Think you have to be a technical wizard to build a great web site? Think again. For anyone who wants to create an engaging web site--for either personal or business purposes--Creating Web Sites: The Missing Manual demystifies the process and provides tools, techniques, and expert guidance for developing a professional and reliable web presence.

Like every Missing Manual, you can count on Creating Web Sites: The Missing Manual to be entertaining and insightful and complete with all the vital information, clear-headed advice, and detailed instructions you need to master the task at hand. Author Matthew MacDonald teaches you the fundamentals of creating, maintaining, and updating an effective, attractive, and visitor-friendly web site--from scratch or from an existing site that's a little too simple or flat for your liking.

Creating Web Sites: The Missing Manual doesn't only cover how to create a well-designed, appealing, smart web site that is thoroughly up to date and brimming with the latest features. It also covers why it's worth the effort by explaining the rationale for creating a site in the first place and discussing what makes a given web site particularly aesthetic, dynamic, and powerful. It further helps you determine your needs and goals and make well informed design and content decisions.

Creating Web Sites: The Missing Manual includes a basic primer on HTML, working with JavaScript, and incorporating services like Paypal's shopping cart, Amazon's associate program, and Google AdSense and AdWords. It delivers advanced tricks for formatting, graphics, audio and video, as well as Flash animation and dynamic content. And you'll learn how to identify and connect with your site's audience through forms, forums, meta tags, and search engines.

This isn't just another dry, uninspired book on how to create a web site. Creating Web Sites: The Missing Manual is a witty and intelligent guide for all of you who are ready to make your ideas and vision a web reality.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 36 Ratings

Great resource but beware of sites recommended within the pages - 2009-10-27
Reviewer Rating:
What's GOOD: A must have for any beginning web site developer. I continue to find this book an excellent resource as I develop my website.

What's BAD: Beware of sources/websites within the book. I did a lot of additional research on hosting solutions as recommended in the book and initially went with aplus.net (who is featured in the book also). After working on my site and looking at some other features I wanted to take advantage of, I canceled the aplus.net hosting solution and went with another provider. Needless to say, it has been 25+ days since the cancellation and aplus.net has not processed the refund (it's still "pending"). Shame on the author and publisher for including references to a company with such POOR business practices.

Great! - 2009-10-05
Reviewer Rating:
Bought this book for a coding class (learning HTML and CSS) and its great! very informative, easy to follow. I'll definitely keep it as a reference after the semester is over.

Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual - 2009-06-27
Reviewer Rating:
A nice smooth read and nicely laid out, I highly recommend this book for anyone who is in need of information on creating a web site.

Another great book by O'Reilly - 2009-06-24
Reviewer Rating:
This book provides a great overview of web site creation that is not specific to one particular software package. I just finished a local community college site on web design and still had many unanswered questions as I looked to purchase web hosting services. This book is a great resource and answers many of questions and provided some answers I did not know I needed.

This is a great highly readable book. It is a book that it clear even when jumping from place to place or reading through chapter to chapter.

What book can cover everything? - 2009-06-13
Reviewer Rating:
Going through these reviews, like always there are reviewers dissing this book for missing the specifics they were hoping to find, or even being too old to cover what they wanted. Isn't that what publication dates are for in the descriptions? I've been knocking around websites for a dozen years. Had a couple of domain registrations, and even included ad hoc webmaster in one of my job descriptions. Soon I'll be teaching a class on web design in a high school. My bookshelf has 25+ books on different aspects of site creation. CSS, JS, AJAX, PHP, Linux and Apache server, assorted Adobe products, Perl, and some sysadmin pertaining to the configurations of the files available from Apache webhosts. When those don't have what I'm looking for, I have around 50 bookmarks for sites that can fill in the gaps from beginner to way beyond my expertise, with postings on subjects that are current right up until this morning. Impressed? Don't be, at least half of the reviewers here are more committed than I am.
There are two types of folks that this book may not be for - a rank beginner who needs to start with the basics of page creation, Internet/networking, and intro programming. The other type being someone who hand-codes and/or is a pro (lots of pros use editors). For the rest of us, this book is worth reading cover-to-cover, which I generally try to avoid.
Of course it could be edited to lose the discussions of version 3/4/5 browsers. Who cares? But even the most mundane sections on fonts, code conventions, color selection, links, etc, have nuggets in them. CSS explanations are clear and concise, and in sections that are clearly beyond the scope of the book there are suggestions for more advanced reading.
This book is a survey of skills, tools, and considerations for building a website. Like most O'Reilly publications, in the hands of the target audience it is a great resource. In the case of Creating Web Sites, that audience is broad enough to include most of us.

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