Areas Of Study In Web

Last Edited: on 14/1/10

Fields Of Study

Different subjects and topics relevant to learning web development and design. If you have other subjects you would like to learn about, feel free to add them below.


Web Design

  • Graphic Design: logo, page layout, navigation. Heavily uses Photoshop and Illustrator
  • CSS + (X)HTML: Coding the appearance of pages and layout. Emphasis on useability, and web standards. Uses text editors and css editors (Dreamweaver)
  • Javascript: Making pages dynamic on the user-side. Emphasis on AJAX (dynamic data loading) and DHTML (animation)
  • Flash: Animated interactive movies or media presentation. Allows for massive pain in the ass
  • ActionScript 3.0: A powerful, object-oriented programming language that signifies an important step in the evolution of the capabilities of the Flash Player runtime. (Also in Web Development)
  • Interface Design: Making websites as user-friendly as possible, through the areas specified above

Web Developement

  • MySQL: Database design and data storage
  • PHP: Server-side coding, allows for dynamic pages and interaction with databases or other datasources
  • ASP: Microsoft Server-side coding, allows for massive pain in the ass
  • AJAX: Study of how to communicate parameters and return relevant information during the use of AJAX
  • ColdFusion: Provides a complete solution for building powerful database-driven websites, rich Internet applications, and advanced web services.
  • Flex: Highly productive, free open source framework for building and maintaining expressive web applications that deploy consistently on all major browsers, desktops, and operating systems.

Search Engine Optimization

On-Site:

  • CSS + (X)HTML: Clean and efficient coding
  • User Accessibility: Labeling, gracefully degradable code
  • Web Crawlers: follow vs nofollow, crawlable pages / content / navigation
  • Relevant content: Emphasis on Google algorithms for relevance of content to keywords or topics
Off-Site:

     Organic SEO:
  • Comments, Posts, Cross-linking
  • Social Networking
  • Virulent Sharing
     Inorganic SEO:
  • Pay-Per-Click
  • Ad-Sense
  • Advertising
  • Paid Cross-linking

Database / Server Administration

  • (S)FTP + SSH: File transferring to and from the server, shell access and control of server with basic shell interface commands.
  • Apache + PHP: Emphasis on htaccess files and authorization, php.ini configuration, and server-side modules like mod_rewrite (url reformatting) and gd-library (php generated images)
  • Database Administration: Emphasis on phpMyAdmin and SQL, instruction in common basic query commands in addition to advanced reporting features and uses.
  • Database Normalization: Emphasis on creative intuitive naming conventions for usage through the database to ease utilization and development
  • Domain Registration: Emphasis on name-servers and CNAME and A Records. Common techniques for purchasing and setting up domain names.
  • Hosting: Emphasis on server hardware, storage and bandwidth capabilities. Cloud Hosting, Virtual Private Server vs True Private Server, Shared hosting. Heavily Uses CPanel
  • Security: Emphasis on ports, password security, script (PHP) and file structure and security.
  • Cron Jobs: Automated tasks and scripts the server runs on a regular basis.