Being able to develop websites is a very useful skill to have. Virtually every industry, business, or initiative could benefit from a well-developed website – from doctors to artists, to landscapers, and more. The good news is that there are great resources out there to teach you web development or even become a web developer. The bad news is that there are so many resources available that you could easily get lost or overwhelmed at where to start. That is where we come in.
In this article, we will go over some beginner web development courses, as well as some intermediate web developer classes that you can try and tackle once you progress forward in your web design and development path. The following courses are from various educational providers, each with different pricing models. Web development can seem daunting at first, so if you prefer a free, low-pressure approach to see if it’s for you, check out our own HTML, JavaScript, and web development tutorials, hosted on our sister site, HTMLGoodies. You can also skip the hand-coding side of web development by learning about content management system (CMS).
Beginner Courses for Web Development
Web Design for Everybody: Basics of Web Development & Coding Specialization is a course from Coursera that focuses on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, helping you learn these technologies in order to build your very own website. At the end of the course, you will complete a capstone project that will allow you to show off your newly-developed skills, which gives you the added advantage of having your very own, custom-built website by course end.
Students will learn how to make web pages interactive with JavaScript, use basic Cascading Style Sheets (CSS3) and the Document Object Model (DOM) to modify pages, and create responsive pages using responsive design techniques to ensure that websites are mobile-friendly.
The Complete Web Developer Course 2.0 is offered by Udemy. Students will learn about an array of different web development tools and scripting languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and even a full-fledged programming language known as Python. This thorough course lets you get a bird’s eye view of programming languages that are frequently used in web development today.
Specifically, web development students will learn how to build websites, create web apps, code HTML-based mobile apps, explore different databases and server-side languages, and even start an online business. Another great benefit of this course is that it discusses how to land a job as a junior web developer and even how to bid on freelance website projects.
Another Udemy offering, JavaScript Complete Beginners Course for Web Development, lets students get to know the fundamental concepts of JavaScript. Over the course beginning web developers will learn to write JavaScript code, and honor their problem-solving skills.
Other things JavaScript course takers will learn include JavaScript fundamentals, such as working with loops, JavaScript arrays, variables, Boolean logic, control statements (if and else statements), event handling, and asynchronous programming concepts. Best JavaScript practices, the ins and outs of Object oriented programming (OOP), and the Let and Const keywords will also be discussed. A great bonus to this course is the addition of Q&A support, where students can ask questions about JavaScript and web development.
One could argue that some of the elements of this course could count as intermediate-level JavaScript concepts, which makes it a great choice for anyone looking to move beyond just the basics of web development and design.
Reading: Top Courses for Data Analysis
Intermediate Web Development Courses
Django Application Development with SQL and Databases is an intermediate web development course from EdX.org that introduces web dev students to structured query language (SQL), a useful database management language and tool. It also teaches you the basics of the Django and Bootstrap open-source web frameworks, which are particularly useful for Python developers.
By course end, web developers will learn how to describe databases and model data and create SQL queries that allow them to insert, select, update, and delete data that is stored in tables inside of a database. The concept of the Object Relation Model (ORM) will be covered. Most importantly from a career standpoint, students will use Django to create database-driven web apps and even learn how to deploy their Django apps to the cloud.
Object Oriented Programming in Java by Coursera teaches students more about Object-oriented programming (OOP), a programming model that revolves around the objects and classes that contain data and code – you can think of them as the blueprint (Class) and the thing you create from those blueprints ( objects). This project-based course serves as a great next step in your journey to learn more about web development.
This particular course will bring your coding to the next level as you deep-dive into OOP principles. The first week covers the basics of OOP – in particular, how to visualize data by creating your own Objects and Classes. This first week gives you a solid foundation for the rest of the course, where developers will learn about memory models, scope, how to create Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) to display information, and what Inheritance means.
Reading: Top Courses to Learn R Programming
Conclusion to Top Web Development Courses
Learning how to develop websites is rewarding because you get to see your work come to life and can start a business with very little start-up costs. Since there are many different aspects to web development, it is recommended that you start small so you are not overwhelmed. You can build a good foundation for web development by simply knowing how they work, front-end to back-end, in addition to learning the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Make sure you take advantage of all of the resources available to you to learn web development, starting with our own web development tutorials and how-tos.
