I didn't really go into HTML because I had a real driving force to do it. I found it a helluva lot easier to use some basic HTML formatting for reviews and then just double check it with the Zone365 WYSIWYG editor. One advantage to the straight HTML coding is that you can copy and paste easily, which makes image links and the like pretty quick to do. Photoshop is a great image editor. Might be a bit intimidating at first, but it's quite good. If you don't want to spend the money, there's always [google]Gimp[/google], which is pretty much the same thing for all practical purposes. I don't have my original website on Geocities. I have the account, but I pretty much dumped the pages awhile ago. You're not missing much...trust me. I was working with some kid on another website, when Sniper e-mailed me about joining him. I jumped on with Sniper, and that was the smart move. The other site fizzled and died. I remember when we used to see maybe one new post a week. There's been lotsa changes on the Z365 backend to say the least, and we've got a new system coming. Actually, it's there, but we're in between changing over to the new system. I don't have a specific timeframe, but Sniper should start working on it more after college lets out for the summer. That's also the reason you can see the some of the same links on either side of the Z365 homepage.
When first learning HTML, I used notepad and coded a simple few pages demonstrating certain concepts, very crappy pages, but it helped me learn the basics of HTML. I then tried to do javascript, but I soon got bored and turned to compiled programs/windows scripting. MySQLis the database engine/server used for the backend of datadriven websites such as z365. Its one of a few relational database servers based on Structured Query Language. Not that I know anything of it but its useful because PHP and other languages like C# and java can access it, making it very useful for datadriven websites. But its not important as of yet, you must learn to crawl before one can walk.
I've not written, or looked much of MySQL. From what I've come to use, and expierience it's "bloody horrible". Sites I go to (though never this one) always have errors in it, or something on the page won't load. I've also shutdown some pages through it just by spamming massive amounts of characters in comments.
you might want to check out http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/beginner got a load of free, well written tuts for html/css/php/mySQL/java...
