Desire to Design Websites

Hello,

I have created a website for my business and discovered a love for web design.

I know that to become a web master requires years and years of experience, however I would like to start small offering very basic websites to clients with basic website needs with smaller budgets.

I do not wish to offend anyone, I just wondered if you can offer an guidance on what I need to know (to do what I have just described) before offering my services.

I respect your skill and the industry and would like very much to learn all that I can and provide a good product.

I am not very creative currently, I am working on that - trying to learn about different layouts and color schemes. I do have an understanding of CCS and html. My current website is http://www.cdmfinancials.com

My idea was to create websites based on this site with improvements as I learn more of what I need to know to make my website look better. I would target businesses similar to mine in the financial arena or other professionals who just need a basic website created then maintained.

I would appreciate any comments. If you could recommend books, tutorials or maybe your own advise from when you were just starting out it would be great.

Thanks so much in advance

Charlene

I think you're starting from the right place and with the right mentality, and your page isn't badly put together at all. A good next step would be to validate the HTML and CSS to clean up some of the errors that are there - http://validator.w3.org/

After that, you could post your site in the Site Review area to get some feedback on the design.

So, you want to become a web designer? Well, you are looking in the right place as this is a web developer's forum (Webmaster forum)

By CCS you mean CSS and I recommend that you make CSS sites but it is up to you and your costumers when you start getting them.

I got influenced by my teacher to start creating sites at 7th grade and I still code and went on to learn PHP (Which I like) and constantly learning more and more.

It's not that hard once you get started. Might seem hard at first and I thought the same thing, but I liked the concept and I mainly copied and pasted codes from other sites to create my site (I don't recommend doing that... takes much longer to learn). The only way you can learn from copying code is if you actually look at it and modify it even if you don't need to. Learn all the different things that you can do that actually works.

As far as creative styling... you might want to leave most of that to your costumers... create something and let them evaluate it and suggest the changes that they want to make... at least that's how I would do it if I was working at this job... mainly I do this for myself right now ...

Yeah, you're on the right track, (X)HTML and CSS are the two base elements of any well put together site, a place where I learned a lot is http://www.w3schools.com ... there are many tutorials and they are all up to standards ... when you're comfortable with those two and have done a few static (X)HTML page you will know where you want to go from there, I'm not going to make any suggestions further than that.

a few tools that I use regularly and that you might find useful:
Firefox Web Developer add-on
W3 Validator
Google Webmasters tools
Google analytics
W3 Schools

Some very good advice already provided. Good luck on your ventures, when I started web designing, I was not very good but with practice I think I have gotten very good now. It just takes patience, lots of patience

I don't think anybody was very good with their first site

I can still remember mine ... was really funny ... I was in class with an html book, we hadn't started yet so I went through the book quickly ... I had a bright green site with a picture of a half naked chick and the words "My first site - great"

Mine is still live on geocities lol

I don't think a good site really needs anything more than that.

Maybe just regular green.

Mine was crazy haha. My first site I made Much worser than your current site. I started at seventh grade at problem solving class. The topic we were talking about was communications and the teacher said web designing is part of it (I agree).

After that I went on creating web sites

well that is a good start, just practice and practice. w3schools.com is my favorite resource.

I have to agree with all of this start with the basics HTML and CSS. Then move on to dynamic website such as php, asp, etc. Web design brings in a lot of different skills and talents. Learn how to make graphics. Graphics make site besides it contents everyone likes pictures. If you are able to get your hands on photoshop or something learn how to use through tutorials it will help you design the layout and style of a site.

I learned how to design in the 7th grade and I am know 22 years old still doing it. I don't do it for money I just run the volunteer fire company's website that I am a member of and starting to do a site for my father's business. You will keep advancing I started with HTML and making layouts with tables. Now I am running php sites and starting to learn how to design with css. So it takes time and effort and trail runs. Stay with it. It is fun and neat to do as a little side job or hobby.

Chris

Right.. CSS and HTML are the two base elements to have a good website.. you will find my useful resources through internet search... http://www.w3schools.com - a good source to learn HTML and CSS.. Also you can free web templates and learn from their codes.. All this you can do for your basic website needs... If wanna go further in web development you can start learning from PHP