Hello to you Exalted Developers,
I actually know absolutely nothing about programming & website design. I currently repair PCs and am quite motivated to change career direction. I am scouring the web to choose where I might want to end up in the CMS type world.
My question is:
What fundamentals should I start learning so that some day I can be on a path to join you here?
Hi rthrash,
Very kind of you to respond. Thanks very much for the links!
X2 what Ryan said...
Being able to write clean, lean XHTML and CSS is a great skill to have under your belt. There are many different systems out there with all kinds of scripting code etc, but CSS is the means for presenting your design and content. Check out all the great videos at www.css-tricks.com
Depending on your interest you might want to dive into actual design as well. This is the arena of pushing pixels and vector graphics around. There is a ton to learn here as well. Web designers and developers all have different tools, techniques and approaches.
I personally do this: I use Photoshop to create the home page for a site. This requires using many layers for each section of the design layout. I add all the graphics, backgrounds, gradients, logos, etc. I know how all these little pieces will integrate with the XHTML markup code and CSS. I then slice the design up into graphics that the CSS supports. Its sort of like a three legged stool: the design (layout, graphics), XHTML (markup) and CSS. Once I have the home page working as a stand alone page using Strict XHTML that validates via the w3c.org then I am good to go. I will test this page in the various browsers. Sometimes IE will trip me up but I have learned to design and code for IE now. Once this is done I can then use the design, images, CSS and markup as the structure for my custom MODx template.
I have tried numerous content management systems but I have found MODX the best thing since ice cream when it comes to creating a template from work I have done while building static pages.
Many of the users here are very versed in scripting languages and PHP. These are great skills as well. There are other skills to learn like typography, space relationships, design, color theory, SEO, and browser performance debugging etc.
Building a cool website can require talent, skills, and experience from many different disciplines. It can be frustrating at times. But on the whole is a very enjoyable pursuit. MODx fits into all this arena very well as well.
Good luck!
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That’s more or less where I came from; taught myself how to build and repair PCs, then how to program in assembly language, QuickBasic, Visual Basic, C/C++, a bit of Java, perl, and finally settled on web development and PHP when I closed my computer repair and small office networking business eight years ago. Along with the sites listed, all good ones, I would strongly recommend reading
A List Apart. Of course, when I began reading it nearly ten years ago there were a lot fewer articles to catch up on, but it’s an excellent source of general design philosophy as well as a lot of extremely useful tutorial articles.
I’ll add that even though I limit the hours per day I’ll work, and have raised my hourly rates, and flatly refuse to do anything but MODx, I turn work away almost every week.
MODX Staff
