Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

General Discussion

Joseph Torres
Joseph Torres
6,280 Points

I began creating a website and felt completely lost. Anybody experience this?

I finished some of the HTML and CSS starter videos and felt like I was doing good. I installed brackets and installed some pretty neat extensions. I wanted to create a cool website and somehow I'm completely lost. How did this happen? lol.. Any insights and tips??

1 Answer

Jennifer Nordell
seal-mask
STAFF
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse Teacher

First, you are not unique (at least not in this regard). I'd bet good money that most people that have ever built any sort of coding project from scratch have encountered this. But here's some tips I've found that are helpful when starting with a blank project.

  • Start small
  • Break it down
  • Make lists
  • Make a mind map if needed

When I say start small, I mean start really small. I would even go so far as to say to not even worry about CSS to start with. Make sure you get your base elements on the page first. Start with deciding what you want on your landing page and wireframe it. Make a sketch with pen and paper, if needed. Do you want a navigation bar or not? Decide on a color scheme. I cannot recommend Adobe Color enough for this. What kind of text do you want on the landing page? Should there be a button? 2 buttons? And then start adding these things one at a time.

I can almost guarantee you that if you make a sort of "To Do" list for your project, you'll be amazed at how it grows and sort of coalesces as you check these things off. Trello and Workflowy are great tools for these sorts of things.

Good luck and happy coding! :sparkles:

Joseph Torres
Joseph Torres
6,280 Points

Thank you so much Ms. Nordell, I do have the end result in mind and I drew it out on paper however I have not mind mapped it so I will proceed with that. I find myself trying to clear my mind and remember everything that has been taught but only come up with a blank. I do go back and forth to W3C Schools and other sites however it feels like I'm doing a research paper when doing this which makes it fun. Thank you for your insight.

Jennifer Nordell
seal-mask
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse Teacher

Then I would suggest when you start making your "To Do" lists having something like:

  • Add navigation bar
  • Add image
  • Add main text

This might be exceptionally suited for Workflowy. By the way, all the tools I mentioned above are free to use.

Then you can expand the "Add navigation bar" task and actually paste in example code so that you don't have to look at it up over and over or have 1000 bookmarks. Keep the code you need where you know you can find it easily :smiley: