Runningwater

Now, that I'm changing my lifestyle around a bit (a lot less World of Warcraft), I'm finding I have a little bit of extra time. I would like to better myself in an area that I love doing so that I can get paid for it.

I was very good in web development and my VB.net classes in college, however that was about 3 years ago, and I haven't done any of that stuff since. I really want to be brought up to date on it and get comfortable enough doing some minor pages (for a "Portfolio"). I was wondering if anyone knew of any good "teach yourself" online sites or programs.

My ultimate goal is to be a professional web development/designer. It is one thing that I really do enjoy and think that I am decent at doing...and I completely believe that if you love what you're doing you'll succeed!

Baraka_Guru

Although it might not be as comprehensive as you'd need it, this might be a good start: Tutorials - Online Training - lynda.com

It's affordable and video-based. I learned a lot about Dreamweaver and SEO from that site.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Glory's Sun

Web Development & Design Tutorials - Nettuts+


and yes Lynda has a ton of great products

telekinetic

What did you go to school for? If your goal is to be a professional web designer, you might want to go back. My wife has a graphic design degree with a web design emphasis, and the stuff she learned had nothing to do with how to use dreamweaver.

I am not saying this applies to you, because there are exceptions to every rule, but the fact that everyone thinks they can be a web designer because they can use Front Page or Dream Weaver and know how to format a head tag always rubs me the wrong way. I am not trying to say that learning HTML/PHP/CSS/Flash/??? is difficult--the mechanics of programming a website are almost trivial (even I can do all of that, and I am just a mechanical engineer good at using google).

The ability to make intelligent color, layout, style, navigation, and gui decisions is not something I feel you can learn from a tutorial. Most of her web design experience was done in photoshop and illustrator...assuming that once you had the mockup/prototype done, it was just 'plug and chug' to get it all to work.

The best analogy I can say is that learning to use a paintbrush is easy, making beautiful paintings is something else all together--taking some graphics design classes will be just as useful to you (if not 10x more) as learning the code.

__________________
twisted no more

Martian

Dreamweaver is a tool for people who aren't web designers.

Real Men Code By Hand.

Self-teaching isn't bad by any means, but to make a career out of it you'll need more than just a strong understanding of the necessary languages. Are your interests technology and/or computer-related in general? Getting onto some mailing lists or attending local gatherings is a good way to meet people and start getting your name out there.

Do people still do LUGs?

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

ratbastid

Real Men output their hand-crafted code from Perl scripts.

Baraka_Guru

Real men are too busy doing a multitude of other things and so use an array of tools to optimize their tasks.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Runningwater

I'm a big time computer geek. Always have been. Always will be. I majored in Computer Information Systems - basically a degree that covers a large spectrum of technologies in business. Classes I did the best in were web development (basics - using HTML, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash), Adv. Web Development (building on the first class and adding in ASP.net to make dynamic websites), and VisualBasic.net, by the time I was able to take Adv. VB.net it was unavailable.

My designs were decent, thing with me is that I make sure that all the coding is perfect (or at least to me it is). I actually had many people ask me to look at their coding and stuff like that to make sure it worked or if it was the correct way.

I do like messing around with Fireworks, Photoshop. I need more work with Flash (would love to learn how to do ActionScripts in Flash), all we did in our class was how to move a ball around a screen basically.

I was building a small site for my parents for their coffee shop, however they had to close down the shop...so I didn't finish it.

I've been wanting to go back to school (maybe a Tech College or something) and doing the web development and/or programming courses for a specialization; money at the moment is quite tight, thats why I was looking for some DIY alternatives for right now. My career background right now is networking (which I really am not fond of) and Customer Service (sit behind the phone).

Martian

Sounds like you'd be more interested in the engineering/administrative side of it. As a point of contrast, Magpie went to college for multimedia and art, and a lot of the people she was in class with ended up in web design. The coding aspects of it are less emphasised than the artistic aspects of it (which, incidentally, is partly why a lot of people in the field have a less than stellar opinion of web developers).

VB is slick, but it's crap. You're better off not pursuing that avenue anyway, in my not at all humble opinion.

ratbastid brings up Perl in jest, but if you don't know it yet, start learning.

DIY for the technically minded: grab an O'Reilly book and start screwing around. A new reference book will go for about $60, and if you can set up a little testing rig to play around on you can probably teach yourself the basics at home.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

ratbastid

Jest?? I was dead serious!

No, but really. Perl. I know the word on the street is that it's a dead language, but I just got hired for a year-long-plus contract gig doing nothing but Perl, by the largest bank in the US. Who doesn't want to work with the Swiss Army Chainsaw of languages, really?

passthru

As others have mentioned, there is a lot of design in the web world. It's obvious, but isn't apparent to people who are computer geeks because they focus on underlying design. I'm not sure if you're interested in both sides, but some of your descriptions remind me of my web design days.

If you're into the design of visually appealing things like product labels or brochures, signs, marketing materials, i.e. have been interested in art school, then you'll like it. Sorry if you know all this and it seems like I'm ranting.. None of those things were apparent to me until after I had learned xHTML and Fireworks. I got a great web design book that had virtually no mention of code. There was a whole area of the user's impression and interpretation of the web involving things I hadn't considered.

It was really interesting and I kept looking at it after finishing the book, but the internal design was what interested me so I moved on to other things.

n0nsensical

Perl is not a bad language, but it's one of the easiest languages in which to write code that is unreadable and unmaintainable by other programmers, which is just as bad as writing code that doesn't work, because eventually it won't. Of course it is quite possible to write good or bad code in any language, just some make it easier than others. Few people do both design and implementation well, there is a broad spectrum between them.

__________________
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." --Abraham Lincoln

Glory's Sun

Here ya go, Lynda.com is has a free 30day trial.. so grab what you like and learn something

Free Trial Signup

Runningwater

Hey Guys thanks a lot! I'll look into that.

I like all aspects of web development; however I'm probably better suited to the coding end of it. I love art (when I was younger i wanted to be an artist - more specifically a cartoonist - but I don't have that "artsy" personality). Plus I love geeking out and seeing code work (and obsess about it if it doesn't work)

ratbastid

As much as I'm a newly-reborn Perl geek, PHP is probably the easiest language to start dabbling with. You can probably find yourself a freebie web host that supports it, and code up your first dynamic page today.