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A friendly web development tutorial for complete beginners (2017)

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Re: A friendly web development tutorial for complete beginners (2017)

#21

Post by tiborsaas »

ktpsns wrote: post #17

I'm not a native speaker and maybe overstress my understanding of "being hard", but CSS and especially HTML are famous for their simplicity. One can start basic markupped text with a basic text editor in minutes. Of course any advanced features require some learning. But I don't like people calling basic web publishing technologies (which are decades old) to be "hard". Because they are designed to be simple and that'…

That got me thinking as well. Is it simple for me because the years of experience or is it really not that simple?

I would say that HTML and CSS is not hard, but complex. It's not the same thing. If something is hard, then the learning curve is very shallow but if it's complex then you can gain solid knowledge bit by bit.

So "html & css is complex" would be a better fitting title.

Re: A friendly web development tutorial for complete beginners (2017)

#22

Post by radiator »

varrock wrote: post #16
temporaryvector wrote: post #15

This is a very well done and pretty comprehensive tutorial. However, there are plenty of pretty good basic web development tutorials out there, and few, if any of them address what I think is crucial. Once you have all your HTML and CSS and JavaScript all ready to go, how do you actually got about putting that webpage online the right way for the modern internet, including basic security best practices. As the websit…

This is the crux to my imposter syndrome. Luckily, I work with people that specialize in this, but it limits my personal growth quite a bit. I really need to figure this portion out.

Yeah, just rent a VPS for a month for $5, install an OS, install a (software) web server on it, acquire a subdomain for free (or buy your own domain) then edit the configuration of the web server to respond to requests for different domains and to enable HTTPS.

Re: A friendly web development tutorial for complete beginners (2017)

#23

Post by CM30 »

radiator wrote: post #22
varrock wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the crux to my imposter syndrome. Luckily, I work with people that specialize in this, but it limits my personal growth quite a bit. I really need to figure this portion out.

Yeah, just rent a VPS for a month for $5, install an OS, install a (software) web server on it, acquire a subdomain for free (or buy your own domain) then edit the configuration of the web server to respond to requests for different domains and to enable HTTPS.

I think you've explained rather succintly while many new web developers find the whole hosting thing a confusing mess. The assumption (especially on tech forums like this one) seems to be that everyone should learn server management to get a website off the ground.

But that's a bit of a jump to make. Learning how to install a web server or edit a server's configuration isn't always the most straight forward thing in the world, and something like Digital Ocean isn't the best solution for someone who's just starting out and wants to put a few pages online.

So really, my advice for someone wanting to know where to get hosting wouldn't be to setup a VPS, but to ask yourself how much you're willing to learn about configuring servers, and to pick a managed solution or simple shared host if you're not interested in that side of things overall.

Re: A friendly web development tutorial for complete beginners (2017)

#24

Post by Xelbair »

CM30 wrote: post #23
radiator wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, just rent a VPS for a month for $5, install an OS, install a (software) web server on it, acquire a subdomain for free (or buy your own domain) then edit the configuration of the web server to respond to requests for different domains and to enable HTTPS.

I think you've explained rather succintly while many new web developers find the whole hosting thing a confusing mess. The assumption (especially on tech forums like this one) seems to be that everyone should learn server management to get a website off the ground. But that's a bit of a jump to make. Learning how to install a web server or edit a server's configuration isn't always the most straight forward thing in…

I would disagree - configuring nginx/apache/whatever to just display a static site is really easy - and honestly - it dosen't take much time.

Honestly, i had more trouble helping my friend with 'simple shared hosting' CMS to setup his webpage correctly, than with setting up nginx on ubuntu for the first time.

Re: A friendly web development tutorial for complete beginners (2017)

#25

Post by [deleted] »

Xelbair wrote: post #24
CM30 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've explained rather succintly while many new web developers find the whole hosting thing a confusing mess. The assumption (especially on tech forums like this one) seems to be that everyone should learn server management to get a website off the ground. But that's a bit of a jump to make. Learning how to install a web server or edit a server's configuration isn't always the most straight forward thing in…

I would disagree - configuring nginx/apache/whatever to just display a static site is really easy - and honestly - it dosen't take much time. Honestly, i had more trouble helping my friend with 'simple shared hosting' CMS to setup his webpage correctly, than with setting up nginx on ubuntu for the first time.

