How difficult was learning web design for you?

[traveller]

I know many people who own a site and still can't manage it or understand how a layout works. Don't tell them about SEO or plugins, cause you've "killed" them. They did try to learn all these and weren't able to get to a point where they can manage their own sites. Others have achieved great skills in a short time and now know a bit of everything or have specialized in an area and are very good.

How difficult was for you to learn all the web design related problems? Are you still a beginner or do you feel more advanced as compared to others?

[PokerPie]

i've been at this over three years and i still don't know how to edit basic things on my site. i have tried very hard to learn this stuff and something as simple as uploading files or even connecting to my server via ftp is really hard for me.

so answer: extremely difficult, i still do none of it.

[pokermonger]

It took me well over a year before I had any confidence in my web design skills. I still make mostly ugly sites, but I can get one up in no time now. When I designed and launched my first site in 2000 it took me almost a week to get a page or two live. It was one of the most frustrating things I have ever dealt with. Now it would take me at most 15 minutes to get the same site up (if I have content) and it would be done much better.

The design is really secondary to usability and SEO as long as the design is not so bad that it scares people off. Web searchers want information and want it to be easy to find. Make the site with these two things in mind and you have a great start.

[Randy]

I had a really hard time learning how to do things too. The first sites I launched were built using Website Tonight from Godaddy, and they were awful in every way imaginable. If I had it all to do over again, I would take a class in Dreamweaver and/or Frontpage, and also in html.

[TheOPC]

I played the "take it apart and see how it works" game. Taught myself in about a week. Lots of reading and trial and error though. Next up for me is CMS.

[kingcobra]

Actually this reminds me of the very first version of the site which I built with a tool in Netscape and it was pretty damn ugly. It's more about having the tools than knowing all that much and a good website builder will allow you to do anything you want just with your mouse, which is my kind of web building Of course the ease here does vary with the program and I had a free trial of Dreamweaver for instance and it would have taken me a long time to figure that piece of crap out, a few minutes was long enough for me, same with a couple other programs. I want to insert and paste and drag and if I can't do that very easily I don't want it. By the way I've been using SiteSpinner for years, haven't found anything easier to use, 5 yr old kid could build a site with this, which is exactly what I want

[jackten]

I studied 3 years in computer programming so it was easy, yet I still don't master web development since it isn't needed. Once you know what a variable is and what a database is, you can pretty easily pick up php+mysql.

Writing from scratch is hard as hell, but all most of us are doing is using templates or cms.. as long as you know how to find your way around other people's code and edit what you want, it's pretty simple.

The downside is I couldn't launch a complex non-affiliate website (ie a game or advanced tools) unless I relearned a lot

[TheOPC]

Originally Posted by jackten

I studied 3 years in computer programming so it was easy, yet I still don't master web development since it isn't needed. Once you know what a variable is and what a database is, you can pretty easily pick up php+mysql.

Writing from scratch is hard as hell, but all most of us are doing is using templates or cms.. as long as you know how to find your way around other people's code and edit what you want, it's pretty simple.

The downside is I couldn't launch a complex non-affiliate website (ie a game or advanced tools) unless I relearned a lot

Learning CMS is my plan this weekend. Any suggestions or tips as to where to get the crash course?

[jackten]

What do you mean by learning CMS? Installing it? Editing? Programming?

[TheOPC]

Originally Posted by jackten

What do you mean by learning CMS? Installing it? Editing? Programming?

Programming