If you taught yourself to create your own website..

[mylongawaitedlife]

Can you describe how you did that? - did you figure it out through books/online, take a course, or have to go (back) to Uni or similar?

Does it depend what kind of site? - for example something with a more sophisticated 'matching' system, or search function.. at what point would you have needed assistance?

Most gallery or retail websites have good templates online that you can edit. If it's good enough for the likes of topshop it's good enough for me.

Google exists.

If you want to learn how to code, and build a website from scratch - I'd recommend going to Uni. Hobbyists could do it but it's quite intensive.

It's not that I can't be bothered to Google!

It's a general question because I'm interested, reading posts on this board, in how many taught themselves versus were taught, where they did the website themselves (I mean where they did a bespoke version rather than using Wix or whatever)

I've just bought my own domain, I'm not building my own websites though I'm going to have mine on shopify. I have heard lits of good things about it and It looks really user friendly and I really don't want to spend a lot of money getting some one to build a website for me.

You just use a template. If you're starting an online store look at shopify. If just a website, there's loads like weebley I think is one. All very easy. But do pay the money for a domain name to be attached as it looks unprofessional to have .weebley.com or whatever in your web address.

I buy domain names on dodaddy.

I used Bootstrap as the basis for mine. It's all hand-coded (that's what I wanted to do). I used the W3 School tutorials, the examples in the Bootstrap documentation and Stack Overflow.

I bought a domain using 1&1 and Joomla to build it, with the help of a book from the library. Installing a paid for template from a company called Joomlage made it look a lot better.

However, I had quite a bit of front-end experience and a tiny bit of coding knowledge.

Lots of people seem to use Wix now and if I was doing it again, I'd look at that.

You don't need to go to college, but I would say following a book is easier than tracking down information online.

If you don't have any experience, it might be more cost-effective to pay someone else to do it so you can concentrate on your business - but make sure you have full control and logins to the front and back-end plus owning the domain.

The most important thing for your business is digital marketing and that would be worth learning/brushing up on if you're not already competent with it.

I self taught from scratch and now do it professionally. I started with Treehouse but now just google when I need something specific. I think I'm going to go back to Treehouse to get started with iOS development.

I did IT as school and college and they taught outdated crap. Everyone I've spoken to (barring Microsoft) have agreed that you don't need uni. Technology moves to fast anyway. Just do it. Practice. Start again. Get better.

My first live website was a WordPress eCommerce site. I used Treehouse tutorials and it was pretty easy.

BUT if you just need a website for your business it's probably worth paying someone to do it.

I used Wix to build the website choir I'm in - you can have a free website (but it will have Wix in the domain name) or you can pay to use a domain name you own.

I found that the tools on the Wix site made building and maintaining the site pretty easy (I am no expert, so if I can do it, anyone can).

If you'd like to have a look at the site, I can post the link.

I taught myself as I went along, just picked things up as I needed to know them (so I'd use online tutorials, etc.). Things change so quickly, I'm not sure a long course would be all that helpful.

I use Wordpress. You can get much more professional results than using the templates provided by hosting companies or companies such as Wix, although the learning curve is a bit steeper.

Most people I know running online businesses are also self-taught (even if they choose to pay someone else to put a site together). It means you can update your site quickly and resolve problems as and when they crop up. Once in the early days (when I still paid other people to do all my online stuff) my site was off-line for over a month while they sorted out technical issues. It had a huge impact on my business and I had to learn to build a site very quickly. And now I have more than one site and they're spread between different hosting companies.

Somewhat related, if you're looking at creating an online business ensure you own your domain name. I've also found myself in the situation where my domain name was 'owned' by the company who hosted my site and in the middle of a dispute they took the site off-line and refused access. It took a long time to sort out and again really damaged my business. There are fewer companies that do that these days, but something to look out for.

I use Wordpress which is I taught myself and is pretty tricky when you don't know how to code. I'm still learning every day. Sites like Squarespace are almost as good and easy to figure out, with drag and drop templates. They charge a monthly fee.

I use Squarespace and use their online tutorials. The monthly fee is a few quid and worth it for the tools it provides.

You can also buy your domain name through them.

And you own your own content.

I used to be a website designer and code sites from scratch.

There are som many off the peg solutions now I would never bother designing from scratch.

I would bother with logo and brand identity and someone who can create graphics hat work across all the social media platforms.

Wix, WordPress, mailchimp, big cartel - depending on business there is usually something to start you off professionally standard.

Get a bit of (free from many local business groups) social media training on integrating website with Facebook, twitter, mailchimp etc and you should be fine.

I have one website on Drupal, with free theme. It is not difficult. Some tutorials helped me..

Buy a domain name with Wordpress hosting (Godaddy makes it easy)

Find a wordpress template (free or paid) on a website like themeforest

And then basically google everything you don't know how to do

As girlwhowearsglasses says, the totally hand built html route just isn't a sensible option now (even if you already know html, css and java script) it takes so much longer to build like that - making it look good on all devices /browsers and quick to load even on 3g tasks such a long time, and updating it should be a fast process where you don't have to think about technology. So for most sites a CMS (content management system, such as WordPress/joomla/drupal) is the way to go