Why Web Design

This Diploma will give you the skills you need to build and maintain a website.

This programme is ideal for you if you:

• Are looking for a new and challenging career in the area of web design and development.
• Are tired of being overcharged by web design companies for small changes to your website.
• Have been given the job maintaining your company’s website and want to know more about how the back-end is built.
• Have your own business, or are involved in a start-up business, and need to create a professional commercial website.
• Want to adopt practical SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques to your website to increase customer traffic to your website.
• Wish to become competent in using Sublime Text on of the leading industry web design and programming software tools for developing web pages.

Web Design Course Overview

Learning to design a website requires mastering many different skills, from organizing the structure of the website, making sure it is easy to use and navigate, to designing the graphics and layout of the information.

This part-time web design course concentrates on the fundamentals of building a website. It starts with the basics, using HTML code to build a basic site, giving you a solid foundation in how a website is designed. The course then moves you into how to use an html editor for code, markup and prose.

The final section of the web design course then introduces you to GIMP – GNU Image Manipulation Program. Learning this tool allows you to manipulate images to make them suitable for websites and other online platforms.

You will also be introduced to Bootstrap which is a free front-end framework for faster and easier web development. Bootstrap includes HTML and CSS based design templates for typography, forms, buttons, tables, navigation, modals, image carousels and many other, as well as optional JavaScript plugins it also gives you the ability to easily create responsive designs.

Course Content

On completion of the Diploma in Web Design Course graduates will be able to:

• Use HTML5 to a competent level
• Use the Bootstrap front-end framework
• Design, construct and maintain Web pages and a Web site
• Support the building, testing and refining of Web pages and sites.

Elements of Web Design:

• Introduction to the common language behind Web Pages
• Create a website using HTML
• Change the title bar of the web page
• Change the background of a web page
• Add text to a web page
• Change font, font size and font colour
• Email links
• Internal Links
• External Links
• Insert a picture

HTML

• Introduction to the common language behind most Webpages
• Create a website using HTML/HTML5
• Change the title bar of the web page
• Change the background of a web page
• Add text to a web page
• Change font, font size and font color
• Email links
• Internal Links
• External Links
• Insert a picture

Sublime Text Editor

This is a professional web-editing package and is used quite a lot in the web industry.

• Defining a Site
• Change the title bar of the web page
• Change the background of a web page
• Add text to a web page
• Change font, font size and font color
• Working with Anchors Email links
• Internal Links
• External Links
• Insert a picture
• Resize an image
• Saving Images
• Adding Alt text to images
• Working with tables
• Changing table properties

GIMP – GNU Image Manipulation Program

• Learning the basics of how to use an image package.
• Optimize an image file
• Create your own logo
• Resize an image

Bootstrap front-end framework

• How to implement Bootstrap in existing web sites
• Common Bootstrap components
• How to use Bootstrap themes

 Good site Management

• Importance of managing internet files and folders.
• Naming files properly
• Naming folders properly
• Saving images to the correct folder
• Saving pages to the correct folder

  FTP

• Uploading & downloading to the internet.
• Connecting to a remote server
• Managing your files on the remote server
• Transferring files to a remote server
• Updating files on the remote server
• Deleting files on the remote server

Search Engines & Meta Tags

• Introduction to SEO – Search Engine Optimization
• What are Meta tags?
• Where to add them in your website
• How to add your website to search engines

Career Opportunities

Upon completion Diploma in Web Design course, students will be able to design a basic website and maintain and update existing websites. They will have a good understanding of how HTML works, be competent using Bootstrap and be able to do some basic image manipulation in GIMP. As businesses move online it is becoming increasingly important that marketing and sales functions particularly have an understanding of the basic principles of web development and can update information about their product and or/services online.