Hi Guys, I am a medical student but i hv a interest in website design but dont know where to start. In future i want to do my own website for my clinic. Cud some1 assist me where to start?

It is worth while to check out your local community college and take a few night classes. A lot of what I learned came from trial and error and simply just reading on my own.

Hi

Do you have a genuine interest in web design as in you want to make it a part-time/full-time job or is it because you just need a website for your clinic?

If it is the latter then I would suggest hiring a web-designer, as getting into web design just to design your own website will take a long time...

If you have genuine interest in making it a career or hobby then a good place to start would be w3schools.com and study the HTML section then move onto CSS so that you have the raw basics covered. Once you're satisfied in that field, consider getting a graphics program to give your layouts a graphical boost. A free program would be GIMP to practice or work on your graphics (logo, simple headers etc.) which you can combine with your knowledge of CSS/HTML to bring your designs to life.

I agree with the above post, it kind of depends on where you want to go with it. Writing and maintaining a good website(s) is more than a full time job. You will find that a lot of web designers put in 12 hour days and weekends.

Aside from hiring a designer as mentioned above, you could get a book on DreamWeaver and by an older copy of DreamWeaver on ebay and be able to build a basic site. If your site is going to be something simple like a dentist office site (about you, directions, etc)., then this should be fine.

If you are truly interested in it, then you will need to learn to write sites in code. I have a book from the O'Riley series (HTML, XHTML and CSS) which I would recommend.

You will quickly learn as well the benefits of databases if you really get into it. Then you will need to study that. A lot of people use the php / mysql combination.

The other thing to consider is marketing. Are you just trying to have a web presence as in my dental example above or are you going to use the site to generate business. Web design and marketing are intermingled and fairly complicated.

There are plenty of good tutorials on the web for free. Sometimes a good book is a good option IMO.

You will find that a lot of web designers put in 12 hour days and weekends.

Who does that ?? We maintain nearly 200 sites for doctor's offices and we don't spend that kind of time on any single site. They aren't blogs, they don't get updated every day, or even every week, a medical office simply doesn't NEED that kind of updating and quite frankly the staff in most medical offices just don't have the TIME to spend updating their web site on a daily basis. They just need a site so that patients and potential patients can find them and get the basic information.

You won't find many webmasters / designers or someone self employed for that matter that doesn't put in long hours.

If you have the luxury of working for a large company with fixed hours great.

This post wasn't about doctors offices sites. It was about web design in general. Medical sites are frequently trivial, not requiring frequent updating. Other types of sites don't have that luxury.

I do work for a large company, and I DO put in LONG hours. The way your post was written, in answer to the OP, made it sound as if she'd have to work 12 hours or more a day JUST on the site for her clinic - and that was what my post was based on.

On the other hand, if you're a web designer, freelance or not, and you have to put in so much time that you're not making a profit, then you need to be more organized and/or do something about the way you work. I'm well aware of the hours it takes, I've been doing web sites for more than 10 years and not JUST as an employee for a company.

This post wasn't about doctors offices sites.

The OP said:

In future i want to do my own website for my clinic.

Sounds like a doctor's office type thing to me If Kandy is in medical school, methinks she's heading for an MD.

thanks for all the replies, they were REALLI useful. Im looking into some webpages. Actually im just going to start it as for a hobby, not someting like professional. So i hope that can be easy. Could some tell me what is webhosting is and how i can do that? I hv read some articles but seems very technical. Hope the replies to this post will be more untechnical...haha...

Sudha,

I was in your position 3-4 years ago until I realized that web design and development was something that I truly wanted to do. I started off with one of those type of social networks where you could create your own profile and modify it however you liked, then I moved onto using free hosting and started designing some really basic templates and what not.

To get started, you would have to understand the basic HTML code and how it functions. If you want to get deeper into web development, look into studying javascript, jsp, ajax, php, mysql, etc ... most of these are back-end programming languages that can be very powerful and efficient if used correctly.

I recommend taking a look at the w3 Schools website at www.w3schools.org they have tons of information there, also check up on youtube if you learn better that way.

As far as hosting goes, there are many web hosts out there that will host your web site for a reasonable cost. Try taking a look at GoDaddy.com, i've been with them for a while and they have been helpful. Sure enough there are more great hosts out there, but I can't name them off the top of my head.

Good luck and enjoy your adventure into the web development world, its fun but can be stressful at times. You will know if this is something you like to do once you get into it.

Originally Posted by LadynRed

I do work for a large company, and I DO put in LONG hours. The way your post was written, in answer to the OP, made it sound as if she'd have to work 12 hours or more a day JUST on the site for her clinic - and that was what my post was based on.

On the other hand, if you're a web designer, freelance or not, and you have to put in so much time that you're not making a profit, then you need to be more organized and/or do something about the way you work. I'm well aware of the hours it takes, I've been doing web sites for more than 10 years and not JUST as an employee for a company.


The OP said:

Sounds like a doctor's office type thing to me If Kandy is in medical school, methinks she's heading for an MD.

you need to remember that there are a lot of lurkers on forums. While yes, the poster did imply that it was a medical clinic site and that it was not a full time profession, others reading the post may be in a different position and different solutions may be appropriate.

Very true, but I tend to try to address the OP's questions - not create a generic answer for anyone that might read it.

What is web hosting?

Web hosting is putting the code of some one's website on a computer that is accessible to the internet. As you get started with your first few websites, you may want to buy individual hosting accounts for each. If not initially, you will probably want to eventually buy a virtual dedicated server. This basically means you rent a computer from some far off business, and that computer is all set up to host websites on the internet. GoDaddy.com is a good supplier of inidividual hosting accounts and virtual dedicated servers.

Once you're rolling in all that doctor money, you won't even blink at the cost of a virtual dedicated server. So if you really enjoy making websites as a hobby, you'll probably end up with some sort of server to host all those not-for-profit websites you volunteer to design over your lifetime.

Thanks for the information. That was really useful. Now i need to know how to load my webpage onto GoDaddy.com. Do i need to use any tool or software to do that?