Hi all. I need to do a website for my new VA business, but I am clueless as to what all those acronyms stand for and how to go about designing a site. I am contemplating taking a class at the community college, but that will not start until January. Are there any websites or books you'd recommend to help me get started so I can get the basics down?

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Blessings,
Dawn King

Hi Dawn,

Wordpress is a great way to get started with an inexpensive yet functional business website. There's a free report on my site that walks you through the process of creating and promoting a professional Wordpress website. You can grab a copy of this step-by-step Wordpress guide here.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to PM me or contact me through the contact form on my site.

Best wishes!

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Tammi Metzler ~ The Write Associate
Free call: "How to Write Email Subject Lines That Grab Attention!"

I think it's great that you're taking this on, Dawn! I'm a very visual, example-based learner and my recommendations below reflect that; these are the tools that worked best for me when I was first learning and I often go back to reference them.

My favorite online tutorial and reference site was HTML Goodies. They provide simple explanations with clear examples that are generally based around asking "so you want to do _____?" and then showing you how to do that. ("So you want to align text, huh?", etc.)

My favorite books were the Visual Quickstart series written by Peachpit Press. They also format themselves in a practical "how do you make ___?" sort of way and they've got great visuals right inside the book so you can compare whether your own work is matching up. The book that you'd want has "HTML, XHTML, and CSS" in the title, though I'm not sure which edition they're currently on.

On preview, what Tammi said about Wordpress is spot on. I've done that for a lot of websites, including mine, and it's really a great tool; easy to use and there's a whole community of people who use it and who offer up things that they've made, so you can implement features and templates on your own site that other people have created. But if you really want to learn the code that goes into it, building a site from scratch is a great way to internalize things.

Good luck and keep us posted!

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Liz
Blue Canary Design & Virtual Assistance

Hi Dawn,

I spent the last three weeks working through "CSS: The Missing Manual." Each chapter ends with a tutorial. Then I re-did my (not up & running yet) website with CSS instead of HTML tables. I also spent a day working with my image software so I can now do some very basic graphics manipulation.

If you're good at working through books on your own, the above book was pretty good, although it assumes you have basic knowledge of HTML. And by creating your own website after wards & it will teach you a lot about basic site creation & you'll have a website when you're finished!

But if these aren't skills you plan to offer in your business, you might be better off hiring someone & putting your energy into something else.

Whether you do it yourself or have someone do it for you, visit the CSS Zen Garden! http://www.csszengarden.com/ Click on "View Designs" in the right hand column & be prepared to spend hours looking at beautiful web design.

Lezly

I'd like to learn it, but I don't know if I will be good enough for people to pay me. :-)

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Blessings,
Dawn King

Dawn,

I don't know if you've had your question regarding web site design answered, but I wanted to tell you about Christina Nelson, our resident Wordpress guru here in the Forums. A few weeks ago, Christiana (ChristinaVOS) did a chat entitled "Your Wordpress Website" and I was very fortunate to be on that chat. Well, my life has not been the same since then! I eat, drink and sleep "wordpress"! I even re-did my web site in Wordpress. You can find Christina on the Forums under the name "ChristinaVOS".

Christina, if you're reading this post, please look up Dawn! Thanks!

Originally Posted by momofkings

Hi all. I need to do a website for my new VA business, but I am clueless as to what all those acronyms stand for and how to go about designing a site. I am contemplating taking a class at the community college, but that will not start until January. Are there any websites or books you'd recommend to help me get started so I can get the basics down?