Should you have aspirations for a web design career, you will need to study Adobe Dreamweaver.
For professional applications you will require an in-depth and thorough understanding of the full Adobe Web Creative Suite. This is including (though it’s not limited to) Action Script and Flash. If you wish to become an Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) or Adobe Certified Professional (ACP) then these skills are paramount.
The building of the website only scratches the surface of the skill set required though – in order to drive traffic, update content, and work on dynamic sites that are database driven, you’ll need to bolt on more programming skills, for example HTML and PHP, and database engines like MySQL. You should also have an excellent grasp of Search Engine Optimisation and E Commerce.
A typical blunder that potential students often succumb to is to look for the actual course to take, and take their eye off the desired end-result. Training academies are full of unaware students that chose an ‘interesting’ course – instead of the program that would surely get them the job they want.
It’s a terrible situation, but thousands of new students commence training that sounds fabulous in the sales literature, but which delivers a career that doesn’t fulfil at all. Speak to a selection of university leavers and you’ll see where we’re coming from.
It’s essential to keep your focus on what you want to achieve, and then build your training requirements around that – don’t do it the other way round. Stay on target and ensure that you’re training for a career you’ll still be enjoying many years from now.
Seek guidance and advice from an experienced professional, even if there’s a fee involved – it’s considerably cheaper and safer to find out at the start whether a chosen track will suit, instead of discovering after two full years that you aren’t going to enjoy the job you’ve chosen and have to start from the beginning again.
A lot of training academies still use a now out-dated method of training – classroom lessons. Quite often pushed as a positive point, if you talk to a student who has had to attend a few, you’ll find them listing some or all of the following problems:
* Many back and forth visits – usually hundreds of miles each and every time.
* If you work for a living, then Mon-Fri events are difficult to make. You’re usually having to deal with several days in a row too.
* Let’s not overlook the lost vacation days. We typically get four weeks vacation allowance. If half of that is used up on workshops, then we aren’t going to be doing much vacationing.
* Workshop days usually end up overly large as well.
* Workshop pace – centre-days invariably have trainees of varied talent, so tension can run high between those that want to go quickly as opposed to those who want to go a little slower.
* Add up the cost of all the travel, fares, parking, food and accommodation and you may be surprised (and not pleasantly). Attendees mention extra costs ranging from hundreds to over a thousand pounds. Sit down and add it up – then you’ll know.
* A lot of trainees want to keep their training private and therefore avoiding all questions in their job.
* It’s very common for people to not ask questions they want answered – just down to the fact that they’re amongst other classmates.
* For students working away from home occasionally, you face the added difficulty that days in-centre now become very hard to attend – and yet, the fees were paid along with everything else at the start.
Doesn’t it make so much more sense to study when it’s convenient for you – not the company – and utilise interactive videos of instructors teaching a class.
Imagine… Using a notebook PC you’re able to learn in the garden, a park, or just outside. And live 24 hr-a-day support is an online click away in case you get challenged.
You can go back and re-cover all the modules whenever you need to. And of course, you don’t have to write any notes as you’ll have direct access to the instruction whenever you want to go back to it.
The result: Reduced stress, saved money, and you’ve got no travelling to do.
(C) Scott Edwards 2009. Hop over to dreamweaver-training-london.co.uk or HERE.
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