Will a CIW foundations be useful for web administration?

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I'm thinking about doing a CIW course and was wondering if anybody could give me a bit of advice as to whether this will actually be useful for job?

I do a bit of web administration/content management within my job and have done in previous marketing roles. It is only really simple stuff that I do and I'm not really interested in being advanced in html but I know I need a little basic knowledge of it.
Is the CIW foundations going to be useful to me?

I was also considering some of the Adobe certs and a Prince2, mainly just to help me along and have a few more skills under my belt and possibly make me a bit more appealing to employers. Since my work experience does not match my degree in any way shape or form, I feel a bit like a have no recognised qualifications to complement my work experience.

I also play around a bit with wordpress and joomla, I have a very simple self hosted wordpress site and am currently taking a couple of little day courses on joomla and am working on a joomla managed site. So I am kind of starting to build a little portfolio. However I am not interested in being a web developer, I'm more content management and marketing orientated.

Could anybody give me a bit of advice on the CIW courses? and/or which route/steps I should take? should I do a postgrad certificate or diploma instead because they are more widely recognised?

Sorry bit confused on which will be most useful!

 

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Why don't you take courses related to e-marketing and new media ?

CIW foundations does cover some parts of these topics.

As you mention content entry is not really IT. Not seen many Web administration jobs, because the real roles are Systems Administrator or E-marketing manager type roles.

Systems Administrator for web is likely to require Linux and basic HTML skills.

E-marketing, is marketing with elements of design and branding but also with focus on web stuff like banner ads, SEO, click throughs, conversions, web metrics etc.

 

CIW do some nice certifications which are handy - especially if you are new to certifications.
Most of them are pretty much entry level and they focus on a pretty broad range of subjects.
For example, in foundation you'll learn a little bit about networking hardware, a little bit about the infrastructure of the Internet, a little bit about protocols, a little bit about security etc.
It's all good stuff if that's the industry you work in, but you won't come away 'knowing' HTML.

The downsides of CIW - especially in the UK - are that it is relatively unknown by employers, and the course material is extremely difficult to get hold of.
That being said, I wouldn't want to put you off it.

If you want to have something that employers will recognise, then by all means consider Prince2. It's a completely different animal, and to be honest, only of any real use if you are actually working in a Prince2 organisation.

 

I don't think the CIW is all that useful and I've had the certification for about 10 years. In those 10 years, I've never seen a single employer or recruiter who has asked for it or listed it in a job posting. The knowledge you would gain by studying for the certification might be useful, but I don't think you'll get the value for your money by taking a course targeted towards the CIW certification.