Just an update.. Ive managed to learn how to add a JQuery accordion to my page

As the title says, I have managed to get the Jquery accordion up and running on my homepage. This is plain and simply just an exercise for myself to learn how to implement java script into my webpages.  It has worked ultra-successfully.

How did I do it?

Well, firstly I downloaded the files from their official webpage which are the backbone of what you need. Accompanied with the jscript files, I had a lot of .css files which I could edit on their webpage to fit my websites look. So it took me around 15 minutes to get it exactly what and how I wanted it.

Once I had done that, I had to change the URL of the style sheets and add them to my home page. This enabled the style sheets to be loaded onto my homepage.

Then, this is the hard bit, using the divs and functions I had found on various website tutorial sites. I had managed to compile a load of functions that somehow converted into a fancy accordion. I am not so sure in what  I plan on putting into the actual accordion but either way It functions!

If you would like to learn for yourself how to do such a thing, then follow this link here which will give you a great step by step account of how to incoporate javascript into your HTML files.

It is definitely worth the time to learn and understand how to do it correctly, because as I found out myself it can be a bit of nightmare if you are not sure what you are doing. You can cause yourself a lot of problems down the line if you just cram random pieces of javascript into your web pages.

A little change of topic coming soon

As it is getting closer to putting up a live version of my website, I am going to look at some web hosting. I was originally planning on using just a free service from Yahoo or one of the many other free web hosting providers. However, I want a little more control than what the free providers offer.

So I am going to do a few posts in a mini-series and look at what I need from a web host, and talk about the kind of packages available today for beginners.  In my next post I will do a brief overview of web hosts and what they offer for what price. Once I have done that I will continue on with the theme of web design, integrating the odd different topic in here and there.

If you have read this far, thank you!

My first website journey – the starting point

Welcome everyone to my newest venture on the internet. With this wonderful blog, I plan to record and track how I go about creating my first website. Bare in mind I am a complete newbie to all things web design related I have no idea what I am doing. So if you are a fellow newbie, It may be worth following along to get some hints and ideas how not to do certain things!

I am going to start simply, by creating a basic HTML website. I really want to look at using some kind of software that will allow me to update it easily. However I plan on learning the very basics first.

I have been looking around websites like w3school.com for great tips on the basics of HTML, however it is definitely more complicated than I had previously thought it would be. It doesn’t deter me tho, I am in this for the long run and will proceed slowly but steadily.

My stage 1 (initial strategy) for completing such a huge task is:

1. Learn the basics of HTML.
2. Start putting it into practice on a Free web hosting site
3. learn about anything else HTML related, how to create cool unique pages with some different abilities on
4. lean about javascript to try and help my pages be a bit more dynamic

This is the basics of where I will start, however while completing my step 1 strategy, If I come across something important more so that I think I should incorporate into my knowledge, I will add in along the way.

To complement what I plan on doing I have bought a copy of Dreamweaver, the HTML editing program. Hopefully this may give me a bit more of an idea of layout and things like that. Either way I need to learn it from the bare bones so to speak.

After my mastery of the basics like HTML, I would love to learn PHP. This is where it will really start to get tricky I imagine.  However there is a wealth of resources all over the internet which should give me a great head start into the world of web design. I will probably also end up buying a PHP & MySQL book to help me as it is a lot more complex and complicated than basic HTML.