Hello everyone,

I am new to this forum and web design in general. I would love to start my own company building webpages but i have no idea where to start, any help would be appreciated. I am sorry if i posted this on the wrong forum there were to many choices to pick from.

My main question is... Do i need to learn java, javascript, CSS, XHTML, PHP at first before i start making Great web pages or are there a few basic ones i can use to make a great page and stick with them. What should i learn first after html of course. What will help me the most in building great pages, i also am not sure if i should use dreamweaver or not. any and all help is Greatly appreciated. Thank you!!

Assuming you are dead serious about "building great pages" and that you want to do this for a living, then I would suggest trying to get a job working for someone else first. If you have not done so already, I would go to college and get at least some qualification in design or marketing, and then try to get a job at a design or marketing firm.

Sure jump in with both feet if you have two years to waste.

If you want to be a designer then learn CSS and Photoshop first and then FLASH. If you need a contact form page. ask me i will send you. it needs some programming.. you can use the same page in all your websites..

If you want to be a developer then i would suggest you to learn ASP.NET & C# and Access/SQL server. You can build any kind of dynamic web application. example online shopping site, forum, blog, database sites etc

Buy Dreamweaver and Photoshop, buy The Missing Manual Dreamwaver, The Missing Manual CSS, The Missing Manual Photoshop. Then lock yourself into your bedroom for 3 months, when you emerge you'll be a web designer and you can start to worry about getting cusomers.

S

3 months, when you emerge you'll be a web designer and you can start to worry about getting cusomers.

Really? 3 months with Dreamweaver and photoshop makes you a web designer? If you are only going to spend three months on anything, you might as well just get a cheap shared host, install Wordpress and hack away.

Its stupid stuff like this that really pisses me off. If you think that all you need is a subscription to seomoz to be an seo expert, or a copy of dreamweaver to be a web designer, then don't worry, I am sure the robots will be kind to you.

Steve (great name by the way), there's no one right path to making a living building websites. Sounds like you want to work for yourself so we'll eliminate advice specific to getting a job.

Naturally you're going to need to know how to build websites. Your first step should be to learn html. Buy a book or find a few tutorials online and learn the different tags that make up html and practice using them. In a couple weeks or so you should be pretty fluent in html. A simple text editor and a browser is really all you would need at this point.

Next up on the technical side I'd learn css and learn how to build sites with html and css. Some parts of css are just as easy to learn as html and some parts will take time to learn well. Again text editor and browser is all you need and by the time you're feeling comfortable building pages in html/css my guess is you'll have plenty of ideas what to learn next.

Along the way you're going to want to understand design. Learn basic design principles. Building web pages is not the same as designing them. You'll probably want an image editor (possibly a lot of them) Photoshop or Fireworks will likely be the best bets if you're only going to buy one. You can also opt for the GIMP which is free. There are plenty of other options as well depending on your budget and what you want to do.

How successful you are will actually come down to how well you market yourself more than your skills as a designer/developer. It would be nice if the best designers and developers were the most successful ones, but the truth is the ones who market themselves the best end up making the most money (assuming you equate money with success of course).

Once you get into this whole process never stop getting better at designing, developing, marketing, and every other thing that will help your business. You want to keep investing in yourself and your business. Learn what you know better and learn new skills.

And keep at it. The early days of building a business are often the hardest. One of the most important parts of success is to keep at it. If you keep working at it and improving all the skills it takes to design and develop sites and run a business you beat out all those people who give up as soon as things get difficult.