Coding: What do I need to learn to be able to create websites?

are you looking for a step by step instructions with distributed study plan ?
 
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, & PHP are usually all you need for the basics. And you don't need to be a PHP master unless you're doing heavy lifting.But you need to have the ability...

I'd recommend starting with basic PHP to see if you have the chops for coding, however, because not everybody is the type to be able to stick with it. If you can't take the heat from that then your future is in modifying Wordpress templates at best.

-ThopHayt
 
I wish I would have asked that question when I started building websites! You just got about ten responses telling you exactly what you need to know. I think this one was the best:
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, & PHP are usually all you need for the basics. And you don't need to be a PHP master unless you're doing heavy lifting.But you need to have the ability...

I'd recommend starting with basic PHP to see if you have the chops for coding, however, because not everybody is the type to be able to stick with it. If you can't take the heat from that then your future is in modifying Wordpress templates at best.

-ThopHayt

I would also second this one:
For beginners(basic):
1.HTML5 (or)XML
2.CSS3
3.JAVASCRIPT

CMS:
Wordpress is best choice.

Wordpress is your best choice for starting out and you will continue to use it on client sites for years to come.

The only thing I could add is in addition to the coding you will need some basic design and hopefully ability to use photoshop and illustrator. This is so you can create logos, banners, graphics, and optimize your images. That will save you time and money and make your sites look better and load faster.
 
Let me explain further, it's not a good approach to build a whole website from scratch unless you want to work as web developer. Because this will need a huge amount of learning, time and trying.

The better approach would be customizing what is already here and build upon it. So, learning how to read php code, how wordpress works and with help of something like genesis you will be able to accomplish whatever you need.

Later, you can give up on genesis, and work directly with wordpress core. Then, you will be able to write full applications from scratch if you needed to.

You are perfectly right with all that you've said. I don't plan to build websites from scratch. I just want to be able to customize sites to my liking and add scripts or features.

Thanks for the great advice. I'll definitely look at Genesis framework once I finish my course at codeacademy.
 
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The only thing I could add is in addition to the coding you will need some basic design and hopefully ability to use photoshop and illustrator. This is so you can create logos, banners, graphics, and optimize your images. That will save you time and money and make your sites look better and load faster.

Yes I am doing all of that in photoshop but just a simple ones. I'm not expert in it but can definitely use it when I need to.
 
are you looking for a step by step instructions with distributed study plan ?

yeah any recommendation? I am already enrolled in codeacademy but you might still have suggestion that is worth looking.
 
yeah any recommendation? I am already enrolled in codeacademy but you might still have suggestion that is worth looking.

good start. mix it up. i know some people conduct hands on training via skype. i think when you arrive at a point where you know the basics. you should hire one.
 
Stackoverflow is life.. Any error/bug has already happened, and has been solved on Stack, along with some good explanations on why stuff is happening/not happening. Definitely get used to using this site as you learn.
 
Pluralsight offers the absolute highest quality online training for close to everything coding related and they have lots of courses on design too. Codecademy is what I would recommend to dive in and start actually doing development. Those guys have built an excellent platform to teach people the basics.

Lots of people suggest PHP as a backend language. Well... that's because they probably have only worked with wordpress before and PHP is all they know. They think every website on earth is built with PHP.

C# and Java are far better choices in terms of power, flexibility, scalability, security and robustness. PHP continues to exist because of wordpress and threads like these. WordPress continues to exist because of threads like these (technologically speaking wordpress is slightly horrible, though the platform itself is excellent to use #securitynightmare).

If watching tutorials and following along bores you to sleep and you want everything handed to you, then to be honest it's probably not for you. It requires a lot of searching for information, reading documentation and solving challenging problems. In that case try the Codecademy approach as its completely hands on.

Learning to develop things of sufficient complexity and quality takes years.
 
Stackoverflow is life.. Any error/bug has already happened, and has been solved on Stack, along with some good explanations on why stuff is happening/not happening. Definitely get used to using this site as you learn.

Just about now before I log in, I googled for a html problem that I can't solve and the first result is stackoverflow. Ended up signing up and asking a question.

I am so happy right now cause I was able to do a little modification to my liking on a LP by looking at the css codes. Even created a navbar for it. It's freaking cool! hahaha

Just wanna share xD
 
Actually I just thought of something I like to use for quickly making prototypes of websites.

Layoutit

Its a drag and drop design tool for sites that use twitter bootstrap. Bootstrap is an excellent CSS framework for making good looking and easy to develop sites. So once you know the basics of html/css I'd highly recommend checking out bootstrap. It makes life a lot easier.
 
I end up enrolling to codeacademy as they are much cheaper. But I feel like that they are just teaching very basic stuff on per topic but I am just starting out the first course so we'll see.
Oh I would have thought you would go for the free options :)
 
Easiest way to get your feet wet is to find free course on udemy.

"Free" as in get a coupon, or download for free. Courses on udemy is heavily discounted. You can get $99 courses for like $5.
 
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