Creating a Website: The Missing Manual, 4th Edition

Appendix A. Where to Go from Here

By this point, you’ve taken a long voyage across the Web. You began by learning the fundamentals of site building, first by considering the HTML markup that structures every web page, and then by using the CSS styling language to transform the appearance of those pages. After that, you explored a range of web-based services for your site, from search engine optimization and visitor tracking to social media promotion and ad sales. Finally, you dipped your toe into the deep waters of web programming with a bit of JavaScript.

So now that you’ve explored so much, where should you go next?

The obvious answer is “To your computer!” To get the most out of your new skills, you need to practice them—starting with the tutorials in this book, and then by building websites on your own. That’s because there’s no substitute for experimentation. The hours you spend fiddling with your markup, changing the design of a page, and building a menu will give you a practical understanding of what works in the web world and where the traps lie.

Another reason to take to your keyboard is to check out the websites mentioned in this book. Using them, you can dig deeper into specialized topics and see more examples. Don’t worry, you don’t need to search through chapter after chapter to find these sites; they’re listed and linked on this book’s companion site at http://prosetech.com/web.

If you’re more ambitious, there’s plenty more to learn. Here are a few other resources you ...