[deleted]

Re: A friendly web development tutorial for complete beginners (2017)

#26

Post by krapp »

Xelbair wrote: post #24
CM30 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've explained rather succintly while many new web developers find the whole hosting thing a confusing mess. The assumption (especially on tech forums like this one) seems to be that everyone should learn server management to get a website off the ground. But that's a bit of a jump to make. Learning how to install a web server or edit a server's configuration isn't always the most straight forward thing in…

I would disagree - configuring nginx/apache/whatever to just display a static site is really easy - and honestly - it dosen't take much time. Honestly, i had more trouble helping my friend with 'simple shared hosting' CMS to setup his webpage correctly, than with setting up nginx on ubuntu for the first time.

Every shared host I've ever used would let you just SFTP your files to the server (which, for static or PHP is all you need,) and they all come with their services already configured, and tend to work out of the box. I've only ever had to deal with the CMS when viewing logs and creating email accounts.

Configuring a server may be relatively easy, but not having to is easier.

Re: A friendly web development tutorial for complete beginners (2017)

#27

Post by lpellis »

This looks pretty good. I had a lot of people tell me they get stuck following most basic tutorials since they all assume some level of basic knowledge that you forget you even have if you work in the field (stuff like 'where to put these files', or even that you can view your file in a browser by doubleclicking it). I even wrote a very basic getting started guide myself (https://medium.com/@lpellis/getting-started-with-web-develop...), but now I can rather send people to this guide :)

Re: A friendly web development tutorial for complete beginners (2017)

#28

Post by duxup »

ktpsns wrote: post #17

I'm not a native speaker and maybe overstress my understanding of "being hard", but CSS and especially HTML are famous for their simplicity. One can start basic markupped text with a basic text editor in minutes. Of course any advanced features require some learning. But I don't like people calling basic web publishing technologies (which are decades old) to be "hard". Because they are designed to be simple and that'…

>CSS and especially HTML are famous for their simplicity

I think that's accurate as for basic example use cases like writing an HTML file with an H1 and some text along with some minimal styling, but CSS and HTML can get surprisingly complex after a few steps.

It's not at all immediately clear what the advantages or disadvantages of say centering something are via the myriad of methods to do so, what methods work together and what don't, etc.

It's the old tutorial problem that I see all the time. "Yeah this tutorial shows how simple this thing is, but that's not how anyone does it, there's always more..."

Re: A friendly web development tutorial for complete beginners (2017)

#29

Post by rimliu »

tiborsaas wrote: post #21
ktpsns wrote: post #17

I'm not a native speaker and maybe overstress my understanding of "being hard", but CSS and especially HTML are famous for their simplicity. One can start basic markupped text with a basic text editor in minutes. Of course any advanced features require some learning. But I don't like people calling basic web publishing technologies (which are decades old) to be "hard". Because they are designed to be simple and that'…

That got me thinking as well. Is it simple for me because the years of experience or is it really not that simple? I would say that HTML and CSS is not hard, but complex. It's not the same thing. If something is hard, then the learning curve is very shallow but if it's complex then you can gain solid knowledge bit by bit. So "html & css is complex" would be a better fitting title.

I think for some people CSS is frontend's "C pointers". For some it clicks for other it does not. This and also misleading notion that "CSS and HTML are simple" leads to many developers not actually learning these technologies and only having an vague understanding. And that's where the problems start.

Re: A friendly web development tutorial for complete beginners (2017)

#30

Post by Raphmedia »

ktpsns wrote: post #17

I'm not a native speaker and maybe overstress my understanding of "being hard", but CSS and especially HTML are famous for their simplicity. One can start basic markupped text with a basic text editor in minutes. Of course any advanced features require some learning. But I don't like people calling basic web publishing technologies (which are decades old) to be "hard". Because they are designed to be simple and that'…

I went to a technical college on Multimedia Development. Classes were anything from video editing to object oriented programming. One of the first programming class was HTML&CSS and the other one was JS. A lot of people would understand JS but get stuck in HTML&CSS. I already knew the basics so I helped a lot of people. Unless you understand it at first sight, it's hard to grok.

And then it's very hard to master. Complex responsive layouts are hard to get right.

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