Designing a professional website [closed]

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I want to make a tech news website.开发者_如何转开发

I started learning PHP, and since I already know how to program, I learned big amount of it yesterday. Now I want to focus more on the design first (HTML, CSS, JS, etc...) I already know these two, I have to revise CSS though.

My question is: What is a good book/resource for learning how to design a website professionally. That is, assuming I already know all the basic, how do I design a professional slick website? I'm looking for a source/book that gives tips, tricks, recommendations, etc...

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Personally I would recommend using Wordpress as the basis of your site, then modifying it or creating plugins as you see fit. It will save you a LOT of time. You can then look at themes for it, modify them or create your own.

If, however, you are serious about building your own platform then, design wise, one of the most helpful things I find is to just surf the net, note down which bits of which websites look good then figure out how they work. To do this simply install Firefox and Firebug then, using their DOM and CSS explorer you can quickly figure out how it works, replicate it, tinker with it, or modify it for your own use.

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http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ is a very good resource

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I would recommend the following books:

• HTML5 For Web Designers by Jeremy Keith
• CSS3 For Web Designers by Dan Cederholm
• jQuery: Novice to Ninja by Earle Castledine, Craig Sharkie
• PHP In Action by Dagfinn Reiersol, Marcus Baker and Chris Shiflett
• Smashing CSS by Eric A. Meyer
• The Web Designer's Idea Book Vol. 2 by Patrick McNeil
• Designing Brand Identity by Alina Wheeler

Of course, you can find these books on many online stores such as Amazon.

You could adventure yourself into a Content Management System (CMS) such as:

• SilverStripe (more geared towards programmers)
• Joomla
• WordPress (more geared towards blogs)
• Drupal

Also, have a look at this SO question.

I'll add more resources later. ;)