Course selection issues: it has been brought to notice that it is a bit confusing for some people to actually select course(s) based on the list provided.
That is what I am going to attempt to clarify here.
First, let us try to get some things clear. There are different levels of developers.
A newbie will mean someone with no experience or very little experience about the subject. Possibly you might have heard of HTML but are yet to learn how to write any HTML code, no matter how simple it may be. It could also mean that you have read a few materials but have not been able to make proper use of the field in question. For instance, you might have read some HTML books but you cannot use that to build a simple basic website with links and images, that makes you a beginner. The introductory courses are mainly for beginners or those that are completely new to that field. Possibly, you are a website developer
but does not know how to make use of joomla or drupal framework, you may wish to enroll for that area. The first advice i will give here is that, try to research the subject you are interested in on google, and decide if it is worth learning or not.
This advice goes out to complete beginners to website development. Select the following:
- Introduction to website design
- Introduction to HTML (this is the foundation of the web)
- Introduction to Cascading Style Sheets
- Introduction to javascript (after this, you may never need to learn javascript again)
- Macromedia fireworks (definitely, you will need some degree of imaged editing)
After having a good grasp of these, you may now return for another round of:
- HTML Level II (this is optional)
- HTML Forms (this is a must before getting to PHP)
- Introduction to PHP (now you are ready to start serious business)
- Introduction to MySQL (Database functionality is a must on the internet)
- Intermediate Cascading Style Sheets
- Search Engine Optimization
By now, you will have graduated to being an intermediate user, but you may still not be able to handle some serious website especially dynamic websites. An intermediate user will mean someone with some degree of use on the field in question. For instance, you might have learnt roughly how to use some of these languages, and get some real life things done, but do not really know the basics and might still have some fundamental problems. For instance, some developers cannot write proper javascript codes, no matter how simple, but rely exclusively on downloading scripts from all over the internet, and sometimes have problems with manipulating existing codes to do precisely what they want. These group of developers are different from beginners and are a level higher. So you may now learn:
- Introduction to XHTML
- CSS 2.1 in depth
- Web animation with flash
- Intermediate javascript
- Introduction to DreamWeaver
- Ajax
Now the next thing you need is how to handle solid websites, talking of social networking, newspaper websites and other dynamic sites that will be using lots of resources like forms, captchas, chat, forums, shopping carts, credit cards and so many others. You require some specialized tools that will make your work faster and more efficient. You could start thinking of how to implement some frameworks:
- Introduction to Joomla
- Introduction to Drupal
- Introduction to WordPress
I have attempted to illustrate how the pattern of learning should go. However, as a website developer, you should be familiar with these areas. There are some variants, for instance, rather than use PHP, you may use asp.net or some other equivalent languages. And of course, all subjects on website development cannot be covered here. But the ones covered here are a must for every website developer to know and learn to apply. Notice that i have skipped out some things like jQuery. I was going to add it to the courses, but i dont have any request on that yet.
That will be all for now, however if you have any questions beyond this, please click on the contact link at the bottom of the page.
To get started, please visit the course application area.
