Online Multimedia course

GlasgowGal

Hello. Just wondered if anyone has come across any good multimedia online courses. I am needing to retrain and have no skills in how to use/update facebook/twitter/Instagram etc apart from my own social use. Also I would like to set up my own basic website. There are loads of courses out there but would be nice to to have one that has been recommended. Thank you.

Flyonthewall

If you really just want to set up a basic website you don't want a multimedia course. They'll include numerous programmes you don't need to know about for that and they'll probably be Adobe ones which are very expensive to buy.

What you need is a web design course for that.

If you're doing it just for yourself though and you don't need any type of qualifications forget looking for courses, it's not worth it (especially if they cost).

Check out Wordpress. You don't need to know any coding. You install Wordpress, search for features you want, install them, go through some settings if needed, type in content as you would in Microsoft Word and there's your site.

If you want images you don't want copyrighted ones. A multimedia course should teach you about copyright and it would show you how to create your own images. However, a quick search on the Internet will bring up places where you can get free images or buy stock photos that aren't copyrighted. If using them for commercial reasons then check that the licence for the image states that's fine.

If you want to code you need to start with HTML and/or CSS. Check out http://www.w3schools.com/html/

Loads of helpful tutorials and it goes through all the basics and more. Open Notepad on your computer, follow what they're saying on that site and you can learn all you need to create a basic site.

As for social media sites, just google tips and guides for each site. There's loads of free information out there.

Multimedia courses are unlikely to go through in any detail about social media sites in terms of how to use them. They may be mentioned briefly, but nothing more.

If you need to do a course as you're looking to get a job out of it then I'd suggest checking out the sites mentioned above and do some research of your own as it'll be a big help for when you start a course.

If you're looking to go more into developing websites you'll need to learn a lot of coding. Not just HTML and CSS, but things like SQL and PHP. You constantly have to be updating your skills and keeping up with the latest coding and how the web works and is changing.

As for other multimedia, you need to be creative and you need to be good with computers. There are a lot of different multimedia programmes and there's a lot to each one. They're not easy to learn and it takes time and practice.

Again, you also need to be keeping up with what's going on. Technology is constantly changing, as is the software. There are things you can do now that you couldn't do just a few years ago.

Multimedia is not a simple industry to just step into and start doing. It covers many many things and each requires a lot of learning time, especially if you have little knowledge on it.

It has many self employed possibilities, but you need the knowledge to get anywhere with it.

Why is it you want to do multimedia?

GlasgowGal

Thank you so much for all the information. I am looking to go self employed as a Personal Assistant or VA and having checked out some other PA/VA sights most offer to update clients social media sights which I cannot do. Sorry I have just realised I may have used the wrong term when using multimedia. I would like to learn the skills of how to set up and update clients social media sights and have my own small webpage so really looking for online courses that would teach me those skills. When I googled them heaps came up so thought I would ask for a recommendation as they all claimed to be the best. Thanks.

asajj

So basically you want to learn how to manage social media for clients?
I'd have a look at this and see whether it is what you are after.

https://hootsuite.com/pages/education

Flyonthewall

GlasgowGal wrote: »

Thank you so much for all the information. I am looking to go self employed as a Personal Assistant or VA and having checked out some other PA/VA sights most offer to update clients social media sights which I cannot do. Sorry I have just realised I may have used the wrong term when using multimedia. I would like to learn the skills of how to set up and update clients social media sights and have my own small webpage so really looking for online courses that would teach me those skills. When I googled them heaps came up so thought I would ask for a recommendation as they all claimed to be the best. Thanks.

I imagine most will already have the social media accounts set up. They'll give you the details to log in and you'll just update it (i.e. post content). Basically, if you use the sites yourself and know how to post on them you should be fine.

Unless it is more of a media update and they want images created and banners/profile pics updated etc. If they have the images it should all be fairly straight forward - just go to settings, go to where it says header/banner/profile image, click a button, search for the image file, click it and it'll upload to the site. Sites all vary a little but for most that'll basically be the way.

Creating the images takes more skill and isn't something you can just do so easily. Even knowing how to create images it doesn't mean you can actually do so yourself, it depends on how good you are. So I'd double check exactly what they mean when they say update.

I assume you want the site to be professional? In which case you'll have to pay for a domain name and although you can get free hosting it might be best to go for paid. Depends on how much traffic you're expecting and whether it's worth it. You'll certainly want the domain name though.

Are you just planning on having one page with a bit of text and an image on? Just very basic? If so there are numerous ways to do that without any coding or site knowledge at all.

First is Wordpress. There are hosting sites where you can click to install Wordpress and it does it all automatically. Quick and simple. Then adding the content will be very easy for one page (you can delete any extra pages it gives you by default). You basically just write your content in. No worrying about installing other features either.

Second, you get free sites such as Webs, Wix and Weebly. These are click and drag sites. You want to write text, you select the text box and you place it on to the page. You then click in the box and type just like you would in Word. You want an image, you click the image box. All very very simple. You can upgrade them if you wish which means you pay and then there are no ads, you get storage space and things like that.

Third, you can paid sites that have their own website builders. So you pay for hosting the site, have a domain name and so on but building the site is simple. It'll be similar to above, no coding knowledge needed.

GlasgowGal

Hi asajj, thanks for the link and will have a look at that.
Hi Flyonthewall. I am just starting out so don't really know what I will be asked to do but would like to be able update the social media pages for clients. If they wanted new ones set up I would refer them to a specialist. As for my wee site, I just wanted a couple of pages with a bit of text so will have a look at what you have suggested. I do have my company domain name but need to set up an email account for it. Is that an easy thing to do or should I pay someone to do it for me? Thank you so much for all your help.

Flyonthewall

GlasgowGal wrote: »

Hi asajj, thanks for the link and will have a look at that.
Hi Flyonthewall. I am just starting out so don't really know what I will be asked to do but would like to be able update the social media pages for clients. If they wanted new ones set up I would refer them to a specialist. As for my wee site, I just wanted a couple of pages with a bit of text so will have a look at what you have suggested. I do have my company domain name but need to set up an email account for it. Is that an easy thing to do or should I pay someone to do it for me? Thank you so much for all your help.

If you pay for hosting or domain name you often get email addresses included.

You could also use a free one (e.g. outlook), although using hotmail, gmail or other free emails isn't really considered professional. If you do that make sure the rest is professional. For example, thecompany@outlook.com or yourname@outlook.com.

GlasgowGal

I know what you mean by those email addresses not looking professional. When networking today one chap was a bit horrified that I was using my iCloud email address for businesses purposes. I have also just decided to change the name of my company so will need to do that before going ahead with web/email address stuff. I bought my original company name through go daddy and they will host an email address for me for a price within my budget. Thank you again for all your help flyonthewall.