9 Sites to follow for a Web education
One of the many things I enjoy about web design and development, is the fact that it is an ever changing landscape. The technologies that were relevant last year, have been replaced with the latest and greatest.
The down side to all this, is trying to keep up and become proficient with these new practices and technologies. Luckily the very industry we are in, also supports us in our education. There are literally a plethora of amazing sites available as long as you know where to look.
Lynda.com
Lynda.com has been around since 1995 and their library of online resources is the best I have seen. They have excellent video tutorials on pretty much anything you can think of and are adding new titles monthly. Be forewarned though, Lynda.com is a commitment. If you are planning on becoming more proficient in your chosen field you are going to have to commit some serious amounts of time, for instance they have over 180 hours of training for Photoshop CS4 alone!
Pricing:
- Monthly-$25 per
- Monthly Premium-$37.50 per
- Annual-$250 per
- Annual Premium -$375 per
VTC.com
The Virtual Training Company (VTC) started in California’s Silicon Valley in 1996 and since then they have built up a massive collection of tutorials.The entire VTC collection consists of over 782 courses, 81,350 video tutorials (20,800+ free). Like Lynda.com they offer video training on their site. I have to admit that I tend to turn to Lynda.com first when looking for this type of training, however when I have used VTC their training has been excellent every bit as good as Lynda.com. Between these two sites you can find training on literally any computer based topic you are looking for. This is a very good resource.
Pricing:
- Monthly-$30 per
- 3 Months-$90 per
- 6 Months-$180 per
- Annual-$250 per
Tutsplus
Now we are moving into a different class of training. I absolutely love these sites! The amount of quality content on these sites is impressive, but what makes them even more impressive is that they are free! The Tuts plus network actually consists of 8 individual sites, that each cater to a specific niche.
- Psdtuts for Photoshop tutorials
- Nettuts for Web Development
- Vectortuts for Illustrator and Vector based application tutorials
- Phototuts for photography tutorials
- Audiotuts for Music and Sound tutorials
- CGtuts for Computer Graphics tutorials
- Activetuts for Flash tutorials
- AEtuts for AfterEffect and Motion tutorials
But the real gem here is their tutsplus program. It however is not free, but it is money well spent as you will find plenty of article and tutorials not available on the other sites.
Pricing:
- Monthly-$9 per
- 3 Months-$22 per
- Annual-$78 per
Smashing Magazine
Although Smashing does not always post tutorials on their site, the sheer amount of resources they make available is pretty impressive. Whether you are looking for opinions, freebies or for tutorials you will find the time spent on this site really pays off.
Pricing:Free
CSS Tricks
Chris Coyier is the author of CSS Tricks and has compiled an amazing site. If you are new to web development this is definitely a good place to get your feet wet. If you are like me and prefer to watch a video than to read a web page, you will be happy to know that Chris just published his 78th screencast. What makes this even more impressive is the fact that each of these are full length tutorials spanning nearly an hour each.
Pricing:Free
Grafpedia
Although Grafpedia sells a membership for their excellent graphic sets. I find that their free tutorials are equally valuable. If you are just learning Photoshop for the web this is a resource you will want to bookmark. Unfortunately, no development tutorials but the Photoshop ones are very good.
Pricing:Free
SpoonGraphics
SpoonGraphics is another one man show, this time by Chris Spooner. Chris is an extremely talented designer and is nice enough to share some of his techniques with his readers. Another excellent Photoshop resource.
Pricing:Free
Noupe
Noupe is another depository for everything web related. If you work or are planning on working on the web, you will find resources that you NEED to read here. Topics range from; CSS, Ajax, Javascript, web design, graphics, typography, advertising & much more. Online since 2007, Noupe has an impressive archive of web news.
Pricing:Free
Webdesigner Depot
Although Webdesigner depot is primarily focused on web design, they also occasionally publish excellent article for web developers. The articles are always well written and documented, and I highly recommend that you add them to your web arsenal.
Pricing:Free
Summary
The web is a big place and this is just a small smattering of the sites that I have found and enjoy. If you are starting out in web design, or you just didn’t know about some of these resources, I highly recommend that you sign up for the RSS feed of each and every site in the list.
So? Did I miss one of your favorites? Please add it to the comments so that we can all benefit
