Reddit reviews The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web

somehow I knew that was a link to cssZengarden. I have the book which explains quite a few topics based on some of the designs on cssZenGarden. Great read ;)

The Zen of CSS Design, by Dave Shea. Picks apart the best design's from the CSS Zen Garden. I think a lot of people were disappointing when they found out this book had little code content-- but it sounds like exactly what you're looking for.

Absolutely.

There are a number of different sites on the web, two of my faves are useit.com and webpagesthatsuck.com

The second one will keep you busy for a bit, and will give you a lot of starting points. They have a few checklists that you can kind of go off of...bearing in mind that there are very few "absolutes" in web design...so if you put together a page that, by a definition on that page, sucks...it may not actually "suck" by all meaningful definitions. In the end, content is what wins over everything. You can have a miserable design, so long as it isn't painful to look at, so long as you have content that is captivating and keeps people coming back.


Anyhow, I'd look through those two and get your research-hat on. From those, you can branch out very quickly across the search engines with all of the lingo and concepts in tow.

Additionally, CSS Zen Garden is a great place to see some of the more "artistic" design concepts in action.

The site itself doesn't necessarily give you a lot of direction, but they have a book that I've found pretty helpful with a lot of those concepts (although it's 6 years old, most of the info is still relevant). Additionally, the zen garden has a few resources linked that can again give you a lot of great places to start.

I always tell people who aren't necessarily able to afford a designer but still need something that a few CMS systems out there can also provide you with the tools you need to get something that looks professional enough and can get you started quickly. Joomla and Wordpress are two that have a bevy of different templates that are free, and readily manipulated to give a custom feel. That's usually the direction most people who have a bit of experience with coding but don't know much about design go.

Hope that helps!

Beeing able to code valid HTML and CSS without any visual help, just by looking at the code-level, should be your first goal. You might be able to learn a lot about it through your Job but I would not depend upon it since it does not seem to go deep enough there.

Right now, disregard Github and all that Jazz, go look for a nice Website with as little JavaScript as possible, make a Screenshot of it and do not look at the code.

Then start building it from scratch. Think about how you would part the sections and place them where they belong, this Book and the website that inspired it helped me a lot with learning good CSS. (Initially, books are your best friends anyway)

The important thing is: Focus on the coding, not the design. Webdesign is a different skillset and can either be avoided or learned seperatly. Do not get hung up on "This just looks bad" before you have the coding down. For now you are only concerned with the coding of HTML and CSS.

When you feel firm (but not perfect) with those you can move on. Now is the Time to decide how you want to apply your new earned skills. If you want to continue developing Wordpress templates I would encourage you to learn the basics of PHP before JS, if you would rather not involve CMS right now you can start by hopping into jQuery. Though there are people who will tell you it's better to learn vanilla JS before you learn jQuery. And I think that's true, but way harder and you won't see as many early, motivating success than starting with the easy-mode that is jQuery.

As soon as you have those 4 down: HTML, CSS, Basic PHP, Basic JS and/or jQuery. You are going to be able to fare way better on the template-front and are more useful to your employer. My guess would be that from then on, as you take on new responsibilities, you will learn more on the Job than you are doing right now.

I recommend this book: The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web

And checking out the website for it: css Zen Garden

This is a good site too, that I find a lot of my searches for how to do a certain something lead me there: http://css-tricks.com/

The Zen of CSS is a great book.

This is the best CSS book I've ever read. It's more or less what made CSS click for me after learning from places like w3schools. How it teaches by example was perfect for me. The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web

This book really helped me out when I first got started. David Shea is a real talent. CSS Zen Garden