but seems to be very unpopular in some quarters. I also found CodeAvengers and a 30 day course in HTML and CSS at TutsPlus. All these online tutorial sites appear to be free to use.
There are also numerous books written about website design, development and the various technical aspects. One recently published book is "HTML & CSS: Design and Build Websites" by Jon Duckett seems to be getting excellent reviews at Amazon and elsewhere. "Build your own website the right way using HTML and CSS" by Ian Lloyd is also recommended, although as pointed out in some of the Amazon reviews, the portions on linking to Facebook no longer work (due to the volatility of Facebook rather than any fault on the part of the author).
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