Learning How to Code a Website for Beginners

Update: w3schools was a good reference for me when it got started. The community at large, however, much prefers Mozilla Development Network, and I highly recommend it as a starting point in today's web.

The web is a gigantically massive thing, and to want to help further develop and design it is, at the very least, overwhelming. So where do you begin? And how can I help?

The web is not unlike the other items I'll teach about in this space in that learning it can be done, for the most part, on the web (and if many cases, free of charge as well). But the best references often live scattered; and some, while helpful, can still be overwhelming. So when it comes to the web and the other categories of this blog, I'll try to act as your facilitator, pointing you to the best references when possible, and creating or altering references where they aren't the best (based on my experience).

When it comes to learning something new, everybody always wants you to start at the beginning. With the guitar they want you to learn scales and notes of chords; with photography they want you to learn what things like aperture and shutter speed mean; and in web design/development, they want you to know how the web works. Now, don't get me wrong; learning how the web works is important should you pursue design/development further. But it's unnecessary for beginners.

The little you need to know before starting can be found at w3schools. w3schools is among my favorite reference sites for web design. It's brilliant for helping you learn the basics, but it'll serve as an invaluable reference down the road as well.

Start there. Go through the tutorials for HTML and CSS (don't even worry about HTML5 or CSS3 at first). And, should you go no further, you'll at least have some knowledge to help design your site—you'll know what you're looking at when you view the code.