The original post seemed to turn into a discussion between whether going to a course on Web Design was worth it or not and one guy made a point that it’s not worth it because software used for web design and development continuously keeps changing, so your better getting a good book and learning yourself.
I want to speak to someone who’s had some success with web design and how they got there, and once you did some training (either with books or courses) how you got some work. This would be really helpful, so if this is you and your reading this please let me know how you got where you are.
I want get into a career that would pay nice and also with something that I enjoy and web design is something I used to do when I was younger, I’ve done some new websites but everything has changed so I need to brush up lol.
I started out over 15 years ago and taught myself, initially using the few resources that were around at the time, and now now spend my time as a freelance web developer.
There are numerous resources online to help you learn, including Sitepoint of course, so just get stuck in - the more you practice the better you get. Of course as you rightly say things are in a constant share of evolution so we’re all still learning
You’ll probably find most web designers/developers/programmers are self taught
I got my first paid job in 2000, about a year and a bit after I wrote my first bit of HTML. Mind you, back then if you could knock up a few web pages and your name got around you were suddenly in demand as there were few people doing it. Jobs came in frequently so I was never short of sites to build. I went “freelance” a few years later and never looked back.
Nowadays it’s a bit different as it’s an industry with many more people doing it so there’s a lot of competition, and starting from scratch is obviously more of a challenge.
Yeah I did HTML years ago with my Dad, I’ve tried some web design but all the codes have advanced since I last properly did it, thanks a lot for you answer though it’s been really helpful, I might not bother with a super expensive course lol.
If anyone knows any good places I can start teaching myself web design that would be perfect.
Thanks a lot, can anyone list some software that is more current to now that I should be aware for web design? Or maybe some really impressive websites for inspiration?
Currently I’ve only used Wordpress, which is great, and I think If I understood some more code and integrated it into Wordpress, it would be perfect. But if there’s something more industry standard or something better I could use, I’m all ears.
Here’s my website for my record label, it’s not anything amazing lol <snip>
Basic web design languages are html, css & javascript you can use w3schools.com for this
Then you need to learn a server side scripting language i.e php (there is php certification from zend)
then you need to learn a database language i,.e mysql (mysql certification from oracle/sun)
the above are open source languages
you can also try closed source languages as outlined below
microsoft - c# and sql server (microsoft offers a certification program for these)
sun microsystems - java, jsp and mysql
apple - objective c & swift
for an academic course there is a degree in web science from the university of southampton and a few other colleges
for computers science the colleges are plenty
