[A live, in-person class on Orcas Island]

If you’re like most people, working on your website is intimidating. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Anyone can learn to maintain their own website.

It doesn’t matter whether your website is hand-coded, built in Dreamweaver, iWeb, Macwebsitebuilder, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, or some other system you can’t pronounce. There are always going to be little changes you need to make, and these all become MUCH easier when you know a few foundational skills.

Let’s compare maintaining your website to maintaining your house. You might not want to know how to move walls around, or even how to fix your oven. But you should be able to…

Hang pictures and curtains (image uploading, formatting options)

Paint the walls (change colors)

Rearrange the furniture (adjust padding, margins, typefaces, etc)

Wash the dishes (keep things up to date)

You don’t need to know structural engineering, home building, etc. You don’t need to …

And unless you want to get into designing sites yourself, what you really need to know is a subset of HTML and CSS. A few powerful techniques can get you out of a lot of sticky situations, and you can leave the rest to the experts.

In this course we’ll take a practical hands-on approach, building from the true basics. Everything will be based on real tasks (on fake websites), so you’ll learn by doing.

We’ll cover topics like changing text, adding formatting, changing pictures, uploading files, adding forms (like e-newsletter signup forms), etc. And we’ll dive into certain advanced areas, such as using padding and margins to make things line up the way you want them (because this can often be the difference between an attractive website and one that’s distracting and hard to read).

We’ll also talk a lot about the mistakes you can make, and how to turn them into part of your learning process instead of letting them terrify you.

By the end you’ll have a good idea of what you can fix and what you shouldn’t touch. Just like knowing the difference between moving a vase on your kitchen counter and moving the kitchen counter. Or between moving your toaster oven and moving your real oven.

The class meets for six weeks on Wednesdays, April 14 to May 19, from 9am to 10am at the Funhouse. It’s $100, or just $75 if you’re a Funhouse member. To sign up email krista@thefunhouse.org or go to http://www.thefunhouse.org/current-classes and click on “register in advance” to fill out the registration form.

A laptop is helpful but not required.

Call me at 298-2869 if you have questions.

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