The Web Learning Series got it’s start on YouTube as an ongoing series of video tutorials related to, and inspired by, a sideline project of mine called WideWorldOfWebDesign.com.  As the Tutorials have grown in popularity the project has taken on a Life of it’s own, and due to the steady feedback of people who found the tutorials helpful I decided to branch out and host them on their own website, TheWebLearningSeries.com,  not only improving the viewing environment but also extending the service to include more indepth topics and the option to download accompanying Lesson Files.

These Tutorials take a practical approach to building web pages using the tools available in Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, and an assortment of other 3rd party Components and Programs. You can view an example of one below as originally presented on YouTube.

If you have little or no background in web design and development, than consider this series the “Web Design 101 Video Handbook” which should jumpstart the learning process faster than the long, drawn out task of interpreting pages of text and print screens when it comes to written tutorials. Not only that, but there should be something here for everyone, after all a lot of it is based on my own practical, real-world experiences dealing with what’s required, what’s available, and what works best in a variety of situations.

When it comes to selling Merchandise online, there are quite a few options open to web designers, developers, and do-it-yourselfers everywhere. The open-source platform of PHP and MySQL has spawned a few viable ecommerce systems that are Free to download and allow you to set up and customize a fully operational online store in a matter of weeks. However, there’s a bit of a learning curve when first tackling a CMS, especially one that involves processing payments, cataloging shipments and customer orders, generating invoices, complex inventory and display options, and so much more . . .

My favorites in this category are ZenCart and osCommerce, because they are widely used, widely supported, and despite some tricky aspects to customizing their appearance, they basically work right out of the box after a relatively easy installation, and you can’t help but feel pretty satisified with yourself at being able to set up an online store all by yourself …….. well, along with the help of several people who were able to answer your desperate pleas on the User Forums that is . . .

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CMS: Content Management System
(photo from www.joomla.org)
When starting out as a Web Designer, there’s a point where you feel like you’re finally getting the hang of creating some slick HTML pages with valid CSS layouts, and the learning curve on creating professional looking web graphics is getting shorter too, and you’re even picking up some Javascript and PHP along the way! However … even after all this work to get your web pages looking good while maintaining proper web standards and cross-browser compatibility, now the client wants the ability to edit their own pages because the content changes regularly. Not only that, but they’ve also decided they want their website to be able to do a bunch of other stuff (Store, Blog, User Submitted Content) especially since they’ve noticed other websites doing lots of really cool stuff!

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