Creating a website is a simple process even for beginners. All you have to do is to follow few simple steps to create a database and to install one of the popular content management systems like Joomla or Wordpress. You need no knowledge about web technologies or web languages like HTML, PHP, CSS or JavaScript. In general, there is no need to learn web programming because as an average web user you only need to know how to create articles, how to add images and other simple tasks.
On the other hand knowing web languages can significantly improve the quality of your website. With few simple tweaks you can modify any template, you can change colors to match your content, you can change positions of page elements, etc. In other words, you have total control over your website.
Many web users think that learning HTML and other web languages is difficult. Fortunately this is not true. There is a very simple way to learn basics of web languages. A working website on a home web server is an ideal platform for experiments. Here you can make modifications to see what effect they have. This way you can learn a lot.
The first step should be to read some tutorials or introductory texts about HTML and CSS. This is the first level of web programming. The next step is probably JavaScript and PHP. You only need to know what these languages do, what is the basic syntax and how these languages work together to create web pages.
The next step is to analyze the file structure of the website. Try to figure out which files constitute the template of the site. You will usually find a main PHP file with CSS styles. Take some time to analyze the structure and syntax of the files. Then make small changes to see what effect they have on the page layout or content.
Small changes will later evolve into bigger changes and you will be able to modify a basic template according to your needs and wishes. Once you figure out how things work it will be very easy to find out which files, where and how need to be modified in order to make desired changes. It is amazing what you can do if you know only basic syntax of HTML, CSS and PHP. Knowing web technologies will help you to understand how the web works and how you can take advantage of it.
The SFP transceiver [http://sfptransceivers.net/] website is an example where small modifications of the original template were made in order to optimize the site for faster loading. This is a small website about special fiber optic modules [http://sfptransceivers.net/fiber-optic-connectors] called SFP transceivers.
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