Cheap web design course

shown73

Amongst todays Amazon local deals is a web design course, reduced from £600 to £49. Common sense suggests that it can't be much good, but the blurb seems quite comprehensive to someone who knows little about the subject. I was thinking of buying this for a teenage girl(14), as a kind of extra string for her future. Is it, however, likely to be out of date at this price, hence of little value, or is this the kind of thing that really doesn't date very much? She is interested in art, graphics, etc., and may well go down this road in future. It's an online thing, which involves about 20 hrs study, apparently. £600 seems a bit ott anyway.

Gunstar

20 Hours? Save your money mate. You can't learn anywhere near enough in that time.

University is 3 year minimum and when you come out and join a web design agency you are a junior and takes another few years to be any good.

I'm personally nearly 12 years into my career as a web developer and I still learn everyday.

If she is really interested there are plenty of free online resources to get her started, after that the web is swimming with tutorials on every topic you could imagine. She would pickup more doing that than on a 20 hour course.

shown73

Not too surprised. If it looks too good to be true..... Just thought it might be useful intro.

nathand_2

shown73 wrote: »

Not too surprised. If it looks too good to be true..... Just thought it might be useful intro.

Checkout lynda.com There are some fantastic courses on there and you pay per month rather than per course.

University is 3 year minimum and when you come out and join a web design agency you are a junior and takes another few years to be any good.

That's one of many routes. I'm a freelancer with no formal qualifications in development and within the first 2 years I was earning more than advertised agency positions.

Jakg

Gunstar wrote: »

I'm personally nearly 12 years into my career as a web developer and I still learn everyday.

The difference being developer (implementation) vs designer (design).

I would recommend that she just gives it a try, lots of good tools (Kompozer, Gimp etc) are free. If she's enthusiastic, she'll pick it up - but if she's not it's not for her anyway.

IMO the web design business a bit saturated, though...

Gunstar

nathand wrote: »

That's one of many routes. I'm a freelancer with no formal qualifications in development and within the first 2 years I was earning more than advertised agency positions.

I didn't go the uni route either and I have been freelance for most of my time in my career. Not many of us do that well in freelance, you make it sound easy :P

Jakg wrote: »

The difference being developer (implementation) vs designer (design).

I'm a designer and developer, both roles you can't pickup in 20 hours. Both jobs require much time to get to a good level.

gb12345

If you just want her to learn HTML then try the free courses at http://www.w3schools.com. They also have courses for CSS, Javascript and PHP for her to work her way through.

John_Ashtone

My suggestion is you start your own website, and get her (is it daughter or neice?) to design a 'cool' one for you.

I have just got mine up and running (I can't post a link but just add .com to my name and after it has taken you to that chap from Beverley hills cops press the did you mean me with the E added to it and I should be there somewhere) I am very pleased with the outcome, but I am now wrestling with Joomla, to give me more control.

I have borrowed 3 books from the Library dated 2008 but these were all out of date as of last year and the introduction of HTML5, still useful for some scripting ideas but has changed substantially.

You can do websites for free, the drawback here is you are restricted to content, but good experience. Mine has cost £150 for 3 years so less than £1 per week.

Things move that fast it is unlikely the course will be much use.