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HTML

Posted by Hunter Hawley
Hunter Hawley
3,948 Points

Help Finding What is Best For Me

Hello, I am having a bit of trouble. As I am going through the Wordpress Theme Couse with Zac Gordon, I am realizing that being able to write PHP for Wordpress is useless unless I can create a static HTML site like the one shown. I learned HTML and CSS on Codecademy.com, which do not get me wrong, was wonderful, but it was very basic, and my fundemental knowledge is just not all there. However, when I went through some of the HTML and CSS couses here, I am seeing that some of the things being taught are things I already know. I feel like I really just use divs too much, and I have HUGE problems with CSS positioning. I can never get something exacly where I like it, especially not when I am designing for responsive. It has me a bit stressed, because I figured I had a good knowledge, but it turns out I may not. What should I do to get back on couse?

3 Answers

James Anwyl
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
James Anwyl
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 49,960 Points

Hi, Some of what you've said reminds me of a similar situation I was/still am in. I understood the basics of css and html, I could add a jquery or php plugin to my site but I never felt like I really understood enough to write my own plugins and my site's would never look 'quite right'.

Also, I never really understood what makes a good design - I'd see something I like and think "oh that looks cool" but never really understand why it was appealing. I lacked the fundamental knowledge as you pointed out.

I am currently working my way through the web design track and although I already knew some of the material covered to begin with, it has served as a great learning exercise and I've learnt a lot. I like to think of it as a 'refresher' course. I suggest you start with this first.

The CSS Foundations section of this track is pretty comprehensive and is useful for getting up to date with the current CSS3 specification.

I highly recommend you complete this track and take notes as you go through. It's great as a refresher and hopefully it will fill a few gaps in your learning. Some of the topics covered include: html5, css3, how to build a responsive website, css positioning (the box model, flexbox, media queries etc. as well as color theory and other design principles,

Work your way through that track and it should clear up some of the confusion you are having, as It has done with me.

Hope this helps!

Jess Goss
Jess Goss
4,874 Points
Jess Goss
Jess Goss
4,874 Points

Hi Hunter,

It's always hard to know what it is you don't know! I agree with James, while its a bit tiresome going through some of the courses where it covers stuff you know back to front, you do need to treat it as a refresher course and more than likely you will pick up a couple of things you didn't know before, and fill in a few of those knowledge gaps.

I wouldn't worry too much about using too many divs - that may well be the case, and there are always going to be cleaner/better solutions to your code, but like anything you'll get better at it with practice. I look back over old code I did and wonder why on earth I did it that way and could trim out a lot of unnecessary markup, I suspect that's not something that will ever go away.

Perhaps you need to create yourself a small project to recreate as a static html & css, and some of the gaps you have might become more apparent and you can do a search of the treehouse videos on those areas to go through more thoroughly.

Best of luck :)

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points
James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

The hard about CSS is learning to select elements and position them on the page.

I'd suggest this course of study...

  1. CSS Foundations
  2. 30 selectors you must memorize
  3. learnlayout.com
  4. Design Foundations
  5. Design School For Developers
  6. Build a Responsive Website

My suggestion is to take notes using workflowy, practice using codepen and if you get stuck check out dochub.io for a syntax reference.

After you've done all of those do the CSS exercises on Pair Up to Code.