In the first session we jump right into designing your first website. No prior experience necessary! We'll introduce you to HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and Javascript, which are the foundational skills behind all web design. You will then learn where to find existing website templates and how to modify them to fit your needs and create a fully functional website by the end of this 2-hour session. Throughout the process we will teach you a number of tricks for making better-looking websites as well as gauging the quality of existing HTML code. Personal assistance will be provided to help you get things up and running.

The HTML & Basics session will be available in Boston in February.

See the full schedule | Download class material, Part 2 (members only)

Now that you've made a website, how do you get it online? At the Webhosting & Backend session we will teach you all the nuts and bolts behind implementing a website. The session will begin with an introduction to web servers and we'll quickly transition into registering your own domain and setting up the name servers, making note about important things to keep in mind when choosing your domain registrar. You will also learn how to choose the right web host and set it up to publish your website, set up email accounts, newsletters, FTP access, and more. All of this will be simulated on your personal, free webhosting account on our server. You will become familiar with the Linux web hosting environment (through software called cPanel), and you'll get to put your HTML website online!

The second half of this session will be an introduction to dynamic website, focusing on the PHP programming language, MySQL databases, and website security. You'll get the critical knowledge about the most common website architecture and will be ready to implement your first e-commerce or social networking website.

The Webhosting & Backend session will be available in Boston in February.

See the full schedule | Download class material (members only)

After completing the E-Commerce session you will be able to fully launch your own professional e-commerce site and start selling online! We will show you a number of options about starting with pre-existing code that you can fully customize to look as if you made it from scratch. You will then decide which one you want to implement and we'll show you how to do it. The first part of this session will involve the most practical skills in getting the site up and running, and it will continue with template modification - you will learn the basics about Smarty templates and a bit more on PHP.

The final part of this session will involve more of the business side of e-commerce websites - accepting payments, ensuring security and credibility, and most importantly search engine optmization (if time permits).

The E-Commerce session will be available in Boston in February.

See the full schedule | Download class material (members only)

Having mastered a complete e-commerce website, you may find it even easier to set up your own social networking site. We will also introduce you to several ways of setting up an online community and will help you implement it within the 2 hours. Social networking websites require significantly more customization than shopping carts, so in this session we will focus on a lot of hands-on code modification. Towards the end we will touch upon some theory and methods of attracting and retaining users on your website.

The Social Networking session will be available in Boston in February.

See the full schedule | Download class material (members only)

Professional-looking informational websites can also be fairly tricky to set up. In this session we will explore the opportunities of setting up an elegant Flash-based website with XML in just a few minutes. Flash websites are a very effective way to impress visitors to your corporate site, a portfolio, photo gallery, or even a basic personal site. By the end of this session you will have yours fully up and running.

Like with other sessions, we will begin with practical skills and will then move towards theory and a comparison websites you can make in HTML and PHP, with emphasis on search engine friendliness and usability.

The Flash Corporate Website session will be available in Boston in February.

See the full schedule | Download class material (members only)

We will have touched upon search engine optimization slightly in some of the previous workshops but this one will be focused entirely on creating a powerful and lasting web presence for your organization. It isn't enough to build a site - you must optimize it to drive natural search traffic while implementing other online marketing techniques to boost your exposure even further. This session will explore some of these options, including paid advertisement, affiliate marketing, and social media.

The SEO & Online Marketing session will be available in Boston in February.

See the full schedule | Download class material (members only)