Web Designing-Which Qualification Is Best?

Penny-Pincher!!

Hey

OH loves computers :rolleyes: He is very interested in Web designing and has built a couple of very basic sites.

Does anyone know what the best web design qualification would be? I assume they change all the time as do most computer related stuff Where do we find out about these kind of courses? OH doesnt want to do frontpage and would prefer flash media????

We also dont have much money (im disabled and he is my FT carer) so if there were suitable courses, would we maybe receive a discount?

Any help/advice would be greatly apreciated.

Many Thanks

Penny-Pincher!!
xxx

Mr_Skint_2

http://www.btlearningcentre.com/mindleaders Try here

katskorner

Well to be honest it depends on exactly wheat he wants to do. There are many aspects to web design, to designing what a screen looks like and how users will interact with it, to graphic design and medias such as Flash, through to programming the code (and database design and code for that too) and writing the shell HTML to contain it. There are loads of programming languages too depending on which platform you want to support, such as ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, CGI etc..

You really need to find out more about what he actually wants to do before deciding which course to do. This is a skill that can keep being built up as he progresses. There isn't any one qualification people are looking for to be honest.

lush_walrus

If he is considering doing it for income, then he should try to get into the database programming of things.

A couple of friends of mine are web designers and say that due to millions of programmes existing at the mo to make web design easy basic web design has dropped, but complex database driven websites are increasing as this is something people cant acheive themselves and is increasing in popularity due to more and more online shops etc.

Hope that helps to give a rough direction, as its not me I don't know much more than that!

fgaughan

Try this one
http://www.creatingcareers.net/channels/courses/it3.asp

saintstreaky

Worth contacting (or looking at the websites of) your local FE college(s) and possibly county council, both of which may run IT courses for adults. Whether they'll have the sort of thing you want is luck of the draw, really, but if he's a full time carer and on benefits there's a fair chance the fees will be reduced.

katskorner

lush_walrus wrote:

If he is considering doing it for income, then he should try to get into the database programming of things.

A couple of friends of mine are web designers and say that due to millions of programmes existing at the mo to make web design easy basic web design has dropped, but complex database driven websites are increasing as this is something people cant acheive themselves and is increasing in popularity due to more and more online shops etc.

Hope that helps to give a rough direction, as its not me I don't know much more than that!

It is very true that the complexity of websites is increasing. However, thre is so much more to it than just knowing how to write the code. You would be better off working with someone who knows about designing and developing sites for users as without this you are a bit stuck to say the least. There is alot of support out there through techy forums etc. But nothing works like experience of those who know what they are doing. You want to try and learn wha the common mistakes are so you can try to avoid them if you can! Talk to people you know who know someone who knows etc. It takes time to learn - find someone to lean on and it is easier. I am happy to help.

kit

Our local college runs web design courses (my OH used to teach them!), and they offer these courses for £15 to those on benefits. Worth checking out your local one to see what they offer.
My OH has just written a few courses at the college he is now working at, they start next week - a lot of places are catching on to the fact that they can attact more people by offering web design courses.

I have to agree that databases are the way to go if he wants to make money from it; however he would be best to take a basic web design course to start with so he can get a feel for what he really enjoys.

katskorner

He could take a look at https://www.HTMLgoodies.com as a good place to get a grounding in HTML.

Also https://www.w3schools.com is excellent for web design tutorials - very easy and superb reference. I have been using it regularly for years and I have loads of experience - it is a valuable resource.

kit

Hi

I've spoken to my OH, he has most of his old resources (hand outs etc) from the web design course he taught last year (level 2 and 3) on his website but they are password protected.

If you are interested, please PM me and I will give you the web address and password so you can check it out. May come in useful for the time being.

newfoundglory

I dont think you need any "qualifications" to do web design. Like most things in design (whether it be web or layout and prining), I think you will find experience matters. Build up a portfolio of your works, and use that as an example of your skills. Experience with industry tools is usually a must (dreamweaver for example would be the industry standard html editor).

I would have thought if you want qualifications, then a qualification in design would be the most useful, or perhaps a degree in computer science for technical skill and for implementing an efficient solution to a problem.

Basic programming skills can be useful (more advance programming for the harder stuff)... javascript along with either php or active server pages. Experience with Adobe Photoshop for producing web graphics, and Flash for vector animation.

CGI applications are usually coded in either C or Perl (these are two of the most powerful and useful languages to know). You can litterly write a program to ANYTHING with the C language. The original UNIX Operating System was coded in pure C, as was Microsoft Windows.

Perl could be classed as very hard to learn. It was originially designed to force programmers to talk to each other. There are lots of ways of doing the same thing in perl, making it quite a tricky language. Its a scripting language design to manipulate and extract files. Everything in a Unix system is a file, thus they are used together.

Some basic Linux skills will also be useful.

Being able to edit html manually is essential for adding fine touches, although you would never code a whole site manually. However, you wouldn't really need to know everything. I would decide what area you want to work in with the web.

I tend to think that a server side language and being able to use this effectively with a relational database package is also *essential*. Example are MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle etc. The reason for this is that most websites are dynamic and have dynamic content (ie updating news, actual web pages being stored in the database rather than on web server so they can be easily updated). You might have to design the database if its complex.

While its not really necessary if you are freelance, Macs are often used for web, imaging and DTP design, so experience with OS X or Classic can be useful too if you want to work for a design company.

There are hundreds of free tutorials on the web on ALL of this stuff. I guess you just have to ask yourself how far you want to go.