I often read a lot of messages about people not sure where to begin when they have an idea for a website. Where can I get somebody to build me a website for cheap? How do I learn how to program? How much should I spend on building a website? Those are just a few of the questions I see being asked time and time again. I am writing this thread to help those who may have been in this exact situation when first deciding to start a web based business. Hopefully it will help a lot of people when they get started. In November 2011, I was asking myself the same exact questions when I didn’t know a single thing about programming. It is now March 2012 and I would like to share what I have learned over those few months.

Should I pay a company to build it for me, or do it myself?
In late November, I had the best idea in the world for a website : An online resume service. I planned out in Photoshop what it would look like, decided how I would monetize it, and how I would bring in users. Not knowing anything about coding at the time, the decision was obvious: have somebody build it for me. I emailed the designs to a company in India (cheaper than the United States) and got their quote. The website would be completed in just over three months for $18,000. Like most people starting out here, I did not have $1,000 to start the site and with my projected revenue from it, I would be crazy if I wanted to spend $18,000 on it.

Fast forward to today. After studying programming languages on my own (HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, MySQL) for a short period of time: I am confident I could build that same website myself in under one month.

Something to consider:
If you are the type of person who comes up with countless ideas every day, it is in my opinion that you would be better served to learn things yourself. There is another website that I planned out that (at the time, I thought) could bring in well over $500,000. I didn’t know how to code then so I offered my friend 50% of the company to code it out for me. Currently, I could program that website in less than two days. Assuming I went forward with that project and did pull in $500,000: I would have wound up paying $250,000 for something I learned to do in less than a few months. (side note: ideas are not as great as you think they are. I just use the large numbers here as an example…but that is a story in itself).

If you aren't the type of person described above, and have one real website planned out for a company that doesn't revolve around constantly expanding your website: That is when you might want to look into outsourcing the project. Even in that case, it is in your best interest to at least get an understanding of how things work to make the process go smoother.

Resources:
As mentioned before, companies charge ridiculous amounts to build websites. You may be better served looking for a freelance programmer to work on smaller websites for you. Odesk.com is just one example of a site where you can find such a person. I am no way affiliated with them, but I hear great reviews about working there.

In my next post, I will talk about how went from knowing nothing to programming HTML(5), CSS(3), Javascript, PHP, MySQL and having a familiarity with jQuery and AJAX in less than 4 months.

Did you get your $18,000 quote through a company found on elance / odesk / freelancer or directly from a company? Because from my experience, you can get pretty complex sites built for less than $3,000 from providers on there.

So as I mentioned in my first post: I knew absolutely nothing about coding in November 2011. As of today (March, 8 2012), I have been able to build some decent websites and programs in multiple languages. This post should provide a brief introduction on where to get started and the path I followed.

The Basics:
There is generally an order to follow when learning programming languages and I will start from the beginning.

HTML – This language provides a base for everything else you will do later on. The words you are reading right now are in HTML. The pictures you see are set in HTML. This is the first thing you should learn.

Teamtreehouse.com is where I first got started. It provides video tutorials showing you where to begin from the basics. HTML - Treehouse Their HTML series was free when I learned it, but they begin to charge for the rest. I strongly suggest using Notepad alongside the tutorials to learn the quickest.

CSS – The second language that is strongly connected to HTML is called CSS. This is the language that dictates HOW things look on the webpage. If you want your font to be red- you do it through here. If you want a picture to be in the top right of the page, you do it through here.

While teamtreehouse.com charges for this. TheNewBoston.org does not. The following link will help your practice HTML some more and work your way into CSS: List of Videos for XHTML & CSS I strongly suggest again to use notepad alongside the tutorials to learn the best. I also recommend NOT skipping the HTML portion of this series because repetition is key.

These two languages are the very basics of what your website will look like. You will have basically zero functionality to it (AKA people cannot submit information to the server or interact with the website). They will be able to view and read your content only. I strongly suggest you get decent with these two languages before you move onto anything else.

