GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - newbies only ... webmaster tutorial? (lots to read)

found this on another board, seems like a good read for some newbies .... its alot of reading, brace yourself:

Quote:

Originally posted at another board

Newbie webmaster advice...
Over the past few years I have been amazed at the type of questions I've heard asked. I am constantly amazed at the amount of people who try to be a webmaster/webmistress and have no clue at all what they're doing. I mean if you're going to be a webmaster shouldn't you at least know how to build a web site? So with that in mind, here are some things in my personal opinion you should do before you jump in to being or trying to call yourself a webMASTER.

First thing, know your computer and how to use it. Learn how to copy and paste, delete, what's in the recycle bin, and how to restore it. Learn how to download things and how to download them to where you want them and also learn how to browse to find them. Learn how to install programs and how to uninstall them. About 4 years ago when I first got on line I didn't know anything other then how to get to yahoo chat. I asked a friend of mine some questions about some things I was doing. He told me, if you're not crashing your computer three or four times a night then you're not learning anything. I thought that was funny at the time but it is so true. Nothing teaches how not to do something faster then doing it wrong, having your screen freeze and having to reboot.

Once you think you at least have the basics of how to work your computer down now it's time to move on to a webpage. So open your text editor. (Note Pad). If you don't know how to do that then go re-read the last paragraph about knowing your computer.

With note pad open, find a tutorial somewhere on html. I use http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/index.html . Search it for an html tutorial and follow it. Because if all you know how to do is to use, frontpage, dreamweaver or some other lesser builder, doesn't make you a webmaster. There are always gonna be times that no matter how well you think you can run your builder it won't do everything. And sometimes you have to look at the html and tweak it a little to get it to do what you want. So study the tutorials. Once you think you can insert an image, resize it and change the size of your fonts, change their color and align you text all by writing the HTML then go find a website you really like. View the source for the page. If you don't know how to do that, go back to learning about your computer.

Learning how to manipulate your browser is important. And if you don't know some of the things your browser can do and how it work it's time to go back to fast food.

Now, study that page. Look at how they did what they did. You should recognize the html. There maybe some things in there like hahahahahahahahahaha that you don't recognize. That's fine, ignore it for now. Right now you need to know HTML, take one step at a time. Learn it, and then move on.

Now, try to make that page you liked so much. If you can make it all in html and it looks the same then you're right on track. If it isn't working then figure out why. Was there some other scripting like hahahahahahahahahaha on the page that you didn't understand so you ignored it? If so then find out why. You don't have to know how to script in the language to look at it and figure out what it's referring to. So if you're positive that it's the hahahahahahahahahaha that was making your page not look like the original then fine leave it alone.

Now, that you have learned all these things try to make a page that you want to make. If something?s not working then go find out why. Any one can tell you why it's not working. But it's really true what mom and dad said, "If I tell you how to do it then you won't learn it." So go figure it out for yourself.

Now if you have looked and looked, experimented and looked some more and it's been at least 4 hours. Then maybe consider asking someone else. Chances are by then, it's a matter of you over looking something. By this point it might be good to have some fresh eyes look at it. There's nothing wrong with asking for help. But at least try to figure it out for yourself. Nothing is more frustrating then getting questions from people that I know if they had spent 5 minutes webmonkey they would have found the answer. But no, now they have to interrupt me because they don't want to waste their time trying to figure it out. That shows me they don't really give a shit about what they're doing. They only want a web page so they can make some money. And if that's all you want, then hire someone to build it for you and stop wasting everyone?s time.

Now if you do these things I have suggested, feel free to start using your editor again. You will find it really does save time and can be very useful. And you're no longer limited to just what it can do. Build a site again that you want with your editor. Use its little features for adding things. Once done with the page, look at the html and see how it did it. What tags did it use? Is there any tags in there you don't know? Then go look them up.

Spend lots of time at this phase. Make a lot of test sites for yourself. And once you feel comfortable with it then find some image editing software. Learn it. Make lots of images, edit lots of images, merge images, make a logo, make a button, make a rollover button. What's a transparent gif, what's a jpg or bmp. Vector images wtf is that?

Now once you can do that, it's still not time to call yourself a webmaster. But you at least have some tools to work with and if you want to make a site you can. Cuase if you're trying to make money on the web with a web site you need to concentrate on that and not how to change the color of your font. It's like deciding you want to be a doctor. It's not like you can walk in and get hired. You have to know how to operate before you can effectively perform surgery.

So with that, have fun and learn something.

Bullet...
P.S I don?t know everything nor do I claim to. But I hear all day from a lot of people who want me to tell them how to do something and I so I tell them and they have no idea what I just said because they have no idea what they?re doing at the very basic level. And this post is not meant directly towards anyone here I may have helped in the past. I was inspired by another thread and it made me think that newbies should have a clue as to what you they should know before they decide to start a site.

rest is
HERE