Choosing the right career is very important given that we spend most of our day or night at our workplace. You would not want to wake up to do something that you do not enjoy. As such, your career decision should involve checking whether the career suits your personality, makes you happy, whether the salary and working hours are ideal, and the extra benefits from the job.
With respect to the above considerations and the latest global advancements in technology, a career in web development might be a good fit if you are a tech lover. Besides meeting your expectations in the tech industry, this career features high demand, and learning is worthwhile. With businesses transitioning to online operations, web development is also increasing in demand, guaranteeing you future employment.
Fortunately, you can start your career in web development from the comfort of your home. Several sites online provide a platform for you to boost your skills. Most of these sites are free, while others have paid option, enabling you to access premium courses. Read the rest of the sections to learn more about where you can learn web development.
What Is the Scope of Web Development?
Before we dive into the websites you can learn web development from, it is worth understanding the scope of this course. The need for web development is widespread in both government and public sectors as companies strive to benefit from the online promotion of sales and services.
Among the career options you can explore after completing a course in web development include:
- Web developers
- Data scientists
- Software engineers
- Game developer
- Multimedia programmer
Why Learn Web Development?
While starting a career in the tech industry forms the basis of learning web development, you will enjoy extra benefits with a certification in this course. These include:
- Possession of skills employers are looking for
- Ability to land your dream job in the tech field
- You can work in any country
- Statistical predictions promise growth in this field in the years to come
- Be part of a prestigious industry with a 56% average salary increment
Websites You Can Learn Web Development
Now that you know the benefits of learning web development, you can scroll below for websites you can access the course. Most websites offer free courses, while others offer both combinations or require you to pay if you want certification. Hence, depending on your career goal, you should select a course that gives you a competitive edge.
FreeCodeCamp
FreeCodeCamp is among the best free online resources for learning web development. It covers web content basics, including HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. With hundreds of projects and exercises, you will learn and test your knowledge and learn how to develop a responsive website.
Udemy
Udemy features both free and paid courses, with paid courses mostly available at discounted rates. With over 80000 coding courses, Udemy courses are worth paying for.
To start learning from Udemy, navigate the website, search for a suitable web development course, enter the onscreen requirements and get yourself a tutor. As a tip, you should start from the simplest to complex to get the concepts right from the beginning.
If you have a busy schedule, enrolling at Udemy is ideal as the courses feature lifetime access. This way, you can learn depending on your flexibility without bringing your life to a standstill. Unfortunately, this feature can distract your learning urgency, and you may end up procrastinating too much and never completing your course.
After completing your web development course at Udemy, you can get a completion certificate that you can attach to your online resume, such as a LinkedIn profile to pitch for better jobs.
Alison is famous for the variety of courses it offers, web development being among them. The site owners’ belief in free education as the base of progress drives them to avail the courses for free. However, you will pay a few dollars if you want a certificate.
Alison’s courses feature interactive sessions with audio and video classes for maximum efficiency. The course also features graded assignments, and to graduate from the course, you should achieve at least an 80% score.
To learn web development from Alison, you will choose from three main levels: academic, personal, or workplace. The web development courses covered include CSS3, JavaScript and HTML5.
TheNewBoston
If you are a beginner in web development and prefer video classes, TheNewBoston, available on YouTube, is ideal. This course bears an introductory nature and covers concepts in HTML, PHP, CSS, Python, and other coding languages and frameworks. A video on TheNewBoston takes 3 to 10 minutes and will respond to specific web development questions.
edX
edX is ideal for book lovers who do not mind joining a graduate web development school. This website gives you a typical academic experience in web development by offering degree and non-degree courses from top universities like Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley.
The edX syllabus mimics most universities’ exams, tests, and assignments. Before commencing a course, you will receive the course details, including the length, language, average effort, and institution offering the course.
edX also caters to web development gurus seeking to expound their knowledge on certain areas by offering free courses. To access these courses, you should enroll as an auditor and pass your exams. However, if you want a certificate, you will have to pay the full course fee.
Coursera
Coursera is generally free, but you will have to pay a few dollars if you want graded assignments. Founded by top professors in the industry, this website collaborates with key global institutions to offer over 1000 courses to its students. With this collaboration, you can benefit from the top facilitators from these institutions for better training.
The filtering system in Coursera enables students to choose fields, topics, level of the course, institution, language, and length of the course they want to enroll in. The levels vary from simple beginner courses to in-depth for intermediates.
What’s more, you can access Coursera courses from any location and time. After course completion, you will get a certificate that you can attach to your resume for career advancement.
