Welcome to the Treehouse Community
Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.
Looking to learn something new?
Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.
Start your free trial
Raeed Sabree
10,664 Pointsim doing front end web development should i practice outside of teamtreehouse or just continue with the program
until im done with the whole program
8 Answers
Mitchell Fargher
11,634 PointsThe courses are great. They give you a lot of knowledge and experience, but just going one time through them will be fast and an overload. I suggest getting books to take a deeper dive into each section as you go.
While all this knowledge is great... Practice is going to make you learn it, memorize it, and be able to teach it. That is when you have mastered it. Start a project that means something to you. Continuously build this project as you learn new skills. Even reinvent the entire project when you find ways to make it better. Applying everything you've learned will make you burn these ideas into your head and not only will they look familiar upon sight, but you'll be able to deduce problems and build complex applications.
Cindy Lea
Courses Plus Student 6,497 PointsIts always good to do both (do webpages on Treehouse & on your own server). Right now Im only doing Treehouse since thats where everything works (most of the time). Once you have working webpages you can download them to use on another web server or locally. It does take more time to download/upload files (although not much), but I feel like its better to focus on learning & the experiment later. Especially since we are paying a monthly fee to learn...Ive had experience already uploading webpages so I know how it all works, but if youve never done it, Treehouse has a video on how to get your domain(free) and how to upload files to the server. Its real good. If youre new to the uploading, I would definitely try doing that at least once while youre on Treehouse so you can ask questions if you run into problems. There are so many helpful people on Treehouse!
Raeed Sabree
10,664 Pointsokay this was the best answer i was looking for because i wasnt sure rather or not to experiment while learning or experiment after and now im just gonna focus on the course and experiment after thank you Cindy Lea !
Raeed Sabree
10,664 Pointsokay this was the best answer i was looking for because i wasnt sure rather or not to experiment while learning or experiment after and now im just gonna focus on the course and experiment after thank you Cindy Lea !
Raeed Sabree
10,664 Pointsokay this was the best answer i was looking for because i wasnt sure rather or not to experiment while learning or experiment after and now im just gonna focus on the course and experiment after thank you Cindy Lea !
Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse TeacherI definitely endorse practice! I'd suggest getting codepen at http://codepen.io/. While workspaces here on Treehouse are great, you can't (as of right now) use a workspace on a mobile device. Codepen supports HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It even has options to load Bootstrap and some other basic things for you. AND you can use it on a tablet! To be honest, I haven't tried it on a phone. Start putting together a site for a fake company that sells cars, motorcycles, or whatever you want! Or better yet, start building your portfolio! You're going to need one sooner or later 
Raeed Sabree
10,664 Pointsthank you for commenting i had no idea there was even a such thing was codepen now i feel like ill be able to experiment a lot easier without having to only use work spaces when im done with the track thank you Hennfer Nordell !
mikaylahumphrey
2,545 PointsI just thought I'd mention that I see you all over these forums and you're always very helpful! You're like a familiar face for me now and I get excited when I see your posts! Haha.
Simon Coates
28,695 PointsPracticing as you go is probably a good measure of how well you understood the material. Copying the code the tutor shows you doesn't force you to engage with the material. You can get through a course merely by copying and only paying a bare minimum of attention. If you're practicing, you can find possibly find scenarios that the course didn't discuss fully and fix these as you go.
abdulrahman
2,515 PointsHi, I am also taking Front end development track. My plan is learn from treehouse and do the projects from freecodecamp.
Raeed Sabree
10,664 Pointsive never heard of freecodecamp before is it good?
Raeed Sabree
10,664 Pointsive never heard of freecodecamp before is it good?
David Bath
25,940 PointsAs others have mentioned, doing personal projects on your own is very, very important. The Treehouse courses (as well as many other online courses) are great: They have good content, a huge variety of topics, and workspaces for trying out your code. But just taking a bunch of courses can lull you into believing that you've "got it", when you've really just been following along, doing what the teacher does. By all means keep going with the program! But by dreaming up a development goal, such as a cool layout for your personal website, and then trying to implement that idea by figuring it out on your own (or using a reference when you feel blocked), your skills will develop in a much deeper and stronger way. Good luck!
