Recommendation for book for web dummy

[OzT]

Me.

Can someone recommend a book for a dummy to build and start and host and run a web site please?

I can do basic WYSIWYG sort of editing, and basic coding and understand a bit of jargon, but a book that will tell me how to build my own web site, not business, just social for people to add comments to have chats etc, I'd be grateful.

Need help on how to upload a completed web site,which I hopefully would have built with help from this book, to where to host it, have a dedicated email addy etc.

I've searched here for similar topics and got the business ones where recommendation was compete hosting, but I would like to build it myself, with help from the book, and amend it etc. Be a hobby for me in my spare tim,e, which I have heaps specially when winter gets here and I'm not out on my bike daily.

So if anyone could recommend a suitable book I can get for that I would be grateful. Have googled 'web site for dummies' and quite a few books came thru, suggestions to narrow that down woudl be very useful.

Thanks.

 

[teuchter]

People still use books?

For something like web development they will surely be out of date as soon as they are published.

Just go with youtube tutorials and the like.

I've just rebuilt my website. I used wordpress, which means that you're not tied into a service like Squarespace where you have to use their hosting etc. You can then choose to what extent you want to base your website on a premade theme/template, or whether you want to customise a lot and/or add extra code etc.

 

[teuchter]

Thread here btw

Question - Easiest way to build a simple but customisable website?

(I need to update with what I ended up going with)

 

[OzT]

Thanks teuchter. Yes I woudl like a book cause I can work at my own pace and refer to it constantly.

Reading your link was informative as well, gives me ideas on what to google for up top date version, cheers.

 

[teuchter]

I'm no expert but my impression is that hardly anyone really builds websites from scratch or starting with raw html any more - they will start from templates, page builders, platforms like wordpress etc, and that applies to professional website designers as well as people like you or I who don't entirely know what they are doing. All of these things are constantly in flux, and for example wordpress is due quite a big rehash very soon, meaning that the best option for you might be different now compared to six months or a year ago. That's why I think a book might not be all that helpful in practice.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

This post is sponsored by squarspace...

 

[editor]

Personally, I'd look at learning and using Wordpress it's a lot easier than trying to dive into coding, and there's untold amounts of plug-ins for adding the functionality you want.
I'd also recommend buying a book too - the basic architecture is unlikely to go out of date and from experience it's easier to have a hard copy to refer to (most books come with online support now anyway).

15 Best WordPress Books For Beginners To Learn WordPress in 2018

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I use books whenever I'm learning something new. I find they tend to be much better written than anything online, for a start, and actually have a coherent learning course. (To be honest I often wander off halfway through and try to do my own thing but that's okay.) Random blog posts are okay for specific techniques but you need to know what you're doing before you can use those, and saints preserve me from someone rambling on for several hours on video "training".

It's true, though, that modern web developers basically never hand code sites - we always use frameworks, which can range from something relatively open to a system like Wordpress or Drupal designed for specific purposes. You _could_ go old school and write your HTML and CSS by hand and put it on a web server, but in practice there's little reason to do that, and you have to do a lot of cut and paste and reinvent lots of wheels.

You do still need to know the basics if you want to be any good though, and what counts as "basic" depends on what you want to do. For instance I spend a lot of my time developing custom Drupal modules, which requires a decent level of PHP, but there are Drupal consultants who can't code at all. They couldn't do the stuff I do but they can still set up a working website.

 

[teuchter]

By the way regarding wordpress. It does the job but it's a horribly designed website (or web interface or whatever it actually is). It's a mess. You have to design your website using an example of what you don't want to end up with.

 

[Saul Goodman]

By the way regarding wordpress. It does the job but it's a horribly designed website (or web interface or whatever it actually is). It's a mess. You have to design your website using an example of what you don't want to end up with.

No it isn't.
No it isn't.
No you don't.