W3Schools Online Web Tutorials Save this website and use it frequently! Now that you have an understanding of the two, this site will make sense to you and is a very good reference guide to expand on the basics. Continue to use w3schools as a reference guide for all languages.

Note: I am no way affiliated in any of the websites above.

It took me about two weeks to learn the basics of HTML and CSS. It was not until I actually started building my own web pages that I got comfortable with doing it.

If this thread is helping people out, I will continue and cover some more advanced stuff and then go into Javascript, PHP, MySQL as well as some content management systems that will make life a lot more easier for most people. Let me know if you want me to continue.

kwerner said:

Did you get your $18,000 quote through a company found on elance / odesk / freelancer or directly from a company? Because from my experience, you can get pretty complex sites built for less than $3,000 from providers on there.

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I got the $18,000 quote directly from a company that I found elsewhere. I am pretty sure I could have gotten a quote for MUCH less from Odesk, elance, etc. That example was just from my personal experience and unless I am building the next Google, I would only really go through one of the freelance websites mentioned above.

AndrewNC said:

I got the $18,000 quote directly from a company that I found elsewhere. I am pretty sure I could have gotten a quote for MUCH less from Odesk, elance, etc. That example was just from my personal experience and unless I am building the next Google, I would only really go through one of the freelance websites mentioned above.

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Yeah, I had a similar experience when I first started out. I asked a local web design / development company to create a simple 5 page site with a real simple mysql backend and they said it would cost between $5,000 and $8,000. I knew it was stupidly overpriced and I told them so. Knowing what I know now, I could get the exact same site built on Elance / Odesk / Freelancer for less than $500. Sorry for the thread hijack.

Ur not hijacking at all... you go to confirm what I mentioned in my experiences. Feel free to add to the threat with your own POV on anything related.

AndrewNC said:

While teamtreehouse.com charges for this. TheNewBoston.org does not. The following link will help your practice HTML some more and work your way into CSS: List of Videos for XHTML & CSS I strongly suggest again to use notepad alongside the tutorials to learn the best. I also recommend NOT skipping the HTML portion of this series because repetition is key.

Click to expand...

This is my first post on here, and I am very excited that I found this particular thread because it is just what I was looking for! I've been trying to figure out exactly where to start as I need to learn to code to build my own webpages.

I have a couple of good ideas that I'm working to firm into solid ideas but I have the same problem of not having any coding experience worth mentioning.

My question is this: do you (or anyone else) know of any good books or DVDs that will help teach coding? An Amazon or Google search will yield a myriad of books and courses, but the reviews are all over the map as far as whether the items are any good or not. I'm looking for books and DVDs because I work in Afghanistan and I don't have the bandwidth to watch any videos online.

On my last R&R I bought The Millionaire Fastlane and read it all the way through in one very excited sitting. The very next morning I was at Barnes & Noble as soon as they opened and was looking for books on coding. Their selection wasn't all that but I walked out with a book on basic Perl coding and the Teach Yourself Visually HTML and CSS book, I figured that would be enough to get my feet wet.

I'm very fortunate in that I have a pretty good job over here that pays me enough that I can afford to splurge a bit on learning to do this. Any resources and suggestions would be very welcome!

I whole heatedly and respectfully disagree. As a pet project, by all means code it yourself. But if you are trying to start a solid large income business I'd highly recommend letting the professionals handle the things you don't know ie: the design and development.

I'm a full blown nerd and developer and I'm telling you that. I have project ideas that I could code myself, but I'm letting freelancers and/or firms handle them simply because I'm in this game of life to win, not to sit a lot on my computer all day. My goal is to run the business because that is the best way for me to leverage my time. I very much so limit my time by programming.

That said, that is my situation. Everyone is different.

My pet projects are either self-funded or I work up a profit sharing model signed contract and get things moving that way. For my larger projects, I find the money somewhere else and then hire it all out anyway. Well, maybe not all but most.

