Creating a Website: The Missing Manual,
Fourth Edition

Creating a Website: The Missing Manual,
Fourth Edition

Creating a Website: The Missing Manual,
Fourth Edition

Congratulations! You’re living in the golden age of website-building. The world has never
had better, more powerful, or easier-to-use tools for making top-notch websites.
However, there’s a catch — all these great tools make for some seriously confusing
choices. If you’re new to web design, you’ll need to sort through a dizzying assortment of
technologies before you can actually start building web pages. Depending on your
ambitions and skills, some of these tools will be downright essential to your site, while
others will be nearly irrelevant.
That’s where this book, the fourth edition of Creating a Website: The Missing Manual,
comes into the picture. Think of it as your personal trainer for site-building. You’ll start by
learning how to create basic web pages, using the standards that underpin every page on
the Web (that’s HTML and CSS). You’ll then branch out to explore the services provided
by companies like Google that can help you popularize your site, count your visitors, and
even make you some money. You’ll even take a condensed tour of JavaScript, the
programming language that powers almost every interactive page you meet online.
In short, this book is the perfect guide for people who want to build a site on their own,
starting from scratch, but with all the goodies the modern-day Web has to offer. It’s also a
gentle starting point for anyone who wants to get deeper into the field of website design
(and Appendix A has plenty of suggestions for ambitious readers who want to learn more).
If either of these descriptions describes you, welcome aboard!

Matthew MacDonald