How to become a web developer

How to start from scratch and make the website your really want without any extra help.

This marks the first post on web development both from the clinical developers and for the unexpected developer publication on medium.

What is this post series about?

In this series of posts I am going to show you how to go quickly from complete novice to adept hobbyist in only a few steps.

Whether you are interested in entrepreneurship, building websites for work or just building your own blog; without a website you will struggle to broadcast your message.

What options do you have?

In essence you have three options:

1. Use a default existing-solution
2. Build your own custom site
3. Go to a professional developer

Option one is simple and in the next post I will go through all these options and some basic terminology. Option three is also fairly simple however, you will pay heavily for the privilege. Then if you want to change anything it will cost you again. This is fine if you are a large multinational corporation but not if you are an individual with only just enough cash for one shot at whatever you are trying to achieve.

Option two is what I will generally focus on. It is my belief that web development is not beyond the ability of anyone, and if you have the focus you can go a long way in a short period of time using content management systems or CMS (don’t be put off by the terminology, I will keep explaining it).

How much build-your-own cost?

Can it be done for free? The answer is yes, but you will need to accept advertising on your site, and you are unlikely to have a lot of control over what you can do with it. Personally, I think you should budget between $10 and $100 to build your site. With that small amount of money you can go a very long way and do whatever you want. If you went to a professional developer it would probably cost you over $1000 to get a lot less done and then you can’t alter it.

However, before we delve further into any of the details lets ask the key question: What are you trying to achieve?

What are you trying to achieve?

The person who wants to build a social network is going to need to know a lot more about web development than the person who wants to build a blog. In general the heirarchy of complexity probably goes something like:

Simplest/Easiest

• Front page for an organisation/product/service (just a static advert really).
• Contact page (static advert plus simple email form).
• Blog (set of scrolling posts — like this one) that updates as new posts are created.
• Splash page with a blog and social integrations.
• Simple sales sites with a shop as well as other basic elements.
• Sites with multiple integrations (contact, about, blog, signup, social, shop, ads)
• Sites with a login only area
• Sites with a forum (forums are easy to set up but hard to maintain).
• Sites with an online learning platform
• Sites with a social networking component (this is where you can actually build your own profile).
• Sites with integrated web applications based in the cloud
• Sites involving machine learning, encryption or even just big data storage.

Hardest/Challenging

Although, choosing the right platform can drastically change how difficult or otherwise the above tasks are.

What types of web-building platform are available? Broadly there are three types:

1. Drag ‘N Drop builders — easy to use but the most inflexible.
2. Content Management Systems — These are like a scaffold onto which you build the website (most popular).
3. Other — for the more advanced user there are a multitude of other options.

Which category should I use?

1. If you are building a very specific site with a simple singular function (ie. Just a simple online shop or a contact page) you should use a drag ‘N drop builder like Shopify or Wix. This is because these ready made solutions are extremely easy to use and help you avoid some of the pitfalls and complexities of running a more freeform site.
2. If you are like and like experimenting or you have a ‘higher purpose’ in mind and need more flexibility use a content management system like Wordpress. Some people suggest you should start with a drag and drop builder and then migrate to something like Wordpress later on; Personally I think you should just start as you mean to go on by using the content management system from the start. The learning curve (if given good guidance) is not too bad and it is usable even by those who know only minimal code.
3. If you are a coder already and you want to push yourself you should start on Joomla or Drupal (These are also content management systems) but they give you more flexibility and freedom although they are more technically demanding.
4. Offline website construction using software like Dreamweaver has very much gone out of fashion. This is because browsers (the window on your computer you are reading this in) have become much more advanced, as has code (the raw text that makes computers do things), hosting (servers), cloud technology (even bigger servers) and a variety of other key technologies. The other options I am referring to are numerous and often nowadays used in combination with a CMS (content management system).

Next we will go through the drag and drops and basic terminology.

Originally published at Clinical Developers Network.