It's fine to do so but today I see some attempt to create from scratch and match what was done by others that built on top of prior works. WordPress is just that. You can attempt to create from scratch but is that your real goal?
Bob
Hi all,
I've just joined cnet, predominently to source advice and help with my many projects - I am a somewhat basic web designer who feels quite comfortable in the coding world but I don't feel I have the design skills to match. This has, in recent times, led me to rely quite heavily on others by purchasing wordpress themes and html templates. I know, I know, what kind of 'web designer' does that?! Well that's exactly why I am here!
I'm wondering if anyone has any recomendations for any basic design courses that I could do online? I don't want to pay a fortune and I'm not looking for any qualification as I believe most are not worth the paper they are written on! This is just to improve my own skills, or lack thereof! So anything that starts from the bottom e.g. colour matching etc would be great.
I want to show some examples of what I can do to give you an idea of my current skill set but having read the no spamming post before I started to write this I'm concerned I will get banned or something so I'll just post 2 links and hope for the best:
My own, from scratch, work: Ri Web Design
What I aspire to that I have 'stolen' from a wordpress design: Eight Ray Music Book a Band
As you can see the difference is quite huge and in my own work I've only managed to come up with a statement blue colour offset by white and grey ![]()
All help and advice would be much appreciated as I really want to take my work up a level (or 2!)
Many thanks,
Zack

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