[CGMNero_]

Right, after finally finding some time, I'm looking to get into web development/design as a profession.

I will be self teaching! Only issue is, being relatively new, I lack the resources to begin learning. Any help will be appreciated, such as the learning curve I'm looking at, languages and possible sites and tools to begin learning from.

Thanks for reading and any feedback.

CGM.

[historygirllfc]

I'm just starting out learning too I'm currently getting back into CSS (after learning basics a few years again) then will look at HTML5 to get myself started and go from there.

[jools@designsofhope]

I have found plenty of good resources through searching google & forums for tutorials. Blogs are pretty good. Sites such as Stackoverflow has been very helpful as any problems you can post your code & ask others to help you solve any issues.

[nublue]

My advice to start would be to get a good basic knowledge of the following:

• XHTML
  
• CSS
  
• Basic Image editing (photoshop)

Once you know this you can start to put together simple brochure websites with some nicely cropped images, resized logo etc.. and some written information. For a lot of local small business this is all they want.

If you want to then take it to the next level. The learning curve does not have to be that steep. Pick a CMS that can provide additional functionality without necessarily having to learn programming skills. Something like Expression Engine is great for this, which will let you build websites with members areas, on-site search and dynamic content etc.. without learning PHP and so on.

Some good resources to get you started are:

• http://simplebits.com/ - For clean CSS/XHTML - his books are great
  
• http://htmldog.com/ - Some good tutorials to get you started.

Plenty of Photoshop tutorial sites too which can get you making glossy buttons and nice layouts in no time. I hope all that helps and best of luck with it.

This post has been edited by nublue: 31 January 2012 - 11:34 AM

[brightonmike]

nublue, on 31 January 2012 - 10:56 AM, said:

The learning curve does not have to be that steep.

That depends entirely on how good a developer/designer you want to be, how far you want to take it, how much you really want to make from it.

To be average is not that difficult, but then you will only ever earn average salaries and your work will be average.

If you want to make a lot of money working on the web then the bottom line is it requires many, many years of hard graft and extremely steep learning curves.

You're not going to start raking in £40k a year without it being steep and extremely difficult, and nobody makes a lot of money making simple brochure/CMS websites.

The real money and success comes with the bigger projects, or full time employment.

The reality now too is that clients demands are becoming bigger and bigger. Clients no longer just want a simple website with a contact form. They want a website, a CMS, Google Maps, a mobile website, a mobile app. They want the website to integrate deeply with their office systems. They want to use cloud services.

Those are all things that are far, far beyond basic HTML.

HTML is the start but being able to code HTML and make simple websites is not likely to get you far any more in terms of a tangible career. Web career prospects are plummeting very very quickly, too many people are doing it, and too many of them are only doing HTML and the "basics".

This post has been edited by brightonmike: 31 January 2012 - 11:07 AM

[porkchops]

brightonmike, on 31 January 2012 - 11:05 AM, said:

...snip...

All of Mike's advice is spot on.

In addition it takes a LOT of time to get good at design. Getting good at the visual design aspect is challenging enough, but learning the principles of design/ux and how to apply them successfully to your work will be time consuming.

Being a competent designer is probably harder than becoming a competent front or back end developer, though mastering the various coding languages is going to be difficult, too.

EDIT: I suppose my point is: be sure that you want to do this because you enjoy it, not because you think it's going to be easy money or easy work. Good designers typically put in more than 40 hour weeks as freelancers and aren't making tons of cash.

This post has been edited by porkchops: 01 February 2012 - 11:23 PM