HINTS
Where to Start

In general, I find that most people have a difficult time in the beginning, mostly because they don't have a basic understanding of how the internet works. The first thing to do is get down some basic concepts that will help you with almost everything else you might encounter.

If you are really serious about learning enough to build and maintain a business or personal website, or even learning HTML and becoming a proficient web developer building other websites,

REMEMBER: You will NEVER know it ALL.
You will NEVER 'finish' your studies, but will be learning continually, all the time.
Everything you do will teach you something.

Everything in the computer software (and hardware) industry is in a constant
state of flux. There is always the NEXT NEW THING. The challenge is to try to learn
(at least SOME of) the new things as they come out...

Sometimes when I am having a hard time with something, I table it for a while, and go work on some other section of the site. Often the answer will come to me as I'm working, (perhaps relating to the other task I'm working on), and I can then go back and improve on the piece that gave me the original problem.

The MAIN thing is NOT to 'GIVE UP' -
but taking a break now and then can be VERY beneficial.

Some Important Tips:

• If you can't find the answer here in this book, do some searching on the internet for answers to your questions. There are many generous individuals out there that can help you, and gigabytes of information already posted on the internet.
  (I'll provide you with a useful and interesting set of links at the end of this manual.)
• Don't be afraid to tackle new things, even if you don't get it the first time around, you will learn something that will help you later.
• Remember: You don't always have to be able to WRITE a certain 'code snippet' in order to USE it.... You just need to know HOW and WHERE to copy and paste it.
• If you are using a Macintosh, you might eventually want to get a PC. I'm not saying you can't do this work with a Macintosh, just that the PC is more flexible, more configurable, costs less, and more files on the internet are PC/Dos/Windows file extensions. Even using email and sending attachments between Macintosh and PC can be very confusing for a 'newbie'.
• Speaking of 'Newbies' - go and visit http://www.newbieclub.com/ . Even though most of the information regarding computer settings is written for the PC, it does contain a lot of excellent general information about how the Internet works which will surely be useful to you.