In closing, yes. You could do it yourself and save yourself some money.

It depends on what your end goal is. For me, I want to build a new web app right the first time so I get someone in who specializes in building that sort of website. I could do it for sure, but I wouldn't do it as well as they do. I wouldn't get it done as quickly, nor as properly secured and scalable as it needs to be.

*shrug* just some food for thought.

Thanks for this thread, man. I'd love to know any other resources you have for learning. Even if I don't code myself, it can't hurt to have a basic understanding of the site.

piotrkrzyzek said:

My pet projects are either self-funded or I work up a profit sharing model signed contract and get things moving that way. For my larger projects, I find the money somewhere else and then hire it all out anyway. Well, maybe not all but most.

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piotrkrzyzek, where do you hire your programmers? Anywhere new that's not elance or Odesk? Also, what are your means of funding if you don't have the money? What kind of profit sharing do you do? Can you give me examples? Thanks!

piotrkrzyzek said:

I'm a full blown nerd and developer and I'm telling you that. I have project ideas that I could code myself, but I'm letting freelancers and/or firms handle them simply because I'm in this game of life to win, not to sit a lot on my computer all day. My goal is to run the business because that is the best way for me to leverage my time. I very much so limit my time by programming.

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I would agree that if one has the resources to do so, it is probably more efficient to hire someone who already has the talent. But I'm torn between the desire for that efficiency and also wanting to learn to do it on my own "just because".

I think it would definitely give me an edge on competition if I were able to be more responsive to problems by just coding fixes myself versus having to get with my programmer and have him get to the problem whenever he could. That's one of my major motivations for wanting to learn to code.

Also, I think your status as a "full-blown nerd and developer" helps out a lot when it comes to hiring someone to build something for you as you are already intimately familiar with the process. It's an intimidating process for me. It's probably how my sister feels when she takes her car to the mechanic lol.

I hear a lot of stories; some good, many bad, about hiring Elance folks to build websites. But I think a lot of the problem stems from our (non tech guys) inability to effectively articulate our vision into something that the programmer can understand and act on. I know I'm guilty of telling my IT guys at work, "I want this to do that" to which they answer, "WTF are talking about, Pete?"

From the standpoint of a programmer, what would be the easiest way for someone to just walk in and explain a requirement to you? Powerpoint? Use of hands?

SeePetey - If you are at the very beginning of things and need to learn HTML and CSS, I can't really offer you any specifics. Partly because I learned all of that through the websites mentioned in my first posts. But with HTML and CSS - they aren't really that difficult of languages to learn. They are fairly straightforward and when you make a mistake, it is not nearly as frustrating as the more advanced stuff. If The internet wasn't an option, I would just go to Amazon or wherever you get your books from and find one with decent reviews. I bought The Millionaire Fastlane on Amazon because it had overwhelming 5 star reviews on Amazon.

Stick with HTML/CSS first (Wait for HTML5 and CSS3) until you get the basic ones first. When you get deeper with things, I am currently reading PHP and MySQL Web Development by Luke Wellington and Laura Thomson (4th edition) and don't have too many complaints so far. Even if you don't have internet too much, you can still practice HTML and CSS on your own computer offline to test things out alongside the books. I highly recommend this.

piotrkrzyzek - Thanks for the comment. After re-reading my initial post, it might appear that I had sort of a biased towards "do it yourself" and in the cases you described, you are right. If you have a solid plan for a larger income generating project, it will save a lot of frustration and time to get a professional to do it. For my own personal experience, I know nothing about creating iPhone apps and could either a- spend 3 months learning how to do that and spend another 3 months building it or b-pay someone to get it done in less than a month. It really depends on each person's situation and how serious they are about turning a website into a business. I just noticed a lot of us on here jump into an idea too quickly when it might not be the best idea for us.

I also think each individual's situation dictates what works best for them. Part of my fastlane strategy is to build multiple income-generating sites and not just be reliant on one. With my abilities and desire to be in control, it makes more sense to me to do it myself. With that being said, the main project I am working on right now will eventually require a specialist to come in and finish it up for me.

