Webmaking 101: Build your own Website with HTML, CSS, Javascript and WordPress

This class aims to make you comfortable with the concepts, tools and practices of webmaking. We will give overviews before going into details using lots of video, metaphors, illustrations, and tests. After four weeks, you will feel confident and ready to make things happen!

This course broadly introduces you to the world of web development. It will enable you to begin making websites and it will equip you to teach yourself any new web skill in the future. 

Enrollment in the course includes 6 months of free full-featured hosting--i.e. a place online to put your website!

This class focuses on four areas:

CODING SKILLS
You will get practice coding HTML, CSS and Javascript, the key coding languages of the internet. Instead of trying to cover these comprehensively, we will focus on giving you experience and understanding in the commonly used areas, so that you can pick up additional areas when needed (using the plentiful resources provided, see below).

TOOLS
Web developers use all kinds of tools that make them efficient and powerful at what they do. We'll demystify and regularly use all the essential webdev tools, like text editors, FTP clients, DOM inspectors, graphics editors, bandwidth and http trackers, code validators, and many more. We'll also explore the libraries and frameworks (e.g. jQuery, Bootstrap, HTML5 Boilerplate, Wordpress and cPanel) that make coding faster, easier and more efficient.

CONCEPTS
You will survey the fundamentals of how websites work, and how developers make them. This includes the mechanics of the internet, the components of a website, and strategies developers use to make things efficient, organized, and easy.

RESOURCES
You will be showered with resources to continue your education on your own--this alone is well worth the full value of the course. The web is chock-full of free learning resources to help you with your webmaking work. However, on your own, it is a daunting task to sort through it all, and it is impossible to know which things to focus on even if you could find them. Your instructor is almost completely self-taught and believes you can teach yourself everything you need to know too. Along the way, we'll use all kinds of resources (references, educational, help forums, sandboxes, code generators, inspiration sites and Google search techniques).

• Trailer
• Understanding the Internet 1
• Understanding the Internet 2
• Get Your Free Domain and Web Hosting
• Interoperability
• Hyperlinks
• Plaintext vs. Rich Text
• Advanced Plaintext Editor - Brackets
• Loading Plaintext in a Browser
• Frontend vs. Backend
• FTP Upload
• Teaching Browsers to Understand
• Anatomy of a Webpage
• Live Editing with ShiftEdit
• HTML Syntax Lesson 1 - Tags
• HTML Exercise
• HTML Exercise Review
• HTML Syntax Lesson 2 - Attributes
• HTML Links
• HTML Syntax Lesson 3 - Nesting
• HTML Document Structure
• HTML Tips and Secrets
• CSS and HTML Sitting in a Tree
• CSS Syntax 1: Properties and Values
• CSS Syntax 2: Multiple Declarations
• CSS Syntax 3: Selectors
• CSS Syntax 4: Classes
• Introduction to the DOM
• Chrome DOM Inspect
• Firefox DOM Inspect and Firebug
• Internet Explorer DOM Inspect
• Safari Mac DOM Inspect
• Safari Windows DOM Inspect
• Using the DOM Inspect Tool
• Intro to Scripting
• Javascript Variables
• Javascript Strings
• The Javascript 'if' Condition
• The Javascript 'else' Condition
• Backend Scripts
• PHP
• Content Management Systems
• How servers handle multiple HTTP requests
• The Network Timeline tool
• WordPress on the server
• Backing up your current site
• Installing WordPress
• WordPress administration
• Permalinks
• Moving the blog page off the home page
• Installing themes
• Customizing the sidebar and menu
• Editing themes
• Plugins
• Concluding WordPress thoughts