Web design

[3boys1girl]

Hi Guys:wave:
I am thinking about going to tafe and doing a course in web design so that I can start my own business from home designing web pages. Does anyone do this at the moment? There are so many courses at Tafe and all bit confusing. What is the best program to use? Dream weaver or flash? or are there any others that I dont know of?
Any info would be a big help!
Thanks

[ticvb]

Hi,

There are many facets to Web Design.
You would need to have some good design skills (or find some good site templates you can customise). Learn also how to use a tool like Photoshop, this is great for creating an array of graphical elements.

Work out what you are offering, and form alliances with others who can help you offer online shop and similar sort of "Functional elements", as many businesses are looking for these types of things on their website, to minimise some costs.

Good luck though, as anything new like this is exciting.

Cheers...

[creativewarrior]

hi
i run a website design business from home and use photoshop and dreamweaver. some good skills that you will learn at tafe are how to edit html and hopefully some type of visual classes on interface design and web graphics.

i went to uni to do my degree years ago now... but loved it and still love what i do everyday :)

if you need some help picking courses i can help you figure out what might be good to start with or whatever

[3boys1girl]

Thanks for your info guys. Do u need to do a uni course though creativewarrior? I dont really want to go back to uni as I have been there and done that. Im hoping there will be a corespondance course somewhere that I can do. Or will it be to hard by distance do u think:confused:
Im wishing I had chose this as my profession first so I can stay at home with my kids instead of doing nursing that takes me out of the house!

[creativewarrior]

you need to do some type of course... im not sure about correspondence but ive heard they can be good.

Do you have a passion for design and are you good with computers in general?

[3boys1girl]

I like to think im good on computers..I spend enough time on them!
And I love to create things when I have the time!
Im just worried about html coding, I have heard its like learning another language!

[creativewarrior]

html is another language but a fairly simple one - and you dont need to learn it off by heart - its handy for problem solving but good software like dreamweaver should do most of the work for you.

your big issue will be getting jobs and competing with established designers and companies... as yet i havent had to pay for advertising its all been thru word of mouth. also you will have to justify to your clients how much you charge in relation to your skill set and experience.

its a great industry to work in tho and perfect for us wahm's :D

[3boys1girl]

There is a short course at tafe but not til July on Dream weaver. I may apply for that because the certificate iv in graphic design is 3 full days a week and I dont think i will be able to handle that with 3 kids and working. Maybe when my youngest gets a bit bigger!

[Little_Toad]

I have my own web design buisiness.

I tought myself.. didn't do any courses.
HTML is actually very easy.
Start with a book like "html for dummies"

it's good to know the code instead of "cheating" and just using an editor. But they can save lots of time too.

Flash is a very powerful tool, now it involves lots of code called actionscript which is similar to jabascript. It will take slightly longer to learn than HTML and creating static web pages.

What are your strengths? Graphics? Or more technical?
It is better to concentrate on one aspect as there are so many different areas.

PHP is a great language to learn.

Good luck.

[3boys1girl]

Wow, u must be smart to be able to teach yourself!:eek:
I have brought the idiots guide to creating a web page and it looked like jeberish to me!
I think the only way I can learn is for someone to teach me!
Thanks for suggestion though!:)

[MissieK]

I know a lot of web developers who are self taught, or who have just done basic courses. If you want to be able to develop a basic site for people, you may not need to do a course, but if you want to create something special, a course is a very good idea :)

Melissa