Ryan - I don't have any more resources currently, but will keep my eye out. While the project that you described in your thread seems like the type of thing that I would recommend to outsource (software, friend, or someone else), it always helps to have a general understanding of how things work.

Hi Petey. I don't think it would hurt to learn code but I think my time would be better spent planning, thinking, and making money at my job. I'm sure you make a decent paycheck and you could probably hire 5 or so full-timers utilizing their skillset while you use yours at your day job. Use your free time to think, plan, and tell your staff what you want done.

That's my 2 cents anyways.

Jake in Jalalabad

Where do I here my programmers: Anywhere I find someone competent. I've worked with great guys from India before, but I've also sadly had to deal with some people with the IQ equal to that of a rock ... Long story short: your mileage will vary when outsourcing. But best place though, is references. Talk to people and get referrals. My #1 place to find great talent. Whether it's a firm or a freelancer, it all depends on their reputation.

Though I also respond to companies who e-mail my public e-mail address. Why? Who knows, might find a hidden gem even though their marketing is borderline spam. *shrug*. For example, talking with one now and I'm going to toss them a bone and see if they deliver on the quality they say they have. Is it a big project? Heavens no. I could code the thing myself in a day or two ... but I don't want to and assuming they are good, they can help me get the requirements document perfect! It's good to have seasoned eyes taking a second look at your project to see if it's worth it or not. Since they contacted me and I have no 'need' to go with them, I'm basically only going to go with them if they work within my requirements, contracts and budget. If not, I have better fish to fry and better leads to follow up on.

My 'job' is selling my products and services, not the nitty gritty stuff .... even though I am OOOHHH so tempted to try out a new development tool I just learned about (and configured to my liking) and to stretch my programming muscles. But if I did that, I wouldn't be able to spend time chasing the bigger catches.

I avoid elance ... meh. oDesk ... meh .... Freelancer (formally Get a Freelancer) ... meh. Most of the people on there are outsourcing companies. BUT NOT ALL. I do look on them, though I'm partial to Freelancer (why? dunno ... just cause). I only look for and hire the people who respond with something other than "please see PM" or fill the message box with their useless crap about their company. I'm looking for people/firms who actually respond to my questions and give real feedback!

Nothing wrong with those outsourcing sites, just gotta find the right service provider. Again, it's easier to just work through references though.

On that note: Craigslist for local hires. Always decent.

Means of funding if I don't have the money? ... ok ... you lost me there. Are you seriously asking that question as a real entrepreneur / business person? Find the money. Friends, family, your dentist, lawyer, gardener ... aka: OPM. Other people's money. There is a lot of it floating around. Failing that, I'd ask for small investment referrals at the networking groups I visit. The local Chamber of Commerce is usually a pretty darn good place to start.

Then there is personal loans, HELOC, credit cards .... *GASP*! Yes, I dare say it! Use that credit card if it's a "investment." ... That new Armani suit you were thinking of buying? Not an investment (in most cases). Using the credit line to fund development costs for a soon-to-be-sold product? Sounds like a very fair and well calculated investment risk to me. With decent credit it's easy enough to get a 0% APR card. Even a 10/15/17% card is fine. Pay the minimums until your thing takes off!

Fair warning: credit cards have a certain amount of risk associated with them. Use it wisely!

Almost forgot: LinkedIn. Meet people there, ask for references. Who knows who you might end up meeting. I know I was surprised who I ended up connecting to and am now doing some very profitable business with ...

Fun strategy: if you don't need the money for yourself right now... use your ROTH/401K. Do a loan to yourself from yourself .... just make sure to put it back with 6? months. Or whatever amount of time the law allows. But don't dare touch that money. Any money OUT from the ROTH has to go straight back INTO the roth plus ALL investment gains. I recommend speaking to a lawyer/investment advisory about that strategy.

