Is it possible for a newbie to create a half decent site?

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

Soldato
Joined
6 Sep 2005
Posts
3,781
Hi everyone

It's a bit of an out there question for me but I hope to get a few answers as my head is in a bit of a whirl reading up on things.

Basically, as the topic says can a newbie create a half decent basic website?

I'd like to create a site which would have some pages of information on it, a photo gallery, maybe some embedded Youtube video...links to Facebook/twitter etc...nothing fancy, not even a forum.

I'm code phobic so WYSIWYG is definitely the way I would have to go, I haven't got the type of brain to be able to absorb coding (or much time to learn) so simple is good.

I suppose the obvious answer people would give would be to use Wordpress, I have looked at that but I would like to be able to design and make my site my own rather than using templates...I've looked at the themes but it doesn't seem very straightforward.

I have found very briefly that it appears Photoshop can be used somehow to design the look of a site which I think is more where I want to go, I would like to create something that looks a bit different...I very much like the design of The Oatmeal with bright colours and uneven borders but I don't have a clue how it's put together.

It's probably a lot more complicated as I understand the guy who produces it used to be a web developer!

If anyone has any tips on how to design/create a basic site I'd love to hear them!


Many thanks. :)
 
You could create a reasonable (if unoriginal) site by using Wordpress and borrowing an existing theme. But if you want your own design, you only really have two options: employ somebody to do it, or get your head round some HTML and CSS. Designers will typically draw up site designs in Photoshop, but there's not really any way to mock something up in Photoshop and translate it into a half-decent site without knowing some code.

Learning basic HTML and CSS is easy and, if you're interested, quite fun. If you wanted to get a site off the ground, you could start with a Wordpress site with an existing basic theme. Then you could mess around with some HTML/CSS and, as you learn, start to customise the theme, bringing it gradually closer to what you really want?
 
So the general consensus is that I need to use Wordpress then! lol

I know there are hundreds of places on the net but you recommend anywhere to look for free tutorials on the basics of creating themes etc.?

Thanks. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom