Did you teach yourself or attend a class?

Personally, I started playing around with our old Netcom (taken over by Mindspring) web space in 1997 and learning code a little bit at a time. Eventually I had a page that said "Welcome to my Web Page!" (centered of course) with a crinkled white background, drawn graphics of a cup of coffee and some chairs with the text, "Pull up a chair and have a cup of coffee." Then I think I had a rainbow page divider and some other images.

I also created a page for the Daisy Girl Scout Troop I was leader of at the time. It's funny what could impress people back in those days.

Then, I discovered that Netscape had a built in editor and began using that (yep, we started with Netscape and not Internet Explorer). In 1998 while we were expats in England, I realized that our new computer came with FrontPage Express! As much as people have bad-mouthed FrontPage, it really took a lot of frustration away and allowed me to see the correct code (for the most part correct code) more quickly. I created the cutest little GeoCities website that chronicled our family's life in England. My graphics were all done in Jasc PaintShop Pro 5 and consisted of a different color crayon for each one of my kids.

I moved on to purchasing Adobe Go Live because in my old job as a Newsletter Editor, I used Adobe PageMaker, so Go Live seemed like a natural step, though it was very different from FrontPage express! That's when I began creating websites as a home-based business.

Now I'm using GoLive CS along with TopStyle for CSS (because I just can't memorize code anymore - I'm really old). I don't feel the need to jump to DreamWeaver (now owned by Adobe and taking the place of GoLive). In fact, if I just want to do something quick, I will open NVU to go into the code and preview from there. It's almost like I've gone back to basics.

Okay, sorry that was long. What is your web design/development story? How did you get from centering entire pages to the great pages you now create?

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Jeanne
NowAssistingYou.com
Virtual Assistant :: Web/Blog Design & Hosting :: Writer

Hi Jeanne This is a fun question! Hamid and I are both completely self taught in both design and code.

Hamid amazes me at his propensity for languages and math/logic (which is what code essentially is...) and has learned now ten programming languages to the point where he knows them, and can use them to build the most amazing applications. We're all about customizing the heck out of any non-house programs we use and that in itself has really done a lot for our growth as a team. Mucking around in someone else's code will teach you a lot about what works, and what doesn't!

He has always used Dreamweaver and CSS, since the very beginning but his methods have all become more sophisticated over the past few years as he's learned PHP, Javascript, Ajax, etc. and to work with things like jquery, etc.
Where it was initially about making 'the thing' - whatever the project was - it's now about making something completely scalable that takes ALL possible exceptions into account. For instance, when we build a site for a client it has build in application for a possible future shopping cart, or possible future directory, or whatever...we learned pretty early on that the only real way to create a site or a piece of software is with growth in mind - otherwise you've to do the whole thing over again, or you're just adding blocks on top of what exists when the goal really is to have a whole functioning system that is seamlessly integrated with itself (no matter what you add to it later).

I am so more old school and certainly not nearly as advanced as Hamid but I code in notepad only and everything I know about HTML I've learned from Hamid over the past few years.

As far as design, I started out playing around with a simple and very inexpensive logo creator software when my first client asked me to design a logo - from there moved into the Adobe CS3 suite of products - my favorite is Fireworks. I'm not a big fan of Photoshop actually, it frustrates me to no end Illustrator can be cool for some things as well. In all honesty though, like you I go back to the basics once in a while when it makes more sense and I still use that old logo creator program sometimes!

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About 11 years ago, one of my husband's co-workers had a part-time web design business and didn't have time to do all the work, so he gave me some basic training using Netscape Composer.

A few years later, I taught myself FrontPage, then took a couple of courses in FrontPage and HTML. Since then I have taught myself Dreamweaver and CSS, using online tutorials and books. I highly recommend the "Missing Manual" series.

I'm just now starting to learn HTML, CSS and website design thanks to tutorials and, now, Hamid and Tess. But I actually have been using a bit of HTML for the last few years and didn't realize what I was even doing...lol

I don't know if anyone has ever heard of an online gaming environment called Everquest, but I was totally addicted to it (I admit it, I'm a nerd...lol). We had a guild "website" and I learned how to bold, italicize, etc. in HTML to get my posts the way I wanted them to look (we didn't have the nifty little formatting bar like we do here). So, now that I realize that I was "a poet and didn't know it" so to speak, I'm trying to expand on that so that I can create great website content and designs (I hope...lol).

Eventually, I may want to take some formal courses on website design. For now, though, I'm happy learning the basics on my own.

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Stephanie
New VA in the research phase :daisy:

Oh, great question Jeanne!

Around 1995 or so I started getting interested in the internet (my first computer was an Apple and I had friends tell me to return it...I ignored the naysayers for several years until my poor Mac died ) I started buying all of these teach yourself HTML books (I have the Idiots Guide to HTML AND the Dummies Guide to HTML). I created some pretty horrendous web pages back then! I was able to grasp the concept, but wanted to learn more!

So, I enrolled in a Web Design program at a Technical School in my area (I found the school through my husband *my then boyfriend* as he was currently going there for programming). Through the program I learned HTML, XML, CSS, Javascript, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Photoshop and Flash (plus MS Office, etc). I graduated from the program in 2001. I have since forgotten how to code XML and Javascript (I am pretty sure I can pick Javascript up again if I wanted, but XML, not so much). I use Dreamweaver consistently and have begun to really get back into coding web pages in HTML (due to my VA business).

I have plans to self teach myself Joomla and a popular shopping cart application (have to research what the most common one is). I would love to learn Visual Basic and I have plans to take some courses in PHP and MySQL.

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Darlene Victoria Gonzalez
The Voice & Vision Behind Your Business

I have to say that it is inspiring to hear of so many self taught web designers. I too am in the process of teaching myself via books and tutorials. I plan to take some courses here and there. Your responses remind me that it is okay to learn through one's own teaching rather than paying $7000 for an online web design school(saying no names!). Keep inspiring us newbies.

Evening,

I learned by default...When I bought the first template for my new VA website..and everything was a mess!

So, after many calls and emails and basically being told that I was on my own.. I went back to the Web and started to teach myself!

All and all, that was the best thing that ever happened to me!


Elenora

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Christiane Jechoux
Virtual Managing Associates

I had my first web page early 1996. Back then there were very few people around who could do web design and as a relatively new business operator, I just didn't have the funds (or thousands of dollars) to pay someone to do it. So I bought MS FrontPage (probably the first version) and played with it for awhile, then paid a guy to come and show me how to use it, answering the pile of questions I'd compiled. It was probably the best 2 hours I'd invested in.

A few years later I got asked to take on a 6 month project with Dreamweaver through the owner of an IT company. One of his staff came out and taught me what to do in a couple of hours and then I taught my team (it was a 6 month project converting 6,000 A4 pages to html and uploading to a database). I enjoyed working with Dreamweaver so much that I started using it seriously. I now provide both web hosting and web design and look after quite a number of sites.

However, these days, if clients are looking for a CMS system, I tend to use Wordpress - it has everything that's needed and I can edit the templates in Dreamweaver.

@KathieMT -

Has Dreamweaver changed much since it's been acquired by Adobe?

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Jeanne
NowAssistingYou.com
Virtual Assistant :: Web/Blog Design & Hosting :: Writer

Originally Posted by jeannedb

@KathieMT - Has Dreamweaver changed much since it's been acquired by Adobe?

Asked by a true Twitterer I feel

I honestly don't know - I haven't updated my version yet so will find out eventually I guess.