I'm not one, so I don't have a good answer. In the worst case, if no one provides a good answer, I would approach it starting with the following. Refine as it

I'm not one, so I don't have a good answer. In the worst case, if no one provides a good answer, I would approach it starting with the following. Refine as it makes sense to you. web development: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=web+development&t=canonical https://duckduckgo.com/?q=web+development&t=canonical web development tools: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=web+development+tools&t=canonical https://duckduckgo.com/?q=web+development+tools&t=canoni... (Your browser, Safari, Chrome or Firefox, has good to excellent front end tools and debuggers.) (And, since you said complete newcomer, be sure to use a text editor (vim, emacs, notepad++, etc), not a text processor like wordpad, word or libre office.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_developer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_developer http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22web+developer%22 http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22web+deve... http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=web%20development http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=web%20development Go broad at first, not deep. Eventually you'll get a feel for what's most interesting to you; then go deep. Identify the major pieces of web development. Decide where you want to start. Don't ignore the back end as a possible area of interest. Identify tools and languages. Decide which ones to focus on. You can't learn everything at once, you just have to choose, and it doesn't much matter which among the major choices. The best way to learn something is to do it. Once you've decided what to focus on (for now, your career is never cast in stone, so don't worry too much about it), then build your first portfolio site or project. Keep it simple and narrowly focused. You'll want a place to develop and host. virtualbox, a virtual machine, is widely used by individuals, it will give you a place to experiment and develop, without messing up your physical machine's environment and without paying (yet) for hosting. Linode, AWS (Amazon) and Slicehost are frequently recommended for VPS (Virtual Private Server). Linode's basic is more than enoough for a first portfolio site, at $20/month. AWS can be cheaper, but I don't understand the pricing model very well, nor the various offerings. [Anyone?] My impression is that google's app server is fading out of favor, but lots like it. There are many more hosting services and options. If you host a site somewhere you'll want a domain name. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=domain+name+registrars&t=canonical https://duckduckgo.com/?q=domain+name+registrars&t=canon... I use pairnic.com, they're not the cheapest but they're not expensive. Don't use godaddy for anything, not hosting, not domain registration, nothing. They hate elephants, people and the internet. Depending on the nature of your first portfolio projects, you may not even need a host and domain, it may be enough to put whatever you've done on github. But if your project is a site and pages, you'll need some sort of hosting. People make sites and entire businesses on WordPress. You could look at that if it turns out to be interesting. I might not call that web development, others probably disagree. It doesn't matter what you call it, it just matters if it's interesting and you can make a living at it, and some people do. Good luck, have fun.