Learning Treehouse and Creating Websites tips

I would say the best thing to do is build the website alongside following the PHP videos. The PHP project is actually building a t-shirt store so it would work very well with your case. Here is a link to the php project which is pretty short and to the point.

Start with HTML, then CSS. Build your site while following the videos. You'll start it over a few times but its the best way to learn, putting into praciotce what you're learning. Do php last and then wordpress. Wordpress takes a lot of the leg work out of dealing with security and the database. Woocommerce rocks and wordpress is a very good CMS.

My suggestion is to make yourself a simple "business card" site. Who you are, what you do, other info you want others to know.

Something like this template ...

For building your first site I recommend the following process...

• Make a wireframe using an online wireframing tool, something like Cacoo
• Write the semantic HTML, don't worry about the CSS yet
• Build a fixed width site
• Keep it simple to start with, don't try to solve problems you don't have yet
• Add in some small CSS3 if the design calls for it, maybe border-radius or box-shadow
• If you need a form add in some HTML5

• Try to stay away from a lot of Javascript for now

• Once you've got the first version fully working post it here and get some critiques on your design

Then it's time for version 2

• Make it responsive
• Check it out using the responsinator
• Then post it here to get some feedback on the responsive version

Time for version 3

• If you are sick of cutting and pasting your header and footer on every page
• It's time to add in some templating using PHP.
  Very basic PHP is all you need, it makes it easier to not repeat yourself (see also: DRY).
• Post it here to get some feedback on the responsive version

Wow! Thanks everyone for your great tips! I am excited to get going with this now :)

Just arrived, insightful.