Web Site Development, so You Want to Get in to This Field?

Web Site Development, so you want to get in to this field?

Web site development is the art of creating and developing the world wide web. Using tools, graphics and programming toward the development of the world wide web.  This article gives you some great resources to get your feet wet in the development field.

First, to learn a little about my skills in web development. I am 24 years old and I started my first online business at 12.  I started hand coding HTML for fun and learned to love web sites.  I have built web sites for small companies to large corporations.

There are so many resources available on the net so that you can get involved designing web sites. However without any sort of knowledge in the field, it can be very confusing. Common questions that probably run through your head are "what development tools should be used", "how do I get web sites on the internet", and "how to I create applications".  I am going to go briefly over these different questions and provide you with great resources to learn more.

Next step in the development process is that you need to obtain a domain name (or web site address) - this can be accomplished by searching google for domain names.  A domain name example would be "yourwebsite.com". You will also need to find a web site host to manage your files. A web site host simply stores your web site on a computer in a datacenter that can be accessed by the entire world wide web.

Now let me give you steps to learn how to build a basic site. First off, I want to give you an understanding of the best web development tools to use (in my opinion of course).

When building a web site, you can utilize many different tools. Some of the easiest tools to use are programs such as Frontpage.  However if you are interested in working long term in this field, I would grab a book on Dreamweaver - dreamweaver is a program that must be purchased. For great tutorials on using this program go to killersites.com/dreamweaver/ for video tutorials. This program is great, simple (considering its power) and offers amazing scaleability. 

You will also need a program called a FTP client. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. This is a program that allows you to connect to your web site (at your hosting company) and add your files. I recommend Filezilla. Great filezilla tutorials are available at easywebtutorials.com/html-tutorial/lessons/publish.html

Another program you may find useful for image design & development is Adobe Photoshop. This allows you to create quality and complex images, and comes with great tutorials.

Now you must understand web site structure when building web pages.  All HOME PAGE files you find on the internet are called index files. A home page file is the first page everyone sees when they land on your web site. Your index file is a page named index.html, (could be index.php or a few others) - The most common is index.html.  The sites landing page will always have an index file. For example when you go to google.com - you are actually accessing google.com/index.html.  You can name any other pages whatever you want, but you always need an index file in the main folder of your web site. 

After you have a main index page, you will need to create additional pages that you will eventually link together from your home page. Good examples would be contactus.html, about.html, jokes.html, and etc.  You can create new pages in your web site editor (dreamweaver) and then you can go to your index.html file and create a link to the new pages you created using the link icon.

This was a quick overview of the web development process. To find great resources on the internet google "web development tutorials", "dreamweaver tutorials", "web design tutorials", and so on.  If you are interested in becoming a web site programmer learning languages like PHP, ASP, JAVASCRIPT and so on. I would recommend checking out classes at your local community college or searching google for "beginners guides to programming".

A quick recap - the web development process works like this. You will build your home page in dreamweaver and save the page you create as index.html - Then you create sub-pages such as contactus.html, aboutus.html, services.html, and then you link to them from the home page. Then you will proceed to upload your index.html file and all other files using filezilla to your hosting accounts root directory. This directory is often times named http, httpdocs, www, home. 

Hopefully this helped!