Interested in learning website design

Hi,

When you state that website design work is a good choice for earning freelance income. Is it necessary to learn beyond HTML and so on? The resources that you recommend for learning copywriting and webdesign sound very impressive. However, I was wondering if there is a cheaper way of learning these skills.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Hi ______,

Thank you for your email regarding learning HTML and web design.

If I were in your shoes, the best investment I could make would be learning how to use a key piece of software for creating websites. By far the best software package I keep hearing about in the What You See Is What You Get category (WYSIWYG) is a program called Dreamweaver, by Macromedia. With WYSIWYG web editors, you don't have to know HTML. You simply type and drag and drop and cut and paste your way to build a web page.

I believe versions are available for both the Mac and the PC, so if you are PC-based and learn the program, you'll still be able to communicate with the Mac world, which is the dominent platform for the graphic arts community.

You can learn about Dreamweaver at: http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/?promoid=home_prod_dw_082403

Any of these programs have far more features than you can possibly wrap your mind around at first. The trick is to use the tutorials the software comes with, plus any free online tutorials (do a google search) and teach yourself how to do simple, competent web pages at first. Then you can gradually learn about other features, as you need them. As you surf the web, bookmark sites you like or designs you like, and keep them in a special folder.

There's nothing better than learning by doing. So build your own website as you learn Dreamweaver. If you have Internet access (which you obviously do), your Internet provider already gives you from 5-10 MB of web space as part of your subscription. So you can build your first test site there, at no extra charge. Once you're confident enough, you can build your own business site, with your own domain name, and promote your services as a web designer. I recommend using www.godaddy.com to both register your new domain name and host your site. It can cost less than $50 a year to both register and host your site!

And finally, purists and experts still suggest that you at least become somewhat familiar with HTML, even if you use a WYSIWYG editor that hides all this HMTL stuff. Many of them go in and "tweak" their web pages by hand, using HTML, to get exactly the look they want.

There are some free tutorials available to learn about HTML. Try:

A beginner's guide to HTML: http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimerP1.html

And http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/

The ability to create attractive, simple and functional web pages is a highly marketable skill. Once you have created your own site showcasing a few examples of your work, your first prospects will probably be small businesses, consultants, and retail establishments in your area. Then, with experience, you can move into working for larger companies. Another benefit -- you can eventually do work for anyone, around the world, from your home office.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Barnaby Kalan
www.outsourcing-yourself.com