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It's been a few months now and thanks to net.tutsplus and lynda.com and a lot of trial and error I feel like I've got a decent basic working knowledge of HTML 5 and CSS 3, but what should I focus on next? Javascript? a CMS? XHTML? Something else?

I suspect a decent portfolio is for more important, but are there any specific qualifications which are particularly well viewed by employers in web design? Quite eager to do something official alongside self-learning so I've got the structure and support that could provide, but a lot of what I've looked at online doesn't really give me the impression that they're well respected or worth the fees.

Thanks for those links. Although you've posted the same thing twice- it was easy enough to work out what you meant. I'll take a better look at them in the morning, but at first glance it seems like it's a great selection of tutorials which I'm sure will be very useful, but without some kind of course-like structure I'm a little lost. I'm such a beginner that I'm not even entirely sure what is relevant or not...

I've got next to no experience in any of this, but I guess this is my first step into the world of web design... For years, probably since I was about 10 years old music has been my "thing", during school my plan was simple- scrape through with the minimum of effort, go to university to study music technology, graduate, become platinum selling mega-producer working in studios that cost more than most people's houses. So I just about made it to the penultimate stage of my plan and finished university with a BSc in Music Technology, but depression and anxiety struck pretty hard and I only got a 2:2 when I should've been aiming for a relatively comfortable 1st. Unsurprisingly, this is not a qualification that carries much weight, at least not in any areas I'm interested in working in. Besides which, the music industry is just about the most unstable industry going at the moment and jobs are scarce by any standards- I can get the odd night of cash in hand sound work at some 3rd rate local gig but they're few and far between and even if I can earn enough to make rent one month I can be forced into selling a guitar to cover the next month's and living on tins of beans. The instability especially does not sit well with my anxiety issues. Basically I want out. But I suppose this isn't the place for me to bemoan my questionable life choices. I'm just looking for some advice so history doesn't end up repeating itself. Web design has the same mix of technical and creative aspects which had drawn me to the music industry, my degree touched upon it very light in fringe modules and I enjoyed it, even if I didn't take it too seriously at the time. And there does seem to be at least some demand for people with web design skills. I definitely do not want to go back to university- It was a good way to spend 3 years, but if I went back now I'd be in my late 20s by the time I finished and more importantly I don't have anywhere near enough money to even consider going through it again. I'm not against part time study, but I'm more interested in some kind of online course at this point, possibly through the Open University or similar, does anyone have any experience or recommendations in this area? I'm effectively unemployed right now, so the one thing I have is spare time, though any kind of formal full time education would leave me in a position where I lose my JSA which is all I am living on right now. Any recommendations for books/ online resources I should take a look at? Or just any general advice about starting out in web design would be brilliant, thanks.