Treehouse
Treehouse is another popular online web development platform. This site has over 1000 quality videos covering web design, development, and entrepreneurship. You can learn at your pace and plan your lessons depending on your schedule.
Also, depending on your current qualification, you can choose beginner to advanced levels hence worth consideration. With about 200 dollars a month, you can enroll and start a course in web development.
Codeacademy
Codeacademy is another popular online web development learning site. The site targets both beginners and intermediates and has over 45 million beneficiaries. Most courses in Codeacademy start at the zero level with variable definitions and simple introductions to coding.
The topics covered include HTML, JavaScript, and CSS though they feature a few restrictions in free mode. However, by paying for a pro version, you access a full course in Web Development featuring more coding projects and exercises. However, free courses are useful for beginners who are yet to settle on the scope as they highlight the expectations in the course.
Classes in Codeacademy have separate sections, with each featuring small units and supporting exercises to test your understanding. You will also do a final test after the course. With Codeacademy, you will get a certificate after graduating from the Pro versions, but this should not limit you from accessing the knowledge from the free course if you cannot pay for the pro version.
Udacity
In collaboration with leading companies like Google, Amazon, and AT&T, Udacity offers amazing free online web development courses. Courses on Udacity vary from beginner to intermediate, then advanced.
Unlike most online platforms, Udacity emphasizes the practice by ensuring interactive classes with videos and questions to rate your understanding. Some courses also call for mid-course projects for practical understanding, putting you in a better place for the market. However, since all its courses are non-degree, Udacity does not provide certification.
W3Schools
W3Schools website provides a platform to learn programming and web development. On this platform, you will learn the three main web technologies, CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. You will also learn React, Bootstrap, and Sass.
If you are a beginner at W3School, you will be lucky to enjoy simplicity in course delivery. The tutorials are written in a simple language, making it easy for individuals without a coding background to understand. W3Schools also features exercises and projects that you can choose to test your comprehension of the coding languages you pick.
HTMLDog
If you want to learn the three primary web languages, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you should sign up on HTMLDog. This free website features beginner, intermediate and advanced levels of the web languages, and you can choose any depending on your proficiency. What’s more, the information is presented in a simplified manner to enhance your comprehension.
Traversy Media
Apart from the above websites, you can access web development content from YouTube via the Traversy Media channel. This YouTube channel by Brad Traversy covers almost all the basics of web development, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and libraries such as Angular and Bootstrap. In addition, Brad Traversy makes tutorials displaying how to create a website and web page.
Codewars
Finally, if you want to sharpen your skills and accelerate your web development career, Codewars is the ideal website. This website makes learning exciting by using martial arts themes. It uses training exercises called katas, which give you access to test cases for checking your progress upon signing in.
As you complete your katas, depending on the ranks, you will be matched with relevant challenges to ensure proper mastery of specific skills. What’s more, this learning website hosts a community of exceptional learners, giving you room to share practices and innovations in web development.
How Do I Select the Best Mode of Learning Web Development?
From the above information, it is clear that web development is increasingly becoming popular, and companies are seizing this opportunity by coming up with more attractive courses. However, before you settle on one, you should garner knowledge on the skills and knowledge you will likely gain after enrollment and whether it will translate into a job if that is your end goal.
As a business owner or beginner wanting to make more money in the comfort of your home, a web development skill can help you achieve this within the shortest time, but this depends on your availability to learn. Hence, if you have a busy schedule, with school and work taking a better part of your life, you may want to reconsider your decision to learn web development from websites with strict deadlines.
Secondly, if you can accommodate a web development course in your schedule, you should consider whether the course guarantees you a job. Generally, picking a paid web development course is more profitable for job seekers as they provide certification, but this does not disregard free courses.
Lastly, before enrolment, connect with other students and alumni to establish whether the course is right for you. You can access these individuals on several online platforms to learn about their experiences. Besides broadening your understanding, this connection will help you network with key players making it easy for you to climb up the ladder in the industry.
Wrap Up
There are many websites where you can learn web development, and if interested, visit two or more websites before settling on the one that matches your career needs. As usual, you will experience mandatory challenges in coding, but thanks to the collaborative communities, you can test your skills and track progress.
The advantage of these websites is that prior experience is not mandatory. The courses are beginner friendly and offer smooth transitions from basic coding terminologies to advanced syntax and semantics, all at your pace. If you have challenges grasping the content, consider interactive courses to ease learning. With intellectuals sourced from recognized universities behind the scenes, you can rest assured that learning web development through the above platforms will not be a time-waster.
Finally, whether or not the course features time limits, you should discipline yourself to complete it within the recommended timespan as delays may result in loss of potential opportunities.
