WordPress for a beginner

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  richardgilmour · Member · Oct 4, 2011 at 12:50 pm

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  Hello WordPress community.

  My name is Richard Gilmour, i’m a freelance Graphic Designer and run my own portfolio site at http://www.richardgilmour.com
  it’s pretty basic, i am a designer first and foremost and only leanred a little basic coding with HTML, CSS & div’s (and a little action script too).

  I’m constantly asked by clients for web design but never had a coder to work with – and selling someone the design only to the average clients feels liek they are paying someone to do half the job.

  So I have decided to knuckle down and learn to code small websites myself, if i don’t my business will continue to struggle designing only for print.

  Hence I have turned to WordPress.

  I’m firstly looking to redesign my own protfolio website & fully code it myself as a WordPress site.

  So i was wondering if an experienced WordPress suer could piint me in the right direction regarding learning resources. I’m completely knew to this, so I need to know everything from applying my own domain & web space, to translating a photoshop design to wordpress them, to uploading and maintaining the site.

  Thank you for any help you can give me,
  kind regards,
  Richard

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  staked · Member · Oct 4, 2011 at 12:56 pm

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  Well, you’ll first need a self-hosted WordPress install so you can play with the design more than you’ll be able to here on WordPress.com.

  Beginning Web Programming with HTML, XHTML and CSS and Designing Interfaces are two books that may help you learn the basics, but neither are WordPress specific.

  O’Reilly also offers video courses on web page design. You can find out more about them at http://oreilly.com/css-html/index.html

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  auxclass · Member · Oct 4, 2011 at 1:51 pm

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  I found the book “WordPress for Dummies” very helpful when I was starting.

  The support documents at here and at WordPress.ORG are also helpful as is just looking at the questions in both forums: http://wordpress.org/support/

  Many questions cycle through the forums every 6 to 24 hours (well some are more like every 4 hours since most people won’t bother to look even down one or two questions) – you can see what others are doing and having problems with or the way things can be done.

  Looks at your local colleges many of them have intro to web design – also look at the evening adult classes and extension classes.

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  richardgilmour · Member · Oct 4, 2011 at 3:23 pm

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  hello, thank you both for the advice, and in particular the book reccomendations.
  Going to college isn’t an option though, i already have a little experience with coding and i’m happy to self-teach myself what i need to know.

  i removed my website richardgilmour.com for now and uploaded wrodpress build. I also installed jetpack which ive been playing around with.

  To gain a higher level of control over the design, aesthetic and functionality however,
  should i be looking to create my own themes or delve much deeper into the code?

  thansk again,
  Richard