LEARN TO BE A WEBSITE DEVELOPER
GAIN SKILLS TO DEVELOP DYNAMIC DATABASE DRIVEN WEBSITES + GRAPHIC DESIGN + MANAGEMENT
This unique course will teach you website development from different angles: programming, database, graphics and marketing.
Designed to help you develop critical and in demand skills that make a difference to commercial success in the here & now of today's world.
- Learn programming skills such as C#, VB.net, ASP.net, SQL and Javascript
- Develop graphic skills such as Photoshop, Graphic Design, Computer Aided Design, & Flash
- Learn the management side of web development such as E-commerce, cybersecurity and marketing
IT staff are often some of the most called upon staff in any office requiring broad knowledge and skills. This means that employers are looking for versatile and adaptable employees with a wide range of skills. Don't miss out on this chance to improve your employment opportunities.
Modules
Note that each module in the Advanced Certificate in Web Site Development is a short course in its own right, and may be studied separately.
CHOOSE YOUR ELECTIVES LATER
There are a lot of choices to make with regards to offered electives
It is probably a wise decision to complete the compulsory modules, or at least some of them before choosing your electives.
Among other things, your experience n studying your first modules should help you to better understand your strengths and weaknesses; and your likes and dislikes.
Tips for Getting Work
- Success in Web Development doesn't come from getting a qualification!
- Many of the most successful web developers do not hold university degrees
- Many I.T. degree graduates have tried and failed to develop a successful career in web development
- Success comes from what you learn, not what you qualify in
- Successful web developers need to be prepared to start at the bottom, take work wherever they can find it (even if pay is poor) and build a career from the ground up
- Few developers ever earn big money working for someone else. If you want a big income; you probably need to be self employed
- If you are going to be self employed; you need to learn business skills, develop a capacity to find clients and sell your services, and above all, have the right attitude and persistence to develop a business
- Make sure you learn the type of programming that is in demand; and that you are prepared to keep learning and staying up to date as your career rolls on.
WHAT IS THE OPTIMUM PAGE WEIGHT?
Consider how fast or slow the service used by your audience will be.
In the past many people accessed the internet by a slow dial up speed, where each 1kb could take as long as one second to download. So the 55kb page above would take on average 55 seconds to download.
As time advances, download speeds increase; but the sizes of files being downloaded also increase; so large files may still take a minute (sometimes longer) for many people to download.
If you know that everyone accessing your page has a fast broadband connection, you are free to create pages with larger page weights. Nowadays, many more people have faster high speed access, so page weights are becoming less of an issue, but still worth considering when designing your site, as fast loading pages are always preferable to slower ones.
Making highly optimised websites is largely dependent on what extra technologies you wish to include when designing and coding your site, for example, will you be using an programming language like Visual Basic or ASP.NET, will you be linking to a database application, etc. However, here are some tips to make pages load faster which might be relevant to you:
- Optimise Your HTML Code: Make sure that your site doesn't have any unwanted tags and that it is optimised (i.e. fast loading graphics and programmed applications like Javascript or Visual Basic).
- Effective Table Designs: Design using nested tables instead of using cell merges and splits. Use separate tables where ever possible. Not designing for 100% height is better than using one outer table. If your page is contained within one main table, it will not be displayed until the entire table is fully loaded. If many outer tables are used (i.e. different tables for the header, content, footer, etc.) the page displays the content of each table as soon as its elements are loaded.
- Maximise Content Area: This not only reduces load time, it enhances the readability of your site.
- Minimise Use of Graphics and Flash Scripts: These are the major contributors to the size of your web page, so try to avoid using them. Try using background colours and fills instead of images.
- Optimise All Heavy Files: As much as possible optimise heavy graphics, Flash files and scripts. In editors like Fireworks and Flash there are various options in the preview panel to reduce the size. See how popular web sites like google and yahoo have pages that are very small in size and thus load in seconds.
- Stick to Simple Designs: Most fast loading sites have very simple designs. Complicated designs will slow down your pages.
- Spread Out Your Content: If you find yourself having very long pages of content, break them into separate pages and thus reduce the sizes of the individual pages. This is also an important navigational issue, as smaller logically arranged pages are easier to use than large complex pages.
- Use Text Links instead of Graphic Buttons: Basically, try to make use of HTML as much as possible.
- Use Server Side Include (SSI) Files – where ever possible. SSI files, once called from the web server, reside in a server cache so on subsequent requests they load faster.
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