Getting Started: a how to on blogging and web design, part 1

So, you want to have a blog? Or perhaps a simple web site. Well, friends, there is good news and bad news.

First, the good news is, anyone can learn to do this stuff.

The bad news? You pretty much have to learn to do stuff with some code if you want to have something good.

Step one, you need content. Before any slick coding or graphics to make anything look cool, you need text (unless you’re doing Flash, or Audio, or Video and then you running before walking). This means you need to have some focus, a theme if you will. If your site or blog is all over the place, it is harder to maintain and keep updating, much less keep visitors interested. Choose something you know or want to know. The whole thing can be as much about documenting a process of learning as it can be about sharing information.

Step two, you need to learn some code. Period. And in this order, you’ll be fine:

1. XHTML
2. CSS
3. Everything else (JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, Perl, etc…)

First thing is first, you need to learn HTML. But not HTML, it’s a broken beast with a lot of broken documentation and tutorials out there on the web that will teach you incorrectly and give you bad habits. You want to learn (need to learn) XHTML. Luckily, you can do this in your spare time in a week or two. Most of it, anyway. It is surprisingly simple and easy to get down. XHTML should not contain any real presentational formatting. It should be first and foremost a document. It should be viewable and readable with no special colors or fonts or anything. Now, many sources are out there, and many will tell you that XHTML is HTML without the formatting elements (tags). Not exactly right. XHTML is XML compliant HTML, meaning the document content is more reuseable and flexible for the future and for other computery stuff. XHTML removes most of the formatting from HTML. I say most, because it is a semantic argument what isand what is not formatting. Suffice it to say, this is all good because it makes learning, remembering and using XHTML much easier than HTML ever was. It makes each element (tag) simpler and easier. Some tips: WestCiv has a nice tutorial available for sale at their web site. It is nice because it well paced and correct. (though it is slightly out of date regarding browser information.) And the price is more than fair.

Avoid things like DreamWeaver and GoLive and other WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) web design applications. They are bad for you. You can use them after you learn more, but you probably won’t want them. Do use a Text Editor such as TextWrangler for Mac OS X (free, but no slouch, BBEdit is the not free big brother) or NotePad2 for Windows. You can test all of your pages in your browser. And speaking of browsers, don’t use Internet Explorer!!! A thousand tims no!!! Use Safari on OS X, KHTML (Konqueror) on Linux/BSD with KDE, or Firefox. These browsers will display web pages correctly. Internet Explorer will not. Even the latest version, IE7, fails to implement long-standing web standards, not to mention it leaves your system open to the bad guys far too often. Validate your XHTML at W3C’s validator page. This will tell you where your mistakes are and keep your code nice and saintly. Do use the browsers’ feature for viewing source code of a web page, but don’ be shocked when you see a lot of stuff you can neither read nor understand. Big, fancy sites use lots of other scripting languages and technologies in their pages to automate things more. But, even the big professionals don’t always have the most appropriate code!

That’s enough for now. Head over to WestCiv’s site and get their tutorial. I do not work for them and do not get paid to promote them, but they’re good people and are known in the industry among the pros because they are pros. After you learn XHTML, start in with CSS. More on CSS next time…