Do you know how to build a website?

[dondy]

Out of curiousity. I wanna know how common knowledge is it nowadays. I myself have only started learning it yesterday and so far, I only know the basics.

I`m single, in my early 20's, with too much freetime for the time being. I had a few years job experience on mantaining, troubleshooting, and networking PCs on Windows platform. I also had a year experience on moderating an IPB forums of a certain private-server MMORPG that I used to play. I've never had any good knowledge on progamming though, and I'm learning HTML as a stepping stone.

I plan to go as far as learning how to code, get an MCPD certification, and maybe to even develop Andor's Trail someday. Geekpedia advised me to start off by learning mark-ups before languages. I know this process would most probably eat up the next decade of my life to gain expertise, but looking at my situation for the past 5 years... I think it would probably do me better than just waiting for the weather to rain cats and dogs.

With that said, I wanna hear from those who will answer yes as to how far your knowledge goes?

[buddyCasino]

I had quite a bit of Computer Science in my university courses, in August I'll start my thesis using C++ and mostly LUA. I also read "The Art of Game Design" by Jesse Schell for an exam. It's a nice book, quite inspiring and providing a checklist of 100 "lenses" that you can use to test your ideas.

HTML, CSS and Java Script are nice way to start. Enthusiasm is of major importance. I avoided coding as learning to code frustrated me extremely in the beginning. Go ahead and try to set up an IDE for a directx 9.0 and C++ program written several years ago. It took me a whole week to find a working combination. Horrible. But it was programming or cancel the studies. I finished all of my other seminars until I had the courage to start it. After two years of delaying I finally started. And after two weeks I finally had the idea that I knew what I was doing. After that I really enjoyed it.

One day in the distant future I'll get myself a Java book and become a AT developer... One day!

[fiernaq]

Ha, sounds like I need to enroll your help, buddy. I'm working on a LUA project atm which is a language I'm only barely familiar with.

@OP, I'm a hardware guy mostly but in order to troubleshoot hardware you have to know software so that you can rule it out as the cause. BASIC and batch scripting were the first two languages I picked up but having the attention span of a squirrel on an energy drink I quickly bounced through HTML, CSS, some PHP and JS, the standard IT admin languages like WMIC, SQL, and AutoIt as well as a smidgeon of LUA, C#, and Java. I never took the time to master any of them but all programming is logic based so even if I don't know something as long as I know what to look for I can generally figure out how to do it eventually.

[Antison]

I am a software engineer with 8+ years of business web site experience (mostly SaaS) focusing in Microsoft . NET technology. ASP.NET, jquery, Javascript, HTML, CSS, and Silverlight. All web based technologies sitting on top of multi- tierd programming infrastructure written in C#.

This feels like an interview so I will stop.

[ncer]

I used to work as a software engineer in webdesign.

Once you think you understand HTML and CSS you can move on to javascript for client side coding, or some scripting language for server side coding (ASP or PHP for example). You might now wonder what that is, client side basically means that it runs on the computer of the person who is viewing your webpage while server side means it's running on your own server. Both are ways to make HTML less static as that is generally a problem with it. I personally prefer server side and really like PHP to do it.

At some point you probably want to become familiar with using a database to store information that is to be displayed on your website, but I'd figure out scripting first.

[dondy]

Very nice replies from all of you. Seems like y'all really exerted some effort on composing them, thank you!:-)

As of now, I'm think I'm getting the hang of it. I made a couple of webpages and linked them up together last night. I had to do everything all over again after learning about the W3C XHTML standards. Then, I tried validating it and came out ok after like a dozen edits. After the SRCs passed, it felt great. Now, guides are telling me to worry about how the pages are gonna come out of different user agents.

It fascinates me how fast one can actually learn HTML and CSS, but the mastery kinda takes... a while. I think I`m ready to start learning a few Java Scripting, the theoretical concepts at least. I do expect that it's gonna be a bloodbath but heck, I'm mentaly prepared for it.

@firenaq & buddyCasino
You guys are college students right? Do you major on CS/IT? You two must be having a blast on trying to get those degrees.

@tek
Wow, these stuff is actually your bread & butter. Much respect for you sir. I hope the business is going great.

@ncer
I really like your advice, it helps a lot and I think I'm gonna do just that. What do you do right now btw? Just curious, y'all need not to answer if you don't want to.

[fiernaq]

Ha ha, nope. As soon as I can afford the $53,000 annual bill I'll go back and try to finish college but till then I'll just have to keep looking for jobs that pay $35,000 a year. Funny how that works.... I just need someone with lysdexia to write my paychecks and I'll be good to go

[buddyCasino]

This is not like an interview, this is the time to bragg! I'm effin' proud of my skills because it was so hard to get them.

Having a blast? Not at all. I really had to work hard in order to understand programming. I am not good at it, because it is nothing I pick up naturally. And if you don't have a knack for it or learning how to program is like scratching an itch for you, then you won't enjoy it. Now that I know how to do the basic things it becomes easier and easier to learn more.

[phydeaux]

This is not like an interview, this is the time to bragg! I'm effin' proud of my skills because it was so hard to get them.

Having a blast? Not at all. I really had to work hard in order to understand programming. I am not good at it, because it is nothing I pick up naturally. And if you don't have a knack for it or learning how to program is like scratching an itch for you, then you won't enjoy it. Now that I know how to do the basic things it becomes easier and easier to learn more.

Programmers and engineers all seem to act the same way and have a lot of the same idiosyncrasies... I know, I'm both
I definitely agree with you on the knack/itch bit... If you don't get it, you probably won't... Unless you manage to find a really good teacher...

[buddyCasino]

For me it was required to hand in an assignment in C++/Directx or cancel my studies. As I have a wife and kid failure was not an option. The tipping point was when I realized that I would be able to make it.