training myself to design and code

Yesterday, i was working on a website for a friend who needed a hand with one of her college assignments. Just standard dreamweaver crap – tables, templates, few images jazzed up in photoshop, anchors, adding links etc..

Anyway, it dawned on me that despite having an arsenal of image editing software including fireworks, photoshop, adobe illustrator etc.. at my disposal, i don’t actually know how to use them properly, i don’t know EVERYTHING about them like i would say with ms word or dreamweaver. So i spent a bit of time with fireworks, and began to get the hang of it.

I’ve also started to read ebooks on how to create a wordpress theme from scratch. Not the easiest thing in the world to do, but it would be a HUGE weapon for me if i could master it.

So i’ll do my best try to and teach myself how to create wordpress themes between now and January 21st, which is when i head back to college. I’m no Leonardo Da Vanci, but i’m fast becoming used to fireworks and i was quite good at art in school, so i do have an eye for class. I’ve never bothered to learn the ins and outs of digital art though.

Imagine putting custom built themes on my little network of blogs – say 10 blogs. Any sort of decent custom wordpress theme, 100% CSS and xhtml valid, with a widgetized sidebar, would sell for $50 alone… add in a little niche site and content and you’re looking at $200+ per site.

The downside is of course that it takes a hell of a lot of time to understand wordpress and how it works. It’s not a one ebook type thing, i’ll need to surround myself with quality resources and take bits and pieces out of them all, plus learn as i go along.Maybe, just maybe, i’ll be able to create my first wordpress theme by the time i’m heading back to college in a couple of weeks. If so, expect my earnings to skyrocket from now on 😈

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