A Beginner Webmaster

Someone who looking into the webmastering business

[SilentKing]

Hello Webmaster Community,

I am a novice webmaster who used to code in HTML back in 1997-98 in college as a hobby. I've since strayed away from the technology till now. Since I have returned I've come to know that there are many languages in addition to HTML. My question is what language's should I look to learning that will help me get a foot in the door to possibly some job opportunites or just returning to a hobby that I enjoyed while at my short stay in college.

Thanks in advance for your expertise,

SilentKing

[oilman]

Hey SK - welcome to WMW. Glad to hear you're coming back to webmastering :)

If I were to pick a second language to learn it would be Perl. Extemely flexible and powerful. You'll find we have a lot of Perl folk here as well.

[SilentKing]

I've heard of Perl. Could you recommend any good books/websites on learning the language? Also how would I go about setting up a Perl environment on my home machine (Windows XP Professional).

[Marcia]

Welcome to the board SilentKing, good to have you here.

Not expert here, but practical: HTML, CSS, some familiarity with Javascript -not too much, but mainly because it's so easy to get wrong on a site, and a lot of jobs require some abiility to work with it. Very important is to become familiar with CGI/Perl (or PHP) because most times there are forms or scripts to deal with.

Start the development part with a little study on browser compatibility, and what's very important is to get familiar with some elements of search engine optimization if you'll want to promote sites at all. That way you can design search-engine friendly sites from the beginning, which will give you an edge a lot of designers don't have.

Since you're just starting out, don't be dismayed if you see a lot of information that seems like Greek at first. Everyone starts with the basics, and there's plenty of information here at the board to get you going. Then, once the basics are mastered, the knowledge and skill-set is built on from there.

Good luck to you!

[oilman]

Check out this thread [webmasterworld.com]. Some good stuff there. Sorry - don't know how to do the local evironment thing....

[SilentKing]

Thanks for the speedy reply. On average how long do you think it would take me to learn the basics? Reason being is that if I were to look for a short term job being a webmaster they look at experience and probably a portfolio. Do I need at least 2 years experience before I can think about finding a job as a webmaster or is it kind of get in as you fit in type of work environment?

SilentKing

[mivox]

Up here in Alaska, I got one job with a printed resume, less than 1 year experience, and a handful of sample sites. They only looked at one site.

The next job I got by talking to my current boss about possibly building a site for him, he looked at the main site I'd done for my last employer, and I was hired.

These are both companies with fewer than 50 employees.

If you're looking for a job with a larger outfit, they may want X years of experience, but I think you can still get in a lot of doors with a portfolio. Expecially if you have any other vaguely related experience (ie - Have you used computers in your intervening jobs?)

The fact that I had multiple years of desktop publishing experience helped land my first web design job.

[Mike_Mackin]

Welcome SilentKing - San Diego, CA
If you would like to get back in to webmastering QUICK attend the Bar Conference [barconference.com]

[ggrot]

For the local environment, I would suggest using phpdev. It has apache, perl, mysql, and php and is very easy to install(if you know how to download and run files):
[firepages.com.au...]

[SilentKing]

Thanks you guys for your help so far. I see that I have alot of work cut out. But hopefully this hobby can turn into a stable career.