Advice on diy learning!

woggie

Hopefully im in the right place to post this if not i trust someone will steer me in the right direction, thanks.

I have a B.Sc comp hons from Trinity that I got years ago but haven't really done any programming other than ABAP for the last 10 years or so. I've just been made redundant and while i'm obviously hoping to get another job asap i'm thinking I should probably update my skillset!

I've been saying for years i'm gonna learn web design but never seemed to have the time...looks like i'll have it now!!!:rolleyes:

first question is - what sort of skills should i be trying to acquire? i.e. whats most in demand these days? Is it all web design or should i be looking at other areas also?

and secondly can you recommend any online courses/books ....or should i try find an evening course instead? I've a young family and my husband works shifts so attending a regular course could prove difficult, i'd much prefer to do an online one in my own time (i.e when the baby is asleep!)

Would appreciate any advise, thanks

Baz_

There are literally thousands of hours of web development based tutorials available online including videos, text tutorials and podcasts. Plus entire books available for free. The biggest problem is sifting through it all and getting to the good stuff.

Another problem is perseverance and discipline on your part. I believe that all you need to know to learn what you want has a freely available tutorial online however you then have to be determined to follow it through.thats where courses come into they're own because it provides structure and makes you feel like you have to do at least that much.

If you're going to give the solo learning at home a go I recommend w3 schools as a very good jump off resource and the basic technologies you should concentrate on are html and CSS. They will help you build static web pages which can look as plain or awesome as you want when done properly.

After that javascript would be my next recommendation that will allow you to add a bit of dynamic seeming content to your sites, but they are all client side technologies and your sites would still be basic enough. But before you learn anything more heavy or server side I believe them to be prerequisite technologies to learn.

terry_s

www.Lynda.com

MungoMan

its an interesting question......ok you have shown that you have the aptitude to complete your science degree years ago, and you programmed a bit, so you almost definitely have the aptitude to deal with the technical complexity of the challenge ahead

web design is a big area, and good web design is a great skill to master.

I think that you need to work from the bottom up........you need to understand the technologies behind the web first......and then move on from there into design.
For me, someone who designs a website or Web application without a fairly good understanding of the technologies behind the web, I see problems there. You wouldnt be able to prototype stuff, and your designs would be limited by not understanding the technology.....

The one web application framework i'm familiar with is ASP.net, it is a bit of a mine field, but its powerful and you can build great websites/web applications in visual studio which you can download for free, and lots of sample websites in codeplex.com to play around with.
Of course there are other great frameworks like J2EE and PHP and others, but its important to know one well........
PHP is a fantastic framework, might be good use that one, it's completely free, and so widely used. I never learned it, because life is too short to learn more than one technology


If you dont know one technology well, you will be limited in your designs.

That's what I think, although others might completely disagree.

woggie

thanks guys, i really appreciate the feedback, you're both right - complete minefield out there when you dont know what you're looking for!

i'll definitely start reading up on php mungoman
and baz_ thanks for steering me in the direction of w3schools.

hellbent

My thoughts on web design have changed over the years, and I've moved completely from from ASP/.net to PHP. I would recommend that you download an apache server to your website, XAMPP being the easiest one to use for PC's. Download from Friends of Apache, I think is the name, or Google XAMPP. Follow the instructions exactly and you will have no problems. Do not choose the option to run as a service, but instead startup the server whenever you need to.

This runs with PHP and MySql, and is ready made, not to mention free, for dynamic websites.
Then download Joomla, install it on your local apache server and play around. you can pick up PHP as you go along, but Joomla will have you producing websites in no time, although the initial experience with it can be difficult. Once you grasp how to create articles, and then associate them with a menu item, you're on your way. Plenty of tutorials online for everything, and look at rocketthemes.com for inspiration!