There are about 23,20,00,000 websites on the internet. You might have browsed through hundreds of to check your mails, update your Facebook status, get info for your projects, watch videos or probably just Googled your name to see what comes up!
Have you ever wanted to create one for yourself? Does the idea of having your own personal website excite you? Wouldn’t such an idea put you on the forefront of managing your college culturals — perhaps an awesome website for a starter?
Well, if you are an IT or a computer science student, your curriculum probably doesn’t give you enough practical knowledge to help create a website. If you’re a non-IT student or still in school, I bet web development sounds Greek to you. What do people usually do? Turn to a training institute, spend thousands of rupees and realise they haven’t really learnt much!
Enter w3schools
We are in an era where you can find great content to learn anything under the sun on the web. Whether it is basic maths concepts, guitar tips or the complex lectures on subjects taught at IITs and the like, they are all available on the web for free. One such resource is w3schools, owned by Refsnes Data, a Norwegian software development and consulting company.
W3schools offers free tutorials in all web development technologies and will teach you how to create a website right from scratch. Whether it is front-end development technologies like HTML and CSS, or back-end ones like PHP and MySQL, it’s all right here. The best part is, it is free, does not require you to have any prior knowledge and you can learn at your own pace.
The portal has an easy-to-use interface. Once you choose a technology, it will take you through every chapter step-by-step. In every chapter, the concepts, syntax and its usage are explained in an intuitive manner armed with examples.
Plus the portal comes with an in-built editor. This means, you get to experiment and play around with the concepts and the syntax that you have learnt in every chapter right away. You can view the output of your code right there, learn from your mistakes and get better at it. Once you are done with scanning through the chapters and practising them, you can take up the w3schools quiz, at the end of every tutorial, which helps you rate yourself.
Get Certified
Additionally, if you want to add the skill that you have learnt on your resume, you can take up w3schools’ Online Certification test. The test can be taken over the internet, at any time and from any location. You will be given a certificate and grades, based on your performance. You can take up the certification test for any technology at $95 (approx Rs 5,000).
For Experts
It is also a handy tool for those who already know web development. You can create your first HTML website in just two days! w3schools offers courses in about 40 web development technologies. Ranjith, a software engineer with Media Mint, Hyderabad, remarks, “The best
thing about w3schools is its simplicity — it is well organised and easy to use. Right out of college, w3schools helped me learn the basics of PHP.” For details, visit www.w3schools.com.
— rahul.prabhakar28@gmail.com
