In this blog I’m going to share my experience of learning web development skills online. With so many different options to choose from, it can be hard to know where to get started so hopefully I can steer you in the right direction.

My initial focus was to gain JavaScript knowledge while learning fundamental HTML and CSS. I wanted to learn JavaScript because I’d heard this was the language used to build apps and games. Learning HTML and CSS is really important if you want to get anywhere with JavaScript projects, essentially HTML is your content, CSS is your styling and JavaScript tells it all what to do.

My journey started here:

Codecademy

codecademy.com

This is a great free source of web development learning. You pay to upgrade your account to Pro for $19.99US but since I have no experience of that, we’ll be focusing on the free courses. Codecademy makes it easy to get learning straight away. With no apps or software to download, fill in a quick a sign up form and then just pick whichever web development language or skill you’d like to learn.

If I was to recommend a first course to try on Codecademy, it would not be JavaScript! Start with something easier like HTML & CSS. Were it not for the extremely helpful community on Codecademy I wouldn’t have completed the JavaScript course and likely would have been discouraged from learning web development further. The forums are super active so if you’re looking for advice, you’ll have no trouble.

I’ve completed 9 courses on this Codecademy and based on my experience, I’d recommend the courses on this site, it’s a really great place to learn when you are first taking an interest in a particular skill. There’s not a whole lot of practical experience you can get from Codecademy without paying for the Pro upgrade so learn your fundamental web development skills there and take advantage of the knowledge of the others in the forum, then move on to get stuck into some actual building!

Next I moved to:

Code Avengers

codeavengers.com

This will be a bit more brief as Code Avengers only offer a 7 day free trial. I’d read that Code Avengers featured more practical learning so I was eager to get started.

I didn’t really find the practical learning in any of the courses available to users that didn’t pay a monthly subscription. It featured a lot of the same types of courses that you find on Codecademy but Code Avengers was a slightly more difficult site to use. I would not recommend this site for users not willing to pay.

After being pretty disappointed by Code Avengers, I turned back to the forums to see if I could find better suggestions for the free user but it seemed that the only courses that people were rating as being worthwhile, were courses that you had to pay for. I know, big surprise!

I decided to go for it and pay for a course. I’d had my eye on a certain course for a few months and had said to myself “If there was a course I would pay for, it’s this one”.

AngularJS with Gordon Zhu

Watch and Code

watchandcode.com

I loved this course. While the focus was to teach AngularJS, which is a type of JavaScript framework, you learn so much from Gordon. He was an engineer for Google and now spends his time making courses that teach people how to code.

In this tutorial I became comfortable using Brackets, GitHub, BootStrap and Firebase, I also learned how to make a Waiting List Notification-Style app.

To quickly explain, it was an app that is designed for people waiting for a table in a restaurant. The restaurant host will take their name and cell number, input that information into the app and then hit the “Notify by SMS” button when the table is ready. For an example go to https://waitandeat-deirdre.firebaseapp.com.

Unfortunately, this course is now no longer available because there have been so many changes to Firebase since Google took them over. There are still lots of courses available on Watch and Code, based on Gordon’s knowledge and attitude, I would highly recommend seeing if he has a course that suits you.

Finally I’m moving on to my latest course which has been:

WordPress with Brad Hussey

Code College

codecollege.ca

When I found out that I was going to be spending a lot of time using WordPress in the internship I’d started, I decided to start this course. The idea of the course is to be able to build a WordPress theme using BootStrap and some custom CSS.

I’ve only completed about 35% of this course so far but I’m happy to share my opinion as it currently stands. The course costs $197US, but it can be found cheaper on other sites at certain times. There’s lots of coding practice, or if you’re sick of writing code all day, you can copy and paste the code from a download folder. Brad has a really exemplary style of coding, particularly with his formatting so that’s something I’ve been trying to replicate.

In conclusion, if you are looking to learn some web development skills, start with Codecademy. If you enjoy what you’ve learnt, go on the forums and talk to people about your next best step. The web development community is a really friendly crowd, reach out and people and they will share their knowledge with you.

The key is to keep learning. Some of your experiences won’t be great but there will always be a takeaway.

Now that you know how I did it, go try it out and see what works for you. Don’t forget to check back at Intrigue for more useful tips and tricks on website development!

Mike is a Web Developer at Intrigue. You’ll find him managing web projects, building WordPress sites, developing eCommerce Platforms, and implementing CRO and SEO on client sites. Mike enjoys spending his free time being way too competitive at old school video games, playing beer league hockey, and taking long walks on the beach.