I started my web development journey in 2005, when I accidentally landed on a website made by one of my college friends who was on the other side of the world. Since then, I had wanted to build my own but, I had zero knowledge of how websites are built and no idea what to learn or where to start on how to build one. And as if things weren’t hard enough, I had to learn it while working full-time.



With some tips from my friend and countless hours of searching the internet, I had landed on some good and not so good places to learn how to build a website. I also found out that there are tutorial videos in Youtube, and quite interesting to note that Google bought it the following year. I spent months visiting numerous web sites and watching Youtube videos until I was able to put the pieces together.



In order to build a website, I needed to learn Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), the foundation from which all web pages are built, Cascading Style Sheet, to make them beautiful and presentable, and to add behavior to the web pages, I had to learn JavaScript as well. But before I could do all that, I needed a text editor. The one from Adobe called Dreamweaver isn’t free, but it’s easy to create web pages without knowing how to code because it has a design view feature, just like WYSIWYG web builder. But for a beginner like me tight on budget, I could have used the text editor in my windows computer called Notepad, but it’s so basic that I downloaded a free source code editor, Notepad++. It has lots of features such as highlighting and syntax folding feature that made my coding experience easier and faster. As time went by, I learned about other powerful free text editors like Visual Studio Code and Komodo Edit among others. It is worth mentioning that I also had to learn at least the basics of image editing like adjusting the color or size of an image to make it fit and look good in a web page. With this, I downloaded a free image editing software Gimp that I used until I was able to purchase Adobe’s Photoshop.



Setting aside the tech jargon and history of things, not that they’re not important, I jumped right into coding HTML tags and tried hard to memorize syntax at least of the most common ones. I learned how to embed or link a CSS and JS file to an HTML document and then tested the code with a browser, in my case, Google Chrome. I also used Internet Explorer from time to time just to see if my code rendered presentable enough .



With a steady pace, at least three hours of practice after work, I found that it has become easier for me to figure out what works and what doesn’t, and most importantly, how to debug my own code. I also bought books to reinforce what I was already doing and to keep things handy while I was coding.



After many sleepless nights and bad hair days, I finally came up with a directory within it are sub-directories for different files and images linked together. I installed Git in my computer, a free open source control system and initialized a repository to track any changes in my source code just in case I forget, then created a Github account and shared my code for others to see and comment on.



When things were ready, I bought a shared hosting with a free domain name for a year at HOSTGATOR.com and downloaded Core FTP, an FTP client for Windows to instantly upload my directory with all the necessary files to the server.



The learning process was difficult and tedious at times, but when I searched my domain name and saw it appear in the search results, clicked it and saw my website for the first time, I thought to myself that the time I spent learning was all worth it because the memories of frustration just all went away.



A lot of things have changed since I uploaded my first website in 2006. New versions, frameworks, and platforms have emerged in the world of web development. In 2014, HTML 4.01 has become HTML5, CSS2.1 is now CSS3, JavaScript ES6 is slowly replacing ES5. It’s reasonable to say that what I know now, may not be useful the next. So, in order to keep up with the ever-changing standards and technologies, I realized that my web development journey won’t end soon, it will be a continuous process.