Others will know better than me but you could start here. Web Design Training Web Development Education Online Courses Self-Study Distance Learning Classes - Web Site Resources, Website Tips, Websitetips.com You might also consider skimming through our sticky thread on free online courses.
Is this for personal use, or to seek work in the field? If the former . . . I am very fond of weebly.com, quite a sophisticated full-featured and totally free web design (and posting) site, with very good instructional videos. (You can see a simple one that I'm in the process of constructing at www.degreemills.com - Home page.)
I'm a big fan of Code Academy, and they have a web fundamentals course. Also good for learning scripting and other languages that could be useful for web development. Good luck! Learn to code | Codecademy
This is something related with my professional career. Thank you for the info at least I have a start.
W3Schools is an offshoot of the W3C consortium, which maintains the standards for web design, HTML and the like. W3Schools Online Web Tutorials Study at no cost Study when it is convenient Study from your own computer Complete your studies in a few weeks Graduate over the Internet Certificates are reasonably priced. The only downside is that they have no academic credit, but perhaps a few schools would honor them.
Find a web designer/web programmer and have a conversation of beer or coffee. The best way to learn is by doing. Good schools will have web design classes that ask students to write a bunch of web pages. Make sure you learn "semantic html" and use CSS correctly.
You asked if this could be done without "buying the software." YES! You don't have to buy ANYTHING. There are all sorts of freeware HTML editors etc. If you know how, a web-page can be built in ANY editor -- even MS Notepad -- but there are free programs that do all sorts of fancy stuff for you. One place to start that I recommend is Freeware Home - Free Software Downloads. I've been downloading totally free software (legally) for all types of purposes from here for over 10 years, with no problems, viruses etc. EVER! Look there, under "Programming - Editors - WSIWYG and you'dd get a selection of good stuff to use for buiding web pages. Also - there are plenty of (printable) basic website-building instruction manuals out there. In recent years, website-building has become much like typing, or keyboarding. It was once a skill people could get paid for -- but now, so many people do their own. Just Google "learn HTML PDF" and you'll find lots of printable ones. If you want to study free -- online, then I agree with previous posters -W3 is the way to go. This is the best way. I'm not a fan of the "Weebly method" - except for the fact that it's free. If you use services of this kind - and they abound -- well, at the end, you've built ONE website. It may look good or it may look like a 50-year-old magazine ad. But have you actually learned anything in the process? Likely not. Johann
Web-design is a good skill to have -- but not so viable as a career. It's not a scarce skill at all; I'm tired of seeing "Web Design - $10/hr" signs. Accordingly, learn - but don't pay. It's unlikely you'll see a return on your money. I learned the basics on my own, for free, back around 1996. The first pages I built, I made on an old 386, in the DOS editor! (It also ran Windows 3.1) Years later, around 2004, I signed up for a college course in Web-design 101. I earned a good mark and picked up some credits, but basically it was about three hundred dollars wasted - I knew just about as much going in as I did coming out. One last time - learn, don't pay. You don't have to. We've all seen this pic... Will Code HTML For Food | Flickr - Photo Sharing! :smile: Johann