There are many books on the different aspects of web sites. Most are reference books on a particular component — say HTML. They are very complete, cover every detail but, rarely give the beginner the information necessary to create a solution. You end up with information overload on one tool and insufficient information on other tools which are also required to produce something useful. Combine that with the fact that many technical writers have subject knowledge but poor communication skills. Where's a beginner to start? I have some suggestions.

1st Site

"Creating a Web Page with HTML" by Elizabeth Castro is a great starting point. With this book you'll be able to create a functioning web site. You'll learn the basics of HTML and CSS along with the lingo — tech speak vernacular of the webmaster. Working with the subset of HTML and CSS markup as covered in the book helps you build a working web site while learning the basics.

HTML & CSS

You may wanted to go beyond what you'd already accomplished. Again I'd return to the work of Elizabeth Castro, "HTML for the World Wide Web" which is part of the "Visual QuickStart" series from Peachpit Press. This has become the most dog eared technical book I own. I refer to it frequently and keep it next to the PC in my home office. I augment the book with some on line references. Sitepoint is one reference site I use.

Javascript

The time will come when you need to add some dynamic components to your web site. Perhaps you want a countdown display for how many days until the Olympics or election day. Javascript is the answer. It's well supported by all browsers. The book I recommend is "JavaScript for the World Wide Web" by Ton Negrino and Dori Smith. It has served me well.

PHP

Javascript only runs in the client, your browser, and for security reasons doesn't write to your disk. Ultimately you'll need to use a data base in your web site. A server side, host, language is necessary. There are a number of languages to choose from but PHP is the best supported by hosting companies. For this purpose, I'd chose "PHP for the World Wide Web" by Larry Ullman. Let's say your searching for a user registration application. There are many free ones available but they tend to be bloated with feature overkill and are difficult to integrate into the navigation and appearance of your web site. This book has simple PHP applications that can be combined to meet my needs. One is for email based registration and the other is an example of how to write to a data base. They can be combined and fully integrated into your web site. Once cracking the code of basic PHP syntax you'll be ready to use this book to learn PHP more fully. With these books and time to assimilate them you'll be able to create a solution for virtually any web function you might need.

Image Editing

You'll also want to become proficient in using images. Any computing platform can run the free open source image editor Gimp. If you are a Windows or Apple Mac user you may choose to purchase Adobe Photoshop. There are many image editing programs available. Both Gimp and Photoshop are very complete applications with more features than most users might ever use. For these two you will benefit greatly from a reference book. I have no specific recommendations. If you're a Gimp user I would at least get the free ebook "Grokking the Gimp" — View. Linux distributions like Ubuntu have copies of this ebook you can install. You'll need to devote considerable time in mastering image editing software.

Advanced Topics

There is no end of languages and tools you might choose to develop web sites. Flash and AJAX being examples. I would want to be proficient re my reading list before delving into any of these. If you master HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and an image editor, in my opinion you've earned the status of webmaster.