Many people have asked me about the design and development process of kevinlonga.com and the blog you enjoy here. In the spirit of free, open information on the web and, of course, the joys of educating, I will begin the “Site Development” series, which will provide for you short, straightforward hints and tips on how you can make a site and blog like the one you see here.

At the beginning of kevinlonga.com‘s development, I had no idea where to start and what steps I needed to take in order to launch my pen-and-paper doodles to a live website. For this edition of my Site Development series, I will begin to list for you the absolute basic tools and resources you will need to build a personal website and blog like the one you see here. In later installments of this series I will go more in-depth on the dirty details of how I developed this website and how you may create your own little slice of the web.

First and foremost, know what you want from your website.

Knowing what you want can often be the hardest part, but it will save you a lot of time later. If you know what you want, then you can easily figure out the tools you’ll need to create your site. I approached this website with form and function both equally in mind. I knew I needed five basic pages: a home page, an about page, a work page, a contact page and a blog. Except for the blog, I learned that I could pretty much design and build my other pages with just HTML and CSS. So, if you want a simple site like this one, then know that you will likely have to use HTML and CSS in order to build it.

In my next installment of the ongoing Site Development series, I will go into what the heck HTML and CSS even mean (don’t worry if you don’t know what they are—I certainly didn’t). Your hands will get much more dirty, but you’ll end up with a clean site and a cool creation.