learning web design from home

lellie

I am entirely self-taught as a web designer. It's best to just get stuck in and practice. I learn most of it from the web but have a few books too.

nathanjm

If you're just getting started in web design, then some of the suggestions above like Ruby on Rails and AJAX are probably a bit too advanced for you.

To begin with you need a good grasp of XHTML and CSS. I'd recommend visiting http://www.htmldog.com/ as they have tutorials on both XHTML and CSS for Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced users.

Also, I wouldn't start off using a WYSIWIG editor like Dreamweaver as it costs a fortune, and you need to get good at coding by hand before thinking of moving onto a WYSWIG editor (if at all).

As for these courses that you see offered on TV and at local colleges etc, I wouldn't bother. Because web design is such a fast paced industry, most of what you will learn is out of date or is bad practice. Most agencies don't really care about your qualifications (in respect to web design at least) and are only intrested in the long list of URL's you give them that lead to websites you've designed.

So my advice is, learn XHTML and CSS then get started building up your portfolio!

Cheers, Nathan.

Kilty_2

https://www.w3schools.com << Use that website to learn XHTML and CSS properly, sod Dreamweaver

Dead_Eye_Jones

imo, the best approach is to have a porblem, and then to find the solution. So design your site on paper and then find out the best way to do x, y, z. Each time you come across a new challenge you'll learn a little bit more. Initially this approach will be slow but you'll ensuer you really teach yaself the basics.

As above, htmldog is a great starting point and a read of that will give you a boost. After that there is no point trying to "learn AJAX" without having a specific prob in mind. Well, unless you are the sort of person who can learn and digest a whole load of info at once! But in my expereince you just get overloaded with info and then when you come to do something later on you feel back at square one anyway!

Also, these days the quick way into professional looking sites is with CMS systems. There are plenty of open source ones around that are free and accessible. A good system will separate content and design, so you can actually theme the site to your hearts content without having to understand the code. You will need to learn CSS and HTML, again htmldog.com will be a good start.

Maybe a couple of reference books will be useful too, I prefer ones where you can look up an answer to a problem rather than the "teach yourself" books - a subtle difference but the former tends to have the detail you require.

Im not sure a course will be great value for money, I think people will get work based on a good portfolio and not some random certificate. So to that end Id be looking at imlpementing a custom themed CMS system for a made up company, or maybe volunteer to help a siteless charity..

CMS systems to look at: https://www.joomla.com is the biggest and prob best supported. However I found https://www.e107.org much easier to use. The latter allows you to do more, quickly, but the former is perhaps more powerful in the long run.

I taught myself PHP to extend the features of e107 further, im rubbish at design so use templates created by the community - there are literally 100s to pick from!

With these CMS systems really evolving quickly (now including blogs, flashy AJAX scripts, user management, RSS, tagging, etc) learning to produce sites yourself is becoming less and less important. To be honest these days its all about content. But dont let me put you off, its a fun thing to do and Ive enjoyed knocking up some great sites in my spare time, im not sure I could compete at a professional level though... just go in with ya eyes open, you could spend years learning and still be able to produce a site with half the functionality that a modern free CMS system offers. And by then they themselves will be onto the next generation...

GL !

niccy

great information,lads and lasses,




it's just, i'm now doing four courses of HTML :rotfl: :cool:

iwannabe

Hiya, I believe you can learn something through Wiki's own Uni (What would we do without Wiki?) : http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Topic:Web_design

15lsp

If you're just getting started in web design, then some of the suggestions above like Ruby on Rails and AJAX are probably a bit too advanced for you.

Also, I wouldn't start off using a WYSIWIG editor like Dreamweaver as it costs a fortune, and you need to get good at coding by hand before thinking of moving onto a WYSWIG editor (if at all).

So my advice is, learn XHTML and CSS then get started building up your portfolio!

Cheers, Nathan.

My last job i had to learn ajax in a week so i didnt do that well with it! :eek: I already have dreamweaver but ive been told its not really used that much now by the professionals???

Think i'll do a college course because i wont do it otherwise. Print design is my passion and what im good at so web isnt going to take over that, i'd just like to broaden my skills a bit more.

Great tips on thread people, thanks!

djhworld

I think teaching yourself is the best way, reading forums and tutorials can usually get you on the right path.

I'm a self taught web designer, once you get to grips with HTML and CSS, designing is easy.

For more dynamic stuff however, you'll need to learn something like PHP, a server side programming language. If you've programmed in C or Java, it's pretty easy to pick up and opens up a vast array of possibilities.

kittiwoz

I used webmonkey to teach myself html and css which both turned out to be pretty easy. They have tutorials for other stuff too but I was only building one pretty basic information site so I never got into them.

anewman

Don't be thinking there's loads of money in web design (I don't think you'd get much above min wage by just knowing HTML. It all seems very glitsy and glam when you can work with "computers" and as in the advert I see on TV, not do crap jobs like being a dustbin man. I see the adverts and the claims in adverts in the newspapers and I have to say I am very sceptical - if we could all get away from the £10k min wage and earn £30k+ wouldn't we have all done it already?! - and why do they want money from people before the course if the people they train will be raking it in and could easily pay afterwards?!).

There will be the occasional company that just wants a nice standard website which says a little about themselves. However.... I don't mean to be mean or nasty or anything but.... IMO where the real money is at is things like PHP and MySql etc etc and databases. Of course the aim of these sorts of things is usually for ecommerce. These are a little more complex than just making a nice page. But if you can learn how to install scripts on an appropriate web server, like Dead_Eye_Jones describes, you may be able to make very impressive things work using other people's scripts (sometimes having to pay for those scripts) without any mega programming knowledge. But if you can learn to make a nice looking web page that works and use CSS to keep the format the same throughout and make a static web page with no dynamic content then thats good, and if you're interested later you can build on your knowledge as all PHP and MySql is really is a back end for making all these things work. Also in some organisations I'm sure there are job positions for people who are good at graphic design and do the actual web pages well, leaving the php and mysql programming to other people.

I wonder what web designers use now if they don't use dreamweaver? It is such a good collaborative package. However, I agree with tr3mor, dreamweaver takes alot of the fun out of it while learning. Notepad is great and playing with the actual code, rather than playing with a WYSIWYG editor gives you a much better feel for what goes on when you make changes and load it up in your browser.

Whatever you do best of luck with your future career