since my leg is almost confirmed as f**ked, I will prob need a career change
as walking is going to be a no no.
So where do I start with this web development larky?
Not dreamweaver :)
Depends if you want to get into design or backend really. Are you artistic or good with code?
i can draw stickmen
Local colleges offer saturday morning courses for Wordpress from Beginner to Advanced, thats what im going to do, they cover everything needed, £65 a course for so many weeks at each level.
You dont need a course to learn how to use Wordpress, that would be like going on a course to learn how to use Microsoft Word. Setting up and using a Wordpress installation is nothing like designing a working template for one - if thats covered it is worth a course, but tbh this brings you round full circle to the below.
Because if you are serious, you can read and learn how to do HTML/CSS in a month or two if youre fairly savvy. Once you understand how the two come together its easy. To get very good and understand design cocepts is what takes a lot longer (5 years on Im still learning good design). To be taken seriously youll also need to learn how to integrate into various platforms whether PHP like Wordpress, Joomla, etc and to use Photoshop for professional design work. To get advanced youll want to learn to code or at very least learn how to read and understand javascript/jquery and AJAX.
cheers..
I can look at code now & understand what does what & where, but may have to learn to do it all from scratch.
All depends on how f**ked my knee is... dont really want to do web design, but I need somthing that I can just
be left alone to get on with.
Like others have said you have two main types of job.
Web Development
and
Web Designer.
Theyre both equally important however the lay person will often just call it all "web design" and in industry many designers like to be called developers because they think (wrongly) that it sounds better (Nexus).
So, do you like to write programs? Do development. Do you like to use photoshop? Do design.
Things like HTML / Javascript / CSS come under design and theyre not programming at all (although Javascript is is like a "toy" programming language).
The other thing to bear in mind is, to be good youre going to need to be a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. Its alright being a site designer in Photoshop and passing it to someone else to code if youre very good, but for the most part youll probably want to be or be expected to be able to do both that and code html/css to realise your designs. Likewise, a coder is going to be expected to be able to do some minor graphics work to chop and change things on a site or to at least strip down a design idea someone has sent you. The latter of the two is definitely the path to start on if youre at Paint stickman level.
By the way if none of this sounds like your cup of tea, you could turn yourself into an SEO expert and optimise peoples websites. If you have a knack for it and the inclination you could do alright off that potentially.
Ahh Sam. Bless you having a dig.
I switch from design to developing per project. I get paid more then some of the other guys here because I do both.
I have hardly done web designer role for a good 3 months recently.
I can create a site in xml / xslt. If I put my mind to it I could get back up to speed with JSP & Java (although I have wrote a few applets recently as well) And I know PHP.
Far from a master in web developing but I do and can do it.
A web designer never claims to be a developer if they are not either. You tend to have people who say they are a web designer when they are not. AS Nige mentioned you have A LOT of people who claim to be an SEO Expert when they are not as well. (growing issue at the moment)
Sams views on javascript and Ajax as well is very old so people are aware. Sams knowledge of current best practises, design, interface, SEO.... Everything other then core sit and code develop he is not the person to speak to for the industry.
If you want someone to help you learn really good skills in java then Sam is defiantly your man! But anything else - No.
But thanks for the renewed Dig Sam, still nice to know you love me.
Im only digging at you thinking youre a programmer when youre not :)
Youre good at photoshop and CSS and HTML, things I dont know a lot about, but its not developing.