If you had to start again ...

As far as web design? The best teacher is experience- I really don't think that it can be taught... The person just needs to be creative and have an eye for good design. Photoshop and HTML are easy enough to learn. The hard part is coming up with creative ideas.

I find the best way to do this is browse some really good web sites: http://www.coolhomepages.com/ will start to get your mind thinking creatively in terms of web/layout development.

As far as what to actually LEARN... In my opinion, the most important are (in this order):
1. HTML
2. Graphic/user interface design (photoshop, or similar program)
3. CGI/PERL (not necessarily to write your own scripts, but you should be able to at least customize scripts to fit your needs)
4. Flash
5. PHP

If you learn all that, you should have most of your bases covered. Of course, you'll want to start small and work your way up. Good luck!

Brian

To state the obvious, it depends on what you really want. For web dev, the best way is after you are fairly confident with your skillset, offer your services for free. I did 2-3 web sites in that way when I started out, and now the business comes in by itself.
As much as the technical side is important, the other thing of equal importance is your communications skills. Word of mouth is the way I have developed my business and that is based soley on the fact that I have always had a very good rapore with my clients. Even when they request things that are stupid, moronic etc.

Get a website for yourself, post dummy portfolio items on it. Do a couple of sites for fictitious companies. This isn;t to say that you should lie about your experience. But making dummy sites is still making a site.

1 more thing, best of luck !

Definitely right Detox,
Word of mouth is probably the most powerful advertising tool you'll have going for your business. Treat your customers like you'd want to be treated, try to make them feel like they got more than what they paid for... they will remember when their friend needs a web site.

You could also consider offering customers incentives (such as a referral fee) if they send any new customers to you.

Word-of-mouth will usually be much more effective than banner advertising or print advertising because the potential client is likely to trust the person he/she is talking to more than a piece of paper saying how great your company is.

Good luck!

Brian

Just curious.... what kind of work are you doing now, Busy? And why do you think it was the 'wrong track'?

The response has been suprising, in a good way, Thanks.

I do have a site or two, personal ones (4) but are all on free hosts, nbci & crosswinds.

I have done a couple of make overs for free in exchange for something to put in my resume, but was just basic sites.
I have no server side experience, so am limited to what i can copy and paste and change to suit for now.
I did make a fictitious site on my web hosts server, bad mistake because they charged me more for having a business site on there, even thou the submit button on the order form was an alert saying "Thanks but just a sample".

I am between jobs at the moment, but was a freelance photographer, as a side line i make and sell framed photos, thats what the topic of the fictitious company was. i tryed making one about belly button fluff but couldnt get past one page.

As for the 'wrong track' Mark, When i was growing up, i partied like there was no tomorrow, i lived from pay check to pay check from the age of 14, one day at aged 25 i woke up to it, turned my life around (gave up drinking) worked my butt off, brought my favorite car, a corvette and last year reaped the rewards, i got to travel around the world for 7 months (USA and UK mostly). I'm 31 now in case your wondering. a refined bad boy.

I actually got introduced to the net through a customer i did some photos for, he was making concrete (cement) birdbaths and wanted to publish them on the web, he showed me his site, thought eww, thought i could do better so put my money where my thoughts were.

**and so are the days of our lives ...**

once again, sorry for babbling, typos and bad grammer

Busy

"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it."
~anonymous

Well, I think that photography is a good place to come from for a web designer. I think you'll do better at designing than others.

I took a photography course at school. Learned all kinds of stuff.

Good luck!

I wish I would have taken more art and CS cources in University. I wish I would have gone for a more general degree that would let me take a wider variety of courses. I still want to take more graphic design courses if I can - a lot of their basic layout principles can apply to the screen as well. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a good school near me for that sort of thing - well, there is one, but I don't really trust it. I took this "Digital Media" program thing and it turned out to be crap (the teacher basically didn't know what he was doing, even though he had all kinds of educational qualifications that seemed impressive.)

At community colleges you need to look for instructors that have "real world" experience - unfortunately, the people who are qualified to teach courses in web development and/or design can make more money (and do more interesting work) elsewhere. Night classes can be good though - you often get real professionals teaching those which can be very beneficial. I would also be good to take some business courses - especially if you're thinking about being a freelancer. I should do that myself.

I also wish I would have started learning ASP or PHP (or CF) a long time ago - I'm just taking too long to decide which one I'm going to learn.

Getting enough experience to get a "real" job is really hard (for those of you who aren't in college yet, I highly reccommend co-op programs - great way to get work experience). I agree with what the others have said - you will have to freelance for awhile to get enough of a portfolio together. Unfortunately "real jobs" in web design tend to be rather scarce - at least they are where I come from. I'm still looking for that perfect "real job".

Edit: Another good thing to do is to join professional organizations in your area - see what you can find. Excellent networking opportunities.

I have a background in banking since that was the job I got when I left college. I got laid off & out of bordom I build a site on the husbands old pc. Thought that's not bad perhaps I could make some money out of this & as my husband is a sales rep got him to help with the marketing and got our first real site built for the company he worked for, then built one for ourselves.

From there, with hubby selling them & me building them our business has taken off from there!