Suggested Web Design Resources

I am often asked which resources (books, etc.) that I recommend for people who want to create web sites.

Many web hosts, such as Powweb, provide basic templates for easy creation of a web site. These can be your base for your very first web site, or can function as a quick way to set up your personal blog, a photo gallery or even a forum.

Once you have your first site created by some type of script or template, you will want to play around with it and change it. Whether you create a site using FrontPage, DreamWeaver, a web host’s templates, or code it by hand, you will probably find that you want to do things that can not be done by the standard package. That’s where coding and tweaking the site by hand come in.

HTML for the World Wide Web with XHTML and CSS: Visual QuickStart Guide, Fifth Edition (Paperback)
– excellent structure, very readable and very understandable. Bite-size chunks of information and examples.

Open Source Web Development with LAMP Using Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl and PHP (the LAMP book will be hard to find).
My reviews of these two books.

If you’re using FrontPage, get FrontPage 2003 The Missing Manual.

Actually, all of the books at this link. I have but haven’t used the JavaScript one. The others are good. Start from the top, with Don’t Make Me Think.

Get one or the other versions (paperback / hardack) of the HTML for the World Wide Web, even if you have another HTML book. www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/web-design-books.php The CSS and PHP anthologies are not learning tools, but more reference / script libraries. The “Build your own database-driven website” book is a good example for getting going with PHP.

Visibone.com’s “The Browser Book” is a 16-page quick-reference booklet that I use almost every day. It covers HTML, CSS, colors, fonts, special characters, JavaScript, DOM and Regular Expresions.
www.visibone.com

The Super Affiliates Handbook about selling other people’s products. Rosalind Gardner, formerly an air traffic controller, made over $478,000 in one year as an affiliate selling other people’s products on the web.

Notepad++ color-coded syntax programmers editor (free). Mostly, I use the EditPad Pro ($40, www.jgsoft.com). I reviewed Notepad++ in my November 28th issue of Terry’s Computer Tips.

Why get links? The more inbound links you have – links from other sites to yours – the higher you should rank in the search engines. Search engines also look at blogs for their rankings because blogs have become a major factor in Internet communications in the last year

You can sign up for Free Web Advertising via the ability to post entries to a blog designed specifically for advertising by members. Free members can post a 700 character ad once per week. Paid members can post much more often, with larger ads and HTML (fonts and images) that free members can not.

Pay attention, though — there is a special one-time offer for a paid upgrade that is not repeated. Although you can purchase a lesser upgrade later, you can not post nearly as often and you don’t get all the bonuses available if you go for the “Elite” upgrade. I wish I had…