Works well for real estate.

What kind of profit sharing? Depends on the deal and amount of work involved. I've been on both sides of the coin. Giving and receiving ends. If you're splitting the work fairly 50/50 ... then a 50/50 split sounds fair. Working on the new Pandora/Spotify? 1% of all net sales sounds fair. *shrug* Depends on your business, who you work with, your goals ... ectect... I can't give you a concrete answer to that one. Sorry.

Recent example of a profit sharing model ... hmm, one project in the pipeline: upfront project development fees + rights to the brand in-order to expand it internationally (after it takes off, not before).

Not exactly profit sharing, but one rather nice JV.

Best way to explain requirements: With my company it's a several step process. Starting out with a simple web to start the discovery phase. The form asks for the usual basics plus some extra info. This gives us a good foothold as to were to start out client discussions. During the discovery phase, I prefer to just talk to somebody. Hand-waving is actually very powerful. Also doodles.... I LOVE it when clients give me their doodles! You won't believe the amount of info in simple doodles. A list of basic features is also nice as well, but for us that (list) is part of the web form which for most (not all) clients takes care of pretty much everything we would need to know except color preferences and final project price.

Hope that answers some of the questions. Best of luck!

Jake said:

That's my 2 cents anyways.

Jake in Jalalabad

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Hey Jake,

Thanks for your 2 cents! I appreciate it.

My 2 cents: watch your back out there, the natives are restless in your neck of the woods lol.

AndrewNC said:

If this thread is helping people out, I will continue and cover some more advanced stuff and then go into Javascript, PHP, MySQL as well as some content management systems that will make life a lot more easier for most people. Let me know if you want me to continue.

Click to expand...

AndrewNC: Your thread is helpful. Please continue on with more. Thanks for all the links.

piotrkrzyzek said:

Hope that answers some of the questions. Best of luck!

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Big help! Thanks! Copied to Evernote for future reference.

I can either spend $1,000 having someone build me a website, which will be done in a week or two and be very professional - or spend months learning how to code, then another month building a mediocre website myself and spend $0.

What if I spent those months learning about internet marketing, seo, sales funnels, and copywriting instead? My business would be far better off because my website will be better, done sooner, and actually have a chance in the market place because of my BUSINESS knowledge.

Leo - Anything specific you would like me to cover? I'm glad that I am of some help to you.

Cparsons - Your response reminded me of a comparison I made a short time ago: Does the founder of Rosetta Stone know how to speak 50 different languages?

I went through this similar problem earlier this year when launching my website. I hired a developer on odesk and was given a buggy website that I had no idea how to operate. I threw it out and hunkered down and learned basic code myself. Once over the initial hurdles, I don't find it too bad (to do basic tasks of course). You can see my site as my homepage in my profile. I used Shopify as an ecommerce platform.

I have only been able to do basic stuff with wordpress so far but I am working at it

AndrewNC: Like you a few months ago, I know nothing about coding. I will start with the links you provided, but I was just curious to read more on the learning path that you followed.

Since you already had an idea for a website you probably learned based on what you needed and the problems you encountered. In my case, I have a few business ideas, but nothing very specific in particular, so my learning would be more general in the beginning.

Thanks again for the help.

Leo - Actually at that stage of things, I had a number of ideas for websites. I basically picked 2 or 3 smaller projects and coded them start to finish while learning new things that I needed as I went along. Experience is the best thing that helped me get to where I am now.

This is one thing that I did when I was learning CSS and HTML at thenewboston.org: I copied their source code (right click, view source code) for the homepage and then the attached CSS File. I then opened up that file on my local computer and played around with the values to get a feel for what each one does.

and W3Schools.com is great for a reference guide when you get the basics. Those 2 sites alone should give you a good understanding.

How would you go about making your website secure? Hacker wise and especially if there is user data involved?

Can you touch on that.

SPX said:

How would you go about making your website secure? Hacker wise and especially if there is user data involved?

Can you touch on that.

