If you thought this was going to be a coding tutorial, guess again. Sure I could always put down the basics for whoever wants to learn, but really, why bother to do that when I instead can refer you to sites that's completely dedicated to teaching newbie and even more advanced webmasters a thing or two. No I'm more interessted in giving you some tips in where to go and what to use to make learning easier. I'm not saying you must use the things I recommend, I'm just offering my tips from what I've learned in all my years as webmaster.

1. Coding
2. Graphics
3. Guestbook
4. Tag board
5. Blog/Update
6. Feedback Forms

.: Coding :.

I'm not gonna go into what kind of set-up is better than the other, because you should really decide for yourself what you think is best and easiest to do. Newbies mostly choose frames and iframes, as it's the simplest solution that doesn't require them to repeat the navigation on each and every page. This solution also makes it easier to find a place to host your site as I don't think there are many free hosting sites that can't handle frames.

More advanced webmaster more targets themselves at specific coding languages. I can't give you specifics on which is best of those. I myself has found my sanctuary in php. In order to get php to work, you need a host that supports it, and usually this means you have to purchase your own domain or be hosted by another webmaster at a domain supporting php. Reason php works so well is because like frames you put your layout and navigation info in sepparate pages, so you don't need to repeat yourself for each page, and updating will be a lot easier. However in frames you have one file loading the set-up, layout and navigation and throughout browsing the site you do it through that file, in php you have each page load the pages containing the layout and navigation info and thereby when a visitor stumbles over a part of your site, the page will no matter what always contain the navigation info, making it easy for search engines to co-operate with your site.

And the great thing with php is that you don't have to write advanced codes if you don't want to, you can use php as simple as just using the import function and leave the rest be. But of course should you start with php sooner or later you will find yourself drawn to other functions.

As for what tools I'm to recommend, you're most likely gonna laugh when I say it, but notepad and wordpad are my preferred tool for coding. Reason for this is that I'm a control freak when it comes to my site and I like to know that if an error happen it's one created by me. Also by coding everything yourself you will sooner get all the codes into your fingers allowing you to code quicker and better.

An other tool I've been recommended by other webmasters is Dreamweaver, which is a very helpfull and friendly coding tool (though I've never tried it), I've been told that it helps you control your coding as well as giving you the option to use shortcuts to get the tags written more quickly. So if you want some help to get the work done, you should get this tool.

However a tool I will go down on my knees and beg you not to use is microsoft word, I can't complain enough about this tool. You never get what it is you want out of it, plus the files are about three times as big due to all the junk codes the word html translator throws in. So lets just repeat myself, whatever you do, do not use that tool.

Site worth going to for coding tutorial:
Lissa Explains
It's written for kids, which makes the learning more fun. Whenever I have a question on something I go there to find it. Beginner or advanced, this site's made for everyone to understand.

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.: Graphics :.

Most webmasters I know of use either Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. I've tried early versions of both and never truly got into them. But should you have a later version of either one of them, then they are definatly worth using for graphics, as long as you get comfortable with the programme. However if you, like me, never really got comfortable with them, then you could always see if Ulead Photo Impact is more your style. That's the programme I've been using ever since my dads version 5 of Photoshop messed up. And after years of using it, I simply can't imagine myself go over to anything else.

Unfreez is the smallest graphics programme I use, only 16 kb big it creates pretty good animated gifs out of regular ones. It's simple so you just control how many hundreds of a second it's going to be between each frame, but do you really need more to a gif animator than that?

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.: Guestbook :.

I've been through several guestbooks, some stacked with ads and pop-ups and pretty much many annoyances. Extra annoyance is the fact that they are hosted at other sites and they can all of a sudden be down and that's never fun. However if you, like me, have built your site with php and, like me, hates the idea of using database to store your data, having seen what that can do to sites should the database get trouble, then my suggestion is:

ArdGuest. It puts all the guestbook features into one php page and puts all the storage information in another file. So in reality you can have a guestbook made out of only two files. Only problem is that it's ugly as hell and is a bit messy coded, should you want to do something about that. But if you have a couple of hours to spare and knows the difference between what coding you can touch and what coding you can't, you can customize this baby into looking exactly the way you want it to look. I've used my own customized version of this guestbook and three of my sites so far and I'm really happy with it. No need to worry about another site being down, no need to worry about sudden pop-ups, ads and all that junk.

Should you not have php support or be too lazy to spend a couple of hours on getting a well designed guestbook, then you can always turn to:

SignMyGuestbook.com. When I signed up for it, it was completely free, but now they've gotten so popular that they need to charge a 2 dollar start-up fee. However it's free after that. This guestbook is compeltely customizable for html, but it hasn't got php support, believe me, I tried... lol. So this is the best option for those still stuck at plain html at their sites.

If you have no money, then I guess you have to put up with some ads, Alxnet was a pretty okay free guestbook for me back in time.

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.: Tag board :.

Here's another goodie for us with php support, no need for any hosting or any database storage. You can integrate it wherever you want on your site.

CJ Tag Board V3.0. This board gives no ads or pop-ups. Unlike my previous tag-boards and it doesn't slow down loading by waiting for response at another site, because it's fully hosted on your own. To truly make it fit in with your color scheeme, you need some css knowledge and mess a bit around with the styling sheet amongst the files, but that's not really a problem. A little downside is that this tagboard don't offer visitors a chance to put down their e-mail or website adress when they post, but isn't that what you have the guestbook for?

Should you not have php support, then Shoutbox is the best alternative choice.

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.: Blog/Update :.

This is all for php users, so skip this bit if you don't have php support. I haven't used any blog/update scripts at this site as I just got comfortable with how I do it here and it would be a lot of work to change it now. This is recommended for sites that is operated by more than one person. Each person can get a username that they post under. I use this script for this site, which is operated by a staff of two people.

CuteNews is fully integrateable with the site, so you can use it to more than just blog/update, you can put in categories and have one page load only the blog, one loading only updates, one loading news. The pages can also load more than one category if there's need for that. The sky's the limit. This script also offers visitors the ability to post comments under each post if they want to, so it's a more interactive way of updating/blogging at a site. Another great thing is that it's not database operated, info is stored in other files. You need to work a bit with the style scheemes to make it look the way you want, but not awfully much.

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.: Feedback Forms :.

As usual the best form is in php and the script for it is offered at EpleWeb. Only thing you need to get it working is to put in your e-mail adress in the required place in the script and then put the script wherever you need it. Very simple. No need to go through other sites for get feedback sent to you.

The alternative for those without php support is in fact Bravenet. The visitors have to go through a confirm page with some ads on them, but what can you do really? It does what you need it to and you can customize the forms to contain any sort of input it is you need.