Resolve to learn something new this year

Each month at our Community Meeting we go around the room and introduce ourselves, say why we are there, and answer an icebreaker question. This month the question was about New Year’s resolutions. We heard from a lot of people that learning web design was on their “To Do” list for 2014.

To help you get started learning about web design, we’ve compiled a list of websites that offer online courses in web design and development. Bookmark these and get started on that New Year’s resolution.

 

Code School
Code School teaches web technologies in the comfort of your browser with video lessons, coding challenges, and screencasts.

 

Killer PHP
Teaches practical PHP to non-nerd web designer types.

 

Dev.Opera
Learn the latest in open web technologies

 

Treehouse
Learn how to build websites & apps, write code or start a business.

 

Code Academy
Learn to code interactively, for free.

 

Tuts+ Free Courses
Tuts+ offers tutorials and courses for a variety of topics, including web design and development. They have paid courses as well as the free courses.

 

Web Design.com
Live webinars walk you through how to do all kinds of fun stuff with WordPress.

 

Bento Box
Everything you need to know about web development. Neatly packaged.

 

Don’t Fear the Internet
Basic HTML and CSS for non-web designers.

 

Designer School
A group of passionate professionals teaching web development

 

Learn Street
Learn JavaScript, Python, or Ruby at your own pace.


Udacity
Advance your education and career through project-based online classes.

 

Udemy
Learn real skills from real experts, including New York Times best-selling authors, CEOs, celebrities, and Ivy League professors. Courses range from programming to photography to design to yoga and more.

 

Google Developers Academy & Google University Consortium
Google Developers Academy provides a set of online classes spanning many different Google developer tools and platforms.

 

W3 Schools Online Web Tutorials
The world’s largest development site offers tutorials on CSS, HTML, Javascript, SQL, PHP, JQuery, and more. This is a great site to bookmark for reference for web designers and developers.

 

School of Webcraft
Work alongside your peers, get help from mentors, or offer your expertise to those in need. Peer-driven study groups and challenges by learners. Brought to you by Mozilla on the Peer to Peer network.

 

Computer Science Education Week
Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek) is an annual program dedicated to inspiring K-12 students to take interest in computer science. Yes, it’s meant for grade school students, but if you learning web design and development intimidate you, you might want to check this one out.

 

Code Racer
For the gamers, Code Racer is a multi-player live coding game that teaches newbies how to code a basic website using HTML and CSS, and tests intermediate and advanced users on their coding speed and agility. Players race against each other and the clock to complete coding challenges, unlocking weapons and rewards along the way.

 

Lynda.com
A favorite go-to place to learn new skills on a wide range of topics, among them: design, and web design and development. Learn how to design and create a website with hundreds of video courses, choose the right one to help you embed video, format text, design in CSS, create a content strategy, and analyze user experience design.

 

Skilshare
Skillshare is a great resources for learning a variety of skills, including Advertising, Design, Film & Video, Photography, and Writing and Publishing. Enroll in a course for $20 and learn on your own pace on your own schedule.

 

 

Editor’s Note:

A few years ago, we offered a Web101 workshop series to teach the basics of web design to print designers. Over the course of a year, local experts lead hands-on workshops covering the basics of functional, well-designed websites. The next session of Web101 is in the works. The instructors and curriculum are lined up. To get this series up and running, we need volunteers to coordinate the logistics of running the series. If you are interested in helping to get this series off and running, please email volunteer@raleigh.aiga.org.

 

By Amy Lyons
Published January 13, 2014