My friend emailed me:

Hello Araz,
I follow you on Twitter and wanted to ask for some advice. I’d really appreciate your guidance. I want to have a source of income in Turkey and, given my interests, I chose web design. I don’t want to become fully professional; just knowing coding enough to contribute to projects and earn some money is enough for me. But I have no idea where to start, which language to choose, or whether what I want to do makes sense. I’d appreciate any guidance.

Since I hear this question often, I’m sharing my answer publicly; it might help someone else too.

Assuming you have no prior knowledge, here’s the basics: The web and its market are as broad as the world of medicine. Just like novice practitioners in medicine, you can start working with limited knowledge.

Whether your goal is to become professional or just earn money, start here:

• HTML: Hypertext Markup Language. Learn the structure of web pages. A simple (though not the best) resource is w3schools.com, easy English and interactive.
• CSS: Cascading Style Sheets. Defines layout, colors, fonts, and styles. Learnable on w3schools.com as well.
• Other things like JavaScript, Ajax, jQuery are more advanced. Good to know, but not mandatory initially.

Main Item: WordPress

A powerful, simple, free system for launching any website quickly. Around 20% of the web runs on WordPress. There are countless tutorials and a supportive community. To set up a WordPress site, you just need to know how to buy hosting, upload it, create a database, and install it. Tutorials for this exist everywhere online.

WordPress Themes & Plugins: After setup, install a theme to get the desired look. HTML and CSS knowledge lets you customize. Plugins add extra features, e.g., weather menus, to your site/blog.

With these skills, you can take simple projects and earn a decent income in Turkey. As experience grows, you could earn 200–800+ lira per WordPress site.

If you want to pursue it professionally, here’s what to learn:

1. Front-End Development: HTML/HTML5, CSS/CSS3, JavaScript, Ajax, jQuery, Angular, React/Redux. Each has subtopics to improve performance and functionality. Mastery makes you a Front-End Developer.
2. UI/UX Design: Learn Photoshop, CorelDraw, or Illustrator; understand colors, browsers, devices, typography, and creativity. User Interface and Experience Design enhance how users interact with websites/apps. Mastery makes you a UI/UX Designer.
3. Back-End Development: PHP, MySQL, Object-Oriented PHP, MVC, PHP Frameworks. Core programming skills needed for websites. High demand, stable jobs. Other stacks include Node.js, Python, Ruby.

Estimated learning time for an average person:

• HTML & CSS: 1 week–1 month
• Algorithms & Flowcharts: 1 day to learn basics, 1 week to practice and understand
• PHP & MySQL: simultaneous learning; depends on your goals and depth

I’ve been learning for over 10 years and still am. Generally, basic work can be mastered in 2 weeks–2 months.

Important: WordPress is a tool to speed up tasks, not a primary learning item. Learning it takes about 3 hours.

Even more important: learning from a mentor who understands your situation is far more efficient than self-study.

For problems or questions, don’t forget Stackoverflow.com. Almost any question you have has been answered there, just know some basic English.