First things First - How webpages are made.

When your starting out in internet marketing its good to have some background knowledge about how the internet works and how to build webpages. This will aid you in anything you do online and having these skills will save you money that you would otherwise have to pay to contractors to build pretty sites. In this post I've outlined the 3 main things you will need to learn to start building your own websites.

1. Learn HTML & CSS
   
   To put it simply HTML is the code that marks up the content on the internet and CSS is the code that styles it. HTML is almost a programming language but much easier to learn. It works by adding tags to your webpage content to tell the internet browsers how it should be displayed.
   
   The Book i originally used to teach myself HTML back when it was in it first edition was
   HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition (Visual Quickstart Guide). For any design orientated the learning i find the visual quickstart guides really useful.
   
   w3schools has some great online resources which i often use as a reference if i forget how something should be written. Checkout their html lessons and css lessons.
   
   Whilst you can use notepad to write html, if you are going to be doing a lot your best off to get a wysiwyg editor (What You See Is What You Get). There are a number of options to suite any budget. The industry standard used by most professionals is Adobe Dreamweaver. Its an extremely user friendly tool and with the new CS3 release it has some great AJAX additions to produce transitions in your sites and the ability to copy and paste images straight from your image editing program like photoshop.
   
   Nvu is a free html editor with much of the functionality of Dreamweaver although as usable. The company also provides a great tutorial explaining Learn How To Build Your Web Site Using Nvu and upload them to your webserver.
   
   
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2. Learn some basic image editing
   
   To make sites look half decent you need to have some image editing skills or at least be able to resize photos. Like html there are a number of free educational resources on the net to learn image editing basics through to advanced techniques. I personally learnt my image editing skills by downloading the trial version of Macromedia Fireworks (now produced by adobe) and going through the tutorials provided.
   
   Your also going to need an image editing application and I'm sorry to say that MS Paint just wont cut it. The industry standard is Adobe Photoshop. Its a great product for editing your images and creating web graphics but it comes with a hefty price tag. If your not going to be doing that much image work there is a cutdown version called Photoshop Elements with much of the functionality of its bigbrother.
   
   The free option here is an open source program called the gimp. It has similar functionality to photoshop however it not nearly as user friendly. Checkout the tutorials on the website which should get you started.
   
   
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3. learn a little about usability
   
   Its vital for any Internet marketer to know a bit about usability. If your customers cant use your site you will loose money. If your site isn't easy to use or self explanatory customers will go elsewhere. Have a read through the articles on http://www.useit.com/ There is so many articles there it is the definitive resource on usability. Its a good idea to sign up to the email updates to keep informed of new articles. Ironically i don't find the the site itself very usable but the information is great.
   
   

This should keep you busy for a while and will serve as a good foundation for all developments. In later posts I'll talk about the actual process involved in building your websites and how to plan a successful website.