Web Design Certificate

Any suggestions for an online certificate in web design or something related, that provides some level of instruction in xml, css, flash, javascript, php, etc.?

I don't care where the school's at or where it's from. I want it to be as cheap as possible, as informative as possible, and not take forever to complete.

These credits will not be transferred to/for anything, but used only for my own personal enrichment.

 

Harvard Extension School, so very reputable and very good
FREE !
so can't get any cheaper than that
how long does it take to conmplete ? Depends on you often you watch the videos and do the work

the only real problem is that you'll need to have a machine with Linux installed.
Linux is free and all the software he uses is free, so that's not a problem.
It's just a matter of having a laptop or pc you can install it on

Building Dynamic Websites / OpenCourseWare
"This course teaches students how to build dynamic websites with Ajax and with Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP), one of today's most popular frameworks. Students learn how to set up domain names with DNS, how to structure pages with XHTML and CSS, how to program in JavaScript and PHP, how to configure Apache and MySQL, how to design and query databases with SQL, how to use Ajax with both XML and JSON, and how to build mashups"

watch the videos under Lectures and Sections

view the pdf notes

download the source code under Lectures and Sections

 

Why do they make you use linux? That said, Linux is awesome!!!!

 

If you need it only for class, Ubuntu Linux can be installed and removed within Windows.

You can also install most linux distib on Windows Virtual PC or VirtualBox

 

If you need/want an actual credential that can be listed on a resume (rather than only for personal knowledge, which can be found for free in many places on the web) here area few options ...

Oreilly Schools offer several certificates (the certs themselves are issued by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champain)
Online Certificate Programs -- O'Reilly School of Technology
They often have sales though so wait until the cert and/or its courses are on sale. (I registered for their PHP cert when it was on sale for half price.) If you already know a decent amount about web development you will be able to breeze through the courses pretty quickly. Total cost (assuming you got it for half price) would be approx $995 for the open-source programming cert, plus monthly lab fees of $10.

Penn Foster offers a "Web Page Designer" cert for $860 (if you pre-pay in full) but the content seems pretty basic, if you already have experience designing actual websites you could probably teach this course:
Web Page Designer Training Outline | Penn Foster Career School
(Also, DETC accredited, blah-blah-blah)

Fort Hays has this "Certificate in Web Development" which definitely looks more thorough than either of the programs above, but it's also more costly, about $3,262 according to my calculations:
Web Development - Fort Hays State University

What's your price range?

 

That sounds pretty good to me. I'll look into that.

I'd really rather not go over a couple thousand dollars.


I realize I could find all of this information on the web for free, I'd just prefer someone go administrate it with me or be there to answer questions should they arise.