Web development and Web design

Marcus, after becoming a member of 3 months, I can tell you you're in the right place. Treehouse has a wide variety of easy-to-learn and intuitive web design and development courses. If I were to start Web Design and Development, I would start here.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

You could start with the Web Designer Course. Check that one.

Best to learn both the Web Designer and Web Developer.

you have to choose what do you want first: Web Designer Course has Photoshop and Illustrator Courses included - if you want to design also.

Web Developer is more Coding based course.

As I've said entirely up to your needs.

Here is a cut-n-paste from a similer question that I answered in another forum. The question there was asking if web development/design has become to complicated for new people. But I think the principle of my answer will help you out!

*This question has become a hot topic, it's on all the forums and most of the industry pod casts. Here is how I look at it; first of all most everyone words that question the same way you did...

...having to learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, on top of...

I think this is the wrong way to look at it. HTML, CSS and JS are the bottom, not the top, of the learning pyramid. With absolute foundation being HTML. If all you mastered is HTML, CSS and JS you would be able to build websites all day long (and get paid to do it! ).

The problem is (and I am going to oversimplify this...) people wake up one day decide "Hey!, that website stuff is cool! I can do that!" and they are right! it is cool and you CAN do it! But they look at it as a whole and see every single tool, style, language, etc... that CAN be used for web development and then assume that you have to know 99% of it. They don't break it down into it's sub categories. It would be the same if that person woke up and decided "Hey! that Medical Doctor stuff is cool! I can do that!" then go off and try to become a Doctor in Family Practice, Surgery, OB/GTN, Anesthesiology, ENT, Gastroenterology, Oncologists, etc.. AND learn how to use all the tools from every discipline...overwhelmed would be an understatement.

Now our industry is different of course, but the basic premise is the same. Decide what you would like to start doing...Front End Design, Front End Development, Backend Development, etc.. then start eating that Elephant one bite at a time. No matter what you decide you want to do you have to start with the same foundation:

+HTML +HTML (yes it's in here twice! ;) ) +CSS +JS

Then you can branch off from there. Learn a web-centric programming language. Start with ONE and learn it well!

+PHP +ASP.NET with C# or VisualBasic +RUBY ON RAILS +ANY OTHER WEB LANGUAGE YOU CAN THINK OF

I would personally suggest that you learn PHP or RUBY for your first language (if you think you are going to want to work with Wordpress then make it PHP). then learn the other.

The next logical step would be tools. All SASS, LESS, GRUNT are are tools to make your job easier, they are NOT NEEDED to be a profitable Web Developer/Designer.

Then it's just a constant life of learning, applying, keeping what works for you and throwing away what doesn't.

Happy Webbing!!*

Amazing feedback! Thx guys.. You've been EXTREMELY helpful!!