This sentence usually is followed by “… something borrowed, something blue”. It is a little wedding rhyme. But this is not about a wedding. This is about a new project.

It is a challenge: to teach people in about 90 minutes how to create a website or weblog in WordPress. People whom I work with, but also work for. Still, I think it’s really worth the effort. Because I like to share knowledge. And I think a nice website or weblog can be helpful for everyone, if not now, it perhaps will be in the (near) future.

What’s old?

I started my first website somewhere in the early 2000’s, with – I think – Yahoo webbuilder. It was very nice, but I thought it wasn’t flexible enough for my purposes. So I started to learn HTML, a bit CSS, a bit Javascript. With this basic knowledge, I could adjust my website. With a WYSIWYG editor, I created a website from scrap. It looked só “90’s”, but I remember that I was very proud of it back then.

What’s new?

Today, there is no need to learn code anymore. With “click and install” CMS’s which are usually provided with a web hosting package, it is easy for everyone to quickly build a professional looking website, without any knowledge. However, I am glad I learned some basic coding. I like to customize a bit, just enough to have it work for me. I am not a real programmer, though. I like to work a bit with asp.net. Even though it is harder to learn than PHP and most webhosts charge a bit more for hosting *.net websites, I like it better. It’s not that I don’t like PHP based websites. The language just isn’t my piece of cake.

The message

There is no real message. Maybe just that it is good to have at least some basic skills. Just to be able to customize or to learn what you like to do so you can specialize. It is not just how to build a website. It is about everything in your professional life. Don’t disregard what you consider old fashioned. I think that you can only fully appreciate what you have now, when you have an understanding on what happened in the past.