Need help. Where do I begin?

[Froyo]

So I'm trying to create a semi-professional-looking website on my own. Trying to go for something like this: https://sites.google.com/site/professionaltemplate/home
Doesn't have to be that complex but I guess that's the general idea of what I'm aiming for.
I'm not totally clueless. I have programming experience in java and C. I've been going over tutorials of HTML and CSS. But I'm having a hard time figuring out how to proceed.
I feel that I have a few options:
1. Use the template and go from there.
2. Use a website building program (CMS???)
3. Code from scratch using an IDE(or whatever they call it for web development) for HTML
Any help on where I should start would be awesome.

[jalarie]

You're trying to copy a site with multiple dozen errors. The messages can be viewed here:

http://validator.w3.org/check?charse...ltemplate/home

[Galway]

You'll really be able to get the customization you want if you learn it yourself. Learning CSS is absolutely painstaking, but I suppose worth it in the end.

Something that I wish someone would have told me when I started was that tutorials will tell you to use CSS to position the objects of your site. This is a horrible idea. Just use tables, and tables within tables. And   when you want to very finely place things left or right.

Good luck!

[DanInMA]

You'll really be able to get the customization you want if you learn it yourself. Learning CSS is absolutely painstaking, but I suppose worth it in the end.

Something that I wish someone would have told me when I started was that tutorials will tell you to use CSS to position the objects of your site. This is a horrible idea. Just use tables, and tables within tables. And   when you want to very finely place things left or right.

Good luck!

don't use tables for layout and nesting tables is even worse. It's not 1990 anymore. tables are for tabular data and maybe forms, not for an entire page layout.

[Galway]

don't use tables for layout and nesting tables is even worse. It's not 1990 anymore. tables are for tabular data and maybe forms, not for an entire page layout.

Well it's not like my sites are one giant table. Using a mixture of divisions, css and tables you can position what you want a lot easier than using CSS position:relative or whatever. At least in my opinion.

[J0106Preston]

I used a table for my footer on my site and feel slightly shameful. BUUUUUT... it worked. In 2 different cases now. For the most part, as long as you keep up on your math and your floats, using CSS to layout divs works out fine.

[Froyo]

Thanks for the responses.
So it wouldn't be excessively hard to write my own code? And make sure to us CSS for formatting?

[Big O(1)]

Well it's not like my sites are one giant table. Using a mixture of divisions, css and tables you can position what you want a lot easier than using CSS position:relative or whatever. At least in my opinion.

you don't need relative or absolute position. The default static positioning is sufficient. Tables might work for a simple page but when you start adding things to your site it needlessly clutters the markup with unnecessary table rows and cells.

[J0106Preston]

Html is easy to learn... especially if you hAve some engaging learning material. I used head first labs head first into html with xhtml and css. Have crosswords and other exedrcises in there to really help u learn code. Especially if u use dreamweaver, which autocompletes some tags.

[donatello]

Start with Wordpress.
It's a very simple CMS and has a very fast learning curve.


It is NOT just blogging software, but you can set up a site quickly and easily to be a static site with a static homepage. You can use posts for a blogging or article section... or NOT, depending upon what you want to do.

Then with Wordpress, if you want to add some functionality or fancy features, you can just find a plugin to do it for you.

Good luck.

[Seebarch]

Drupal man. It's epic..