Taking on “smaller” jobs, be they for friends, family, or a local charity can be a great way of gaining experience and a portfolio. A potential employee with 3-5 great sites is more employable than someone with 50 terrible ones.

PHP, JavaScript, etc - Yes, there is a lot to learn. HTML, CSS and decent design skills (useability, as well as graphic skills) will let you build functional web sites. Some basic JavaScript will also help. Other technologies will let you expand into dynamic pages, database applications, etc. Each person has a different degree of skills in different areas because the direction you take is entirely up to personal taste. Once you see a little or gain a bit of experience, you’ll be hooked by one path or another (or several). Just remember, no-one knows it all… and there will always be someone who knows more than you (which means there’s always someone to help!).

CMS = content management system. Basically, its a way for non-technical people to contribute content to a web site. Wiki based sites like wikipedia.com are a great example. To a point, so is this very page! To really understand these, you’ll need skills described above.

Oh, and being 40 is not a disadvantage… Quite the opposite actually. Business leaders will inherently trust an older person with business skills. Sure, your web experience may not be huge, but your life experience is. Making a site which enhances an existing business is far more useful than creating some wonderful looking site that does nothing for the end-of-month bottom line.

Most of all, have fun. If you’re enjoying it, you’ll learn twice as fast.

Also what about PHP, Javascript ect ect do I need to learn that stuff - a lot of ads ask for these skills as well. There is so much to learn…

What is CMS?

Sorry for all the questions - but thanks for your site, it’s full of so much useful information for the newbie..

Cheers
Tiye

It basically refers to the practice of making websites easier for search engines to crawl and index. It involves making changes to your web pages code so that the information contained on the page is more ‘obvious’ to search engines.

Note:

Contrary to popular belief, SEO does not make websites more findable … at least not directly. To make a website more findable, you need to increase your websites pull.

More on this stuff later.

Stef

I come from an aviation background so am used to lots of acronyms but this one has me stumped.

Thanks.

Sue

I’ve been asked many times about this and was thinking of putting together a small printed handbook with the best stuff:

‘Killer Tips’ from Killersites.com, if you will.

Would that be of interest to you?

Glad I was able to help at least in a small way.

Thanks,

Stef

I have learned a lot from your site and greatly appreciate it. This posting is something that I need to continue to use.

P.S. Thanks also for the article on blogging and using Wordpress. I made the plunge and am loving it.

Thanks for the kudos.