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I have a few questions for experienced website design and graphic artists. I have dabbled in website design for the last 13 years, always doing it for fun and always coding it in HTML. The first team website that I had put a lot of work into was GiTM (Gosu in The Making). If Chill is still around, I think he can confirm that I had a new design or changes every other day. I would like to be more serious about it and build on to what I already know.
I picked up HTML fairly easily and I had a good working knowledge of CSS over the past year. What I am wondering on the coding side of things is what I should learn, what other languages, and what can I expect the curve of difficulty to be in learning them and which is the best method to go about doing this aside from trial and error?
On the graphics side of things, what should I be looking at in terms of honing my photoshop skills which are next to non-existent? I can make fancy words, bevel and emboss and all those fun things, but what else should I be looking at in terms of understanding layers, etc?
I am asking these questions because I am looking to start my own website design and development business, with my own side being a major learning point. I had thought that while I was learning more advanced techniques, I could offer services such as installing and setting up a WordPress website. I am looking at this to supplement my income.
Any and all input and criticism is welcome as well as other areas that I should familiarize myself with for those who got into this.
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On the design side of things, if you don't understand layers in Photoshop yet than you are really a super beginner, as you kinda say. Look up all Photoshop beginner tutorials on Youtube you can find (minus the ones made by 12-year-olds, they usually have no idea what they're talking about :p) and learn how layers and blending modes work first of all. Then you can push on to more advanced topic, get creative etc.
As far as coding is concerned, you should look into Javascript (client-side) and PHP (server-side). Unlike HTML and CSS these are not markup languages or key-value definitions but actual, real programming languages! It won't be easy at first but both languages are just the absolute corner-stone of web development at the moment (PHP being hated by almost everybody but you just need to know it still in my opinion). These are the tools you will use to create actual, dynamic websites and not just self-written HTML pages. They're very well documented on the internet, google "How to get started with Javascript" or "How to get started with PHP" and you'll be finding more information that you can ever take in! :p
PHP in particular needs to be combined with a Database system to do most things that will be relevant for you, I personally recommend SQLite as I find it easier to get started with than SQL - might just be me, don't know. Once you've got Javascript and PHP sorted out, that's the next thing you need to learn about.
I wouldn't recommend making a business out of creating/setting up WordPress sites, that's just so simple to do for everybody these days that I highly doubt anybody would pay money for that. If you're looking to start a business, I would, as I said, focus on HTML/CSS/JS/PHP (with SQL/SQLite), then you can make (some) money! 
It sounds like you still have a lot of learning ahead of you, I was in the same spot a couple years ago. Depending on how well you do with actual coding (HTML/CSS does unfortunately not count :p) it's going to be a bit of a challenge. But it's also very fun and cool, the things you can do on the web!
Disclaimer: I'm a computer science student but not a professional web designer (just a hobbyist)!
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Netherlands6183 Posts
What would you like to know about Photoshop? From my experience, Photoshop is only really useful when you're actually editing photos or creating non vector art (such as banners and paintings etc). Create your image content in Photoshop, leave all your fonts, buttons etc to Illustrator because you most likely want vector work that you can resize without pixellation at the drop of a hat.
Anyway, pm me if you have more specific questions. I'm not a guru on these things but I spend 70% of my day in these two programs doing graphic design, a lot of it for web work.
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After you can write basic "Hello World" programs in JavaScript ask yourself what you actually want to do.
It's always more rewarding to work on an actual project and learning it by doing it instead of just learning everything about a language.
For example, a simple project may look like this:
Set up a server that regularly pulls data (e.g. viewer counts per game) from the twitch.tv API.
You parse and process the data in php and store it in a mysql database.
Then you present the data on a website.
You can later make the website interactive with jQuery and ajax.
If you want to create larger web apps later, learn a framework.
And so on...
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In terms of languages, it depends on what type of website you want to create.
PHP/Javascript are definitely the cornerstone of web development. Learning real programming languages is not easy at first, but once you learn one, they progressively get easier. There are also different types of programming languages (object oriented programing (OOP), etc...). Once you learn one language of one type, all the other languages falling under that type get extremely easy to pick up.
I went to a software/web/app entrepreneurship start up event recently and one thing that seemed to be in high demand was people who had skills programming in Ruby so maybe look into that.
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Def begin by learning javascript, if possible, learn some frameworks too (angularJS, batmanJS) and server-side too (nodeJS).
Also, after learning PHP, have a look into Ruby and again, learn frameworks (I'd say Zend for PHP and Rails for Ruby)
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All of what your asking depends on the type of web person you are aiming to be...
Most people will tell you that if you want to become a web 'developer' you should be learning how to program via javascript and php. There are other solutions, but these two are the primary ones that you should learn if you want to go this route. They will enable you to create more dynamic content, and even be able to manage and maintain that content. Wordpress is a giant CMS (content management system) using php. To further break this down, generally speaking php is more suited to back end management, while javascript is for more suited for front end support (like making a button do something that html can't).
Another avenue is to better research and learn design psychology (perhaps better known as User Experience Design). This helps you to both map out how a user will likely use a product, but also help define what the goals of the product are so that the eventual UI is maximized to the design goals. Information Architecture plays a huge part of the user experience as well, and is one of the most important things that a good designer has to know (If you are aiming for more front end tasks like frameworks and layout, IA knowledge is a must).
Designers on the other hand can be a bunch of different things. Do you design UIs, or optimize graphics for sites? What about creating visuals for backgrounds or the like. Designers don't necessarily need to know how php or javascript works, though in my experience the structuring and logic behind writing serious programming immensely helps in preparing any kind of front-end content for development and use.
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I advise you read up on some basics, from what you wrote it seems you really only see the client-side of web development, if you ever hope to create anything even as sophisticated as the teamliquid website you'll need to learn more about server-side development, the basics of networking and how a web page is served, how data is persisted to a database, etc. To do all these things whats important is not the language but the framework. If you can answer how your blog post was made available to anyone to find on the internet, how the web page was rendered, saved, etc you are in good shape to start picking a framework and dabbling in coding and creating a real website.
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EPT
