Starting out advice

Hi all my name is Justin I am a full-time student attending the university of phoenix online, trying for an Associates degree in web design. My personal opinion is that the school is wasting my time with bs classes that have nothing to do with web design, so I decided to take it upon myself to learn via trial and error, books, videos and helpful forums such as TF.

I have adobe photoshop CS5, Dreamweaver CS5, and some cheap software called Web Plus x4. My goal is to complete a fully functional site for myself to use for a portfolio.

I am just looking for some start up advice, maybe any tips on how to get my first few clients. How to charge as a beginner. etc etc.

Thanks for any input.

Hello,

If you're a beginner I'd recommend to do it for free or for a very low price. If it's your first site, it's most likely not going to be your best work anyway. Maybe ask a friend who could need a website and use this for your portfolio.

I recommend that you learn how to code in html. If you use an WYSIWYG editor like Web Plus x4 or Dreamweaver, it is very likely that you will not understand what you're doing and you'll always be a step behind. (Except if you just use the code editor.)

Once you're done, ask for some feedback here on TF.

Best of luck!

Thanks for the advice, I have offered a free 4-5 page site for a couple of friends as of today. Hopefully they will take advantage of the offer.

I agree that I should learn the actual coding, I would not want to rely specifically on the WYSIWYG software.