I am the owner and "webmaster" of www.banishcare.com , a wine website that suffers from a probably unique problem in the grand world of the internet. I have lots of content and none of the technical ability to present that content in any close resemblance to my wishes. Right now, only the forums are up and running, though I would like to have a Joomla-driven frontpage with articles and archives on it, a supporting Simple Machines forum, and possibly a winewiki to come. For now, the software I'm using is static, in other words I'd like to stick to these programs until I can find my way around them. However, all of those programs require basic knowledge of PHP, html, and css, of which I have none. I've messed aroung with all of the softwares, but find that in order to acheive my layout goals, I have to crack into the nitty gritty of the template and css files. So, my question to you is general: If you were to guide someone in the creation of a whole site like mine and not tell them directly how to do it, but instead point to a series of online tutorials and references, what would they be? If no online options exist in this matter, what book resources would you recommend?

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer to me. Feel free to visit my site and critique it, though I probably don't need to hear that it's clumsy and ugly...I already know that.

I may be able to help you. What software are you using? Those "For Dummies" instruction books are normally well informative. I brought the "For Dummies" book on all of Macromedia software and it gives step by step instructions on how to accomplish everything!

errr...Joomla, Simple Machines, and Mediawiki. I've sifted around the supporting sites for these softwares and while there are generally piecemeal instructions and tutorials, there's rarely ever any guide to understanding the overall concept from its base to its peak. In other words, most of the instructional stuff I've come across either expects you to know some php or html or css OR it gives you instruction that's too direct and can't be applied to more general situations--if that makes sense.

Hi BridgeBurner - I don't know about it being a UNIQUE problem, but it is GOOD that you have lots of content to work with for your site.

All of those scripts you've mentioned are open source - they are wonderful packages but if you want to customise them out of the box (so to speak) you will need to build your web developer skills, and this takes time. With those packages you will particularly need to look at improving your knowledge of HTML, CSS and PHP (some MySQL wouldn't go astray either).

My suggestion to you would be to utilise these packages to organise all your content first, before you start worrying too much about customising templates etc. You may also want to look at some of the plugin options available.

Also, there are many places you can download custom templates for free or a fee, and they are very simple to install (normally just a matter of uploading a new themes directory). A good starting point for this would be the support forum on the site where you download the software.

mejane, I think you understand what I'm getting at. And I think what you're getting at. I've sifted through those sites and, yes, there's lots of great info that relates to their respective softwares. My question is, is there anything out there that I can use to "build my web devolper skills" in the aforementioned html, css, php, and mysql? I'll continue to use those sites to solve my specific questions. But I was just wondering if someone has put up a good web guide on any of those above topics. Thanks for the helpful replies so far.