Years ago I wrote an article that was ready by many people about how to gain some understanding of PHP. I'm going to do this again for this forum but in a very brief form as it's basically been covered in the forum rules as well. This will serve as the beginning of a longer tutorial we will write in the future. This is very quickly written post...will revise later.
1. Read the forum rules & Useful Threads/FAQ
Gain some insight into how the forum will work - do this for any forum you might use. This forum places an emphasis upon learning as opposed to the few who help here on a daily basis being asked to write code for people. HTML and CSS are not rocket science and you can learn the basics of these things. But people need to try and show they are trying...when people try it's a pleasure to help them learn...
2. Asking for help/questions
Everybody knows that real knowledge is gained from asking great questions. Once you have enough tools to ask the best questions you will go far. But certainly, it takes time before you will reach this level so keep working at it.
- always try the search tool first
- try to ask specific questions
- if it's not specific enough, try again
- if you don't understand, try to be specific about what you don't understand
- don't simply post a big chunk of code and say what's wrong with it?
- learning is hard work - stay positive
- remember that answering questions, for us, is hard work as well
3. Online manuals and tutorials
Indexhibit, like many web applications, is composed with HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP. Don't be afraid to consult online manuals (via Google) for specific questions. And/or, if somebody suggests you do this understand that they are trying to help you think through a problem and solution. This forum holds a great deal of information but these online manuals are literally the nuts and bolts and hold it all together.
If you can understand the online manuals (any of them) you are in a great position to accelerate your skills. Spend a little time with the manuals (start with HTML and CSS) to understand how they basically work.
4. Problems don't always come in one's
Very often a problem is much more complex than a simple answer. They can oftentimes, for instance, be a combination of CSS, HTML and Javascript. Expect that we will try to break down the problem into parts - usually trying to deal with one thing at a time. We're trying to expose the different technologies so things can make a little more sense.
5. Allow for time
Because we do not have a large group of people helping in this forum it can sometimes take a day or two before we can get to question (usually it's faster though). Be patient and if you haven't had a reply in a day just politely bump your thread (not with a an odd comment like "Anybody?" - you know what we mean). We help around here in between our real lives and work - this is not a paid staff helping people around here. We are volunteers too.
And finally...
On a daily basis we get emails from people telling us about their new sites and how they did it on their own with the help of this forum. The majority of these people haven't built a website before. We know that this approach is working for alot of people - you can do this too.