Raeed Sabree
10,664 Pointsokay cool because i want them to develop on a wayyyyyyyyyyy deeper level, ecspecially javascript i had i hard time remembering how to use some things
abdulrahman
2,515 Points@Raeed Sabree Yes, freecodecamp is good, also it's always good to learn from one platform and apply what you learn to the other platform.
Alexis Lawson
Front End Web Development Techdegree Student 1,521 PointsYes you definitely need to branch outside of Treehouse if you are serious about expanding & refining your knowledge of programming & web development. Treehouse is a great starting resource but it's the same as with anything; the greater the number of sources you utilise when learning a new skill, the greater & more diverse your knowledge of that skill will become...... There's so many great resources out there, it can sometimes be hard to know which of them to invest your time in, but the following are definitely worth looking into.
Similar Course Sites to Treehouse:
- Codecademy
- Code School
- Lynda
- Udemy +FreeCode Camp
Reference and Validation Sites:
+w3Schools +MDN (Mozilla Development Network) +The various languages and frameworks' official documentation sites
Code Experimentation:
+Code Pen
Question and Answer Forum:
+Stack Overflow
Blogs:
+HongKiat +SitePoint +CSS Tricks +TutsPlus +Smashing Magazine +Codrops +WebDesignerDepot +A List Apart +TNW +Specky Boy +TutorialZine +CodeHorror +Github Blog +WP Beginner +Nettuts
And many more
Books & Magazines:
Note that a very extensive range of current programming & web development books exist in eBook format on publication sites, most particularly on Issuu and Sildeshare.
Some of these include:
- The Head First series of web development books on topics such as HTML CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Ajax, Python, Java. +The Sam's Teach Yourself in 24 Hours series of web development and programming books +Creating a Website the Missing Manual +CSS/CSS3 the Missing Manual +A Smarter Way to Learn HTML/CSS +A Smarter Way to Learn JavaScript +The Dummies series on all sorts of topics, including web development and programming. +Smashing's series of web development books +A wide range of Wiley's books on various web development and programming topics.
And heaps more web development & programming eBooks MANY of which are fully downloadable in either pdf or ePub format!!
Many issues of the following FANTASTIC web development magazines are also available for viewing and often downloading on Issuu and Slideshare too:
+Web Designer from the UK +Net from the UK +Code Magazines +Rails Magazine
Apologies for the markdown errors - Im not sure what's wrong with the formatting but I don't have time to fix it.....
Karen Creighton
30,185 PointsThank you, Alexis! This is an awesome list of resources to pursue.
Raeed Sabree
10,664 PointsRaeed Sabree
10,664 Pointsoh man books okay and when it comes to creating my own how would i go about inventing my own project do i have to download something in order to write code or would i use work spaces as my means to intent a seperate project?
Mitchell Fargher
11,634 PointsMitchell Fargher
11,634 PointsYou can just use notepad or any text editor on your computer. Create a folder and inside that folder you will need to make an index.html file. All your html will go there. Then, create a style.css file to put your styling in. (You can name them anything you want as long as they end in html and css respectively).
Once the files are made link your css file to the html file in the head section. Once this is done you're set to go.
All you have to do is open the index.html file in the browser to see what it looks like. If you want to actually publish it on the web then that is a whole other thing.
Raeed Sabree
10,664 PointsRaeed Sabree
10,664 Pointsokay that is very helpful information because i have notepad and had no idea what to do with it and i can use notepad like work spaces?
Mitchell Fargher
11,634 PointsMitchell Fargher
11,634 PointsYep! Basic notepad will not have the fancy features (like code complete and the different colors), but it will do the exact same thing.
You just have to keep all of your files in a folder you create just like workspaces does. Instead of clicking the preview button like in workspaces you will just open the file in the browser of your choice.