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SPX - The level of security for your website really depends on what type of website you're running and how sensitive the information is that the users are passing onto your servers. This pretty much comes into play when you get into the advanced programming languages such as PHP, SQL, etc. A forum website like this will have different security measures than Bank of America's website.

Some very basic security measures that you would start off learning yourself: MD5 encryption of passwords turns passwords into a 32 character long mix of letters and numbers to keep those secure. Making sure to protect against SQL injection where hackers can put in a combination of letters into your forms and they can change the code. Securing your connection file. Also keep in mind who you give your database information/passwords too (employees). Double checking your code to make sure the values entered are within the parameters that you intend them to be...the list goes on.

As I said before, these are some of the very basic measures. Contrary to my post earlier about how I mentioned a lot of the benefits of coding stuff yourself. If you are not completely comfortable with security features, this is something you should have a professional handle, even if it is to double check what you already put in. There are a variety of factors that determine the level of security you want for your website to include anything from the type of information you are handling to the cost of the security software.

I want to make clear again - if you are not 100% on this, get an expert to handle it. Don't take my list above to be an exhaustive list of everything you need to do. One book that I have been studying from is "PHP and MySQL Web Development by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson" They have a couple of chapters that touch on the issues I presented and go even further. If anything, it should give you at least an understanding of what you need ($54.99 at B&N).

Also, look into the benefits of SSL certificates. If you click on the "Quick Tour" button on the following website: Products - it should give you an idea of what they do.

thanks Andrew for sharing these helpful and knowledge gaining experiences... i think all of us must share some personal experience that would be helpful to all of us..we can also share or mistake we have done without feeling shy so that others take care of doing such mistakes again..

AndrewNC said:

Some very basic security measures that you would start off learning yourself: MD5 encryption of passwords turns passwords into a 32 character long mix of letters and numbers to keep those secure.

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That is far from ideal.
do this (for php):
$salt = 'randomstring';
$encrypted_password = sha1($password . $salt);

sha1 is stronger than md5 and using a salt will prevent someone using password tables. (If you save the password in the cookie for example, they can use a password table to check common passwords, chances are some of your users will have one. Also if your db gets hacked, if it's the password is not salted it will allow the hacker to gain access to other accounts of your users if they use the same password)

Also make sure you validate all data inputs.

The security things to look out for are XSS (Cross site scripting) and SQL injections. Make sure you read up on both to make sure you know how they work and how you can prevent then.

Frameworks like CodeIgniter help you with that. I think it's smart to always use a framework for webapps, especially as a beginner.

The rest should be handled by your host.

How do you suggest I get started with MySQL and PHP? (Resources, books, videos etc)

AcquireCurrency said:

How do you suggest I get started with MySQL and PHP? (Resources, books, videos etc)

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I am assuming you at least have an understanding of HTML and CSS before you move onto this. A lot of places recommend you know Javascript too, but I learned PHP before javascript and didn't have too much of a problem. It is your call on that part.

Videos- thenewboston.org has a 200 part long video series on PHP (which includes some MySQL). It might be confusing at first, but if you keep following through and actually practicing along with it, you will get a decent understanding. They have a MySql series that you can watch after you finish PHP. Note: Some of the videos are him programming in an old version of PHP. So if you start running into a series of errors that never seem to work, click on the link to go to the actual YouTube page and read user comments. It also helps to copy and paste the first part of the error message into google search before you pull all the hairs out of your head.

Books- Read my last post on this page. There is a good book that I have been working with that covers stuff in more detail. You might want to read the 'crash course' in PHP chapter real quick before you go to the video series mentioned above to get more familiar with it.

Resources - PHP Freaks - PHP Help IRC Live Chat If you go to the help chat, there are always people in there willing to help you out if you have a problem. I suggest learning the basics and getting somewhat comfortable with PHP and MySQL before you ask for their help.


Pat: Thanks for covering that. Maybe you can weigh in some more on other resources that help when it comes to this post.