How to build a website: A beginner's guide

You’ll be amazed what you can achieve in just two days – learn how to create websites from scratch using the latest web standards

Whether you want to host an online portfolio or promote your business, a website is great way to share your passion with the world. Led by Guardian web element designer Carlo Rossi, this step-by-step course will show how to use the latest web standards to create a site to be proud of.

During the course, you’ll learn the basic building blocks of web design and style – HTML5 and CSS3 – as well as more advanced navigation effects to give your site a professional look and feel. By the end of the course, you’ll be amazed what you’ve achieved. You’ll have gotten to grips with all the fundamental elements – from headers and links to images and sidebars – and leave having built a basic framework for your own site.

This course takes place in the Guardian’s high-spec education centre, with practical sessions on desktop Mac computers. Teaching will be tailored to the experience and interests of members of the group. Plus, you’ll even have the option of receiving follow-on email tutorials from Carlo to assist you with further learning.

Course content

• How to build a basic framework for a website
• Simple techniques that will enable you to build a site from scratch or modify existing website-builders such as WordPress
• The building blocks of web design: discovering HTML5 elements
• The style of web design: CSS3 properties and values
• How to apply styles in CSS3 to the elements of HTML5
• How CSS3 and HTML5 apply to everything on the web
• Creating fundamental elements for your site – including headers, paragraphs, links, images, tables and sidebars
• Style and layout techniques
• An overview of more advanced navigation effects – allowing you to improve the look and feel of your site
• Q&A and tailored tuition

This course is for you if...

• You want to build a website from scratch but have never written code before
• You’re familiar with older versions of programming languages but want to learn the latest techniques
• You’re a non-coder who owns a website and wants to learn how to communicate better with your development team

PLEASE NOTE: Students on this course should be comfortable using computers, but no specific software knowledge is needed.

Tutor profile

Carlo Rossi has 20 years’ experience in print and web design. He currently manages the digital ad design department at the Guardian, and also works as a freelance web designer and digital educator. Carlo finds enormous satisfaction in creating easy-to-use, well-designed websites. He is a regular tutor for Guardian Masterclasses, whose teaching consistently gets outstanding feedback. As one of our students said, ‘Carlo is very engaging: it is hard work to teach a subject like coding, yet he managed to keep us entertained and interested throughout the whole course and delivered the learning at the same time.’

Full course and returns information on the Masterclasses website