Saturday, June 23, 2012

Learning Web Design

Not more than two weeks ago I decided that I wanted to start learning a little bit about web design. Many of the job descriptions I have been reading for communications coordinators or directors mention something about needing to have a basic knowledge of HTML (website language) and web design. I figured since I am not working very much right now it's a perfect time to try to teach myself some new skills that could help me become a more competitive candidate for a job.

I checked out a book from the library (the idiot version) about HTML. I started reading to try and get a basic understanding of this coding language so if nothing else I could have a foundation for more learning. Originally I wanted to build my own website; one to have the experience of doing it and two to have a more professional looking online portfolio of all my work. And of course still play host to my blog. The more I thought about it I knew I wanted to keep the blog as the main element of the page so I decided to just stick with a blog instead of a full blown website. I knew with HTML I could customize the blog and make it look more professional and websitey. 

I had been thinking about moving over to Wordpress from Blogger but as I got into it I knew it would be a lot of work transferring all my old posts into Wordpress. Because I still want my posts from Morocco to be on my blog. I  really fell in love with a template from Wordpress and wondered if it was possible to get it for Blogger. With some handy Internet searching I found out it was. So that's what I did and that is what you are looking at now. But I soon realized how much customization of this template was possible if you knew a little bit about HTML. So now even though I have the same template as many other bloggers it doesn't look the same as theirs because I changed things that make it my own. 

There are still some things I am trying to figure out and I'm sure I'll find new things to change as time goes along. I'm very happy with what I was able to do and feel like I am on the road to reaching my goal of having a working knowledge of web design.