Now that I'm making money working from home all of my friends want to build websites, but none of them have the knowledge/skills. I learned the hard way. About 10-12 years ago I started working with Photoshop, then about 7 years ago with Frontpage. Quickly I realized that Frontpage had it's limitations/frustrations and moved on to Dreamweaver. I'm totally, 100% self taught from reading books/mags/online articles etc.. I'm finally at the point where I feel adept at this thing, but it took.....forfreakingever!
Here's what I tell my friends. Do yourself a huge...no, gigantic favor and...take a class! Take a class, take a class, take a class! There are plenty of schools out there that teach this stuff and will in the long run save you years of trial and error. Make sure you find a class that moves along, you don't want to be stuck learning how to put tables into layers for the next 6 months, but a class that quickly moves through the key elements of building a website will save you monumental amounts of time.
If you just
have to get started tomorrow, go with the blogs. If you do start a blog, but still want to build websites down the road.....take a class!
Was my opinion clear? Sometimes I beat around the bush.
TheDonk