There are two orthogonal issues at hand here. 1) How do i build a site that serves my needs? 2) How do i learn to build a website? Those are two very differen

There are two orthogonal issues at hand here. 1) How do i build a site that serves my needs? 2) How do i learn to build a website? Those are two very different tasks can (and often do) require different potentially conflicting approaches. If you are familiar with the skills, technologies, and requirements of a project, one starts with a discussion about the needs of a site, and go through design exercises in order to determine what it is that needs to be implemented. That often means markups and design stuff, which will often have nothing to do with either HTML or CSS (although some people do mockup with HTML & CSS). If you are trying to learn how to build a site, while also building a site, there is a process of exploration and learning that you must engage in before you know what is even possible to build. This is where a modular and iterative design and build strategy has become popular. When you don't necessarily know where you're going with your end product (because you don't know what's possible), you build small chunks of functionality, experiment with whether it meets your requirements, and then incorporate that smaller experiment into the larger whole. So, what does that actually mean in concrete terms? Building a site can be like building a house, where you draw up architectural plans (design mockups) and then start doing the engineering to calculate whether your house will stand up and meet your aesthetic needs. But building a site can (and often should) look more like building a series of small experiments, and taking a step by step approach to reaching a product that meets your original concept. As a very practical matter, almost everyone futzes with both their HTML and their CSS at the same time.