Getting StartED Building Websites

Website design and development can be a minefield for beginners. Where do you start? What languages should you learn? What techniques should you use to produce your site? What should you put on your site? How do you make it look appealing? How do you update it? This book takes into account the most frequently asked website design and development questions and gives you straightforward answers.

• No experience required in this step-by-step guide to website design and development
• Presents the important techniques you need to learn in easy-to-follow examples
• Takes the confusion out of languages, technologies, and all the important elements of the development process

What you’ll learn

• How to start making a website that takes into account important practices such as accessibility and usability
• A simple and effective step-by-step process you can master to work at your own pace and fuel your own learning process
• The importance of taking the time to understand and learn your craft while being able to dive straight into the creative process
• What languages, products, and resources are available to allow you to extend your learning beyond this book to maintain an active skill set
• The different fields that exist within the web design industry and how each of these areas helps bring a website together
• How to troubleshoot and resolve problems and advice on courses of action you can take for general problems that occur during the process

About the Author

Alexander Dawson is a 25-year-old freelance website designer/consultant based in the UK who specializes in web standards, accessibility, usability engineering, and UX design. With self-taught experience in software development and producing simple but elegant websites through HTML and CSS, he spends his days (when not working on projects either privately or publicly) absorbing the vast amounts of knowledge in books, the Internet, and other media related to the fast-paced industry of web design. His aim in life is to be able to share his knowledge with the world, so that others who follow the same path can be there at the front lines and not feel intimidated by the constant flow of new technology.