Is this course any good?

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Hi,

I have no experience in web development, but am trying to learn. I am currently studying a degree with the OU and wanted to know if this certificate was any good http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/qualification/c39.htm. It appears to teach me everything I wanted to know, but the reviews by other students who have done it don't appear to be to happy with it and say there are better courses out there.

If that's the case what are they? It's not the scripting I am bothered about learning from this course (as I'm happy learning the languages from other sources) but more the process of designing, database use, system performance and security.

Regards,

Edd

 

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The course content looks good, however some OU courses are purely online offerings.

Unlike the traditional OU 30/60 point courses you get no tutor groups, no direct tuition, no exams, interaction is therefore going to be very limited, so it's likely you will be largely doing self study.

 

Thanks dmarsh,

Do you know of any equivalent courses, vendor neutral preferably. What I'm after is a something that can teach me how to design and develop a website, then publish the web page securely.

 

My first OU course wasn't specifically web design, it was all things interwebby.
The catch was that all your TMAs had to be submitted in HTML, so that got you used to that.
It was T171 which has now retired, but I'm sure there is something similar.

To be honest, a good way to learn is just to buy a book - something basic that covers a bit of everything 'web design in 14 days' or whatever. Often these books have CDs or websites with extra resources such as free editors or FTP tools.

That's enough to get you started.
Once you've grasped the basics, you can then decide what you want to get into CSS, ASP whatever.
You'll find that once you start, you're driven by 'I wonder how they do that'.

Most hosting companies also have pretty good tools and tutorials that make uploading and managing your site pretty easy.

 

Thanks Jonny that's really helpful. I already have a book on PHP, MySQL and Apache. I'll complete that then see where the gaps are so I know what to learn next.

I read somewhere on here that certs for web development aren't as necessary as those for the techie jobs, i.e. you can prove you web development skills with a good portfolio of the work you've done, do you think that's the case?