Stefan Mischook
August 8, 2011
What is the best way to learn web design?
Well, I’ve learned over the years that the best way to learn anything is to just do it. I would say that the theory-to-practical mix, should be say 20% theory and 80% practical.
Yep, academic shills (regardless of profession) are not only useless, they’re down right dangerous!! To avoid becoming an evil useless shill, you need to step it up and actually build websites, write code, make mistakes and learn from it.
We build our courses with that in mind.
If you check out our growing collection of web design training courses, you will notice a few things:
- They are very tasks oriented – you learn by doing.
- They are very practical – you learn stuff that people actually use in the field!
- The teachers are ALL experienced web designers and programmers – no academic shills here!!
Conclusion:
Yep, I’m shilling for our courses, but why not?
🙂
Besides, people like our stuff, check out just a small sampling of the emails we get:
www.killertestimonials.com/
Thanks.
Stefan Mischook
read more
August 2, 2011
Hi,
I know you’re busy, so I will get to the point: if you are having problems building your website or, you are thinking of building a website for say, your small business and you have questions, then a great place to go is the online forums.
Besides being a place frequented by web nerds of all skill levels, the forums are also a treasure trove of information on web design and web programming. We have forums on subjects like:
- HTML and CSS
- PHP and Javascript
- Dreamweaver and Photoshop
Best of all, our video tutorial authors frequent the forums – so you can talk to the experts directly. Check it out:
Killersites ‘Killer’ Web Design Forums
Final comment: if on the other hand, you are ready to start learning, then check out our collection of fine video tutorials.
Stefan Mischook
killersites.com
read more
July 18, 2011
Hi,
The one great fear any nerd has is the specter of outsourcing – will my job be outsourced to some cheaper part of the world?
Yes, free trade is really not free trade, it’s actually opening up barriers to allow big American, Canadian and European companies to ship jobs to much poorer countries so that they can save money on cheap labor.
The people who benefit are:
- The executives of the big companies, since they can pay themselves big bonuses. Of course, they are the few who WILL NOT have their jobs outsourced!
- The hard working people in the poorer countries – people of the west should not bear them any ill will. They are simply trying to earn a living like anyone else.
- Bankers – who see the stock prices rise in the publicly traded corporations. In fact, it seems the big Wall Street banks were the major force behind outsourcing.
… But it is not all bad for SMART web designers and programmers working in the crumbling west. Read on and learn how!
read more
July 7, 2011
How to Value Domain Names
A nerd’s Guide to the Business of Domain Names
Domain name speculation is a game/business that started the 1990’s, where less than savvy investors got hosed and bought up domains for huge sums of money … sometimes in the millions.
Like any speculative bubble, once the public smells easy money, whole industries are created and the game goes on until there aren’t any suckers left. See housing and the .com bubble days for examples.
Domain Name Speculators
There is now a class of web entrepreneur – people who buy domains and then they try to flip them for huge profit. People who buy to flip, are speculators. Speculator is a nice name for gambler.
Beware: the game of domain name flipping is pretty much the same as the game of house flipping … once people figure out that much of the perceived value is just a bunch of crap, the fake value crashes.
read more
June 26, 2011
Web Designers Roadmap
June 2011 – By: Stefan Mischook
PDF: web-designer-roadmap
The skills required in modern web design are constantly changing … that’s because the Web itself is always changing. If you want to be successful as either a web professional (web designer / programmer) or as web site owner, you have to keep up!
What to learn (as of 2011-2012) – in order of priority:
1. HTML
2. CSS
3. PHP basics
4. Javascript
5. JQuery
6. WordPress
7. OOP PHP (for programmers only)
8. HTML 5 and CSS 3
9. iPad / iPhone (choice of either: Objective C or HTML 5 + CSS 3)
Comments
read more
June 20, 2011
Every once in a while, something very big happens that affects the Web in general. Recently the iPad came out blowing away the market and effectively shutting down Flash by not allowing Flash to run on iPads.
… Yes, Flash is dying.
Unlimited Domain Names
The nerd powers that be, have just opened up the domain name market where any extension (suffix) is possible; no longer are we limited to .com, .net, .org etc … anything can go!!
That said, it ain’t cheap but it should still help put an end to the volture-like, blood sucking industry of after market domain names and cyber squatting losers, who can’t come up with anything more original than buying up a bunch of domain names, hoping to bilk someone in a resale.
From the article:
… people and companies will be able to set up a website with almost any address by the end of next year, if they have a legitimate claim to the domain name and can pay a hefty fee.
The Internet body that oversees domain names voted Monday to end restricting them to suffixes like .com or .gov and will receive applications for new names as of Jan. 12, with the first approvals likely by the end of 2012.
And they can be in any characters — Cyrillic, Kanji or Devanagari, for instance, for users of Russian, Japanese and Hindi.
Read more: New Domain Extensions
BTW, we have a new video course on how to build a CMS from scratch. Check it out!!
Stefan Mischook
read more
June 7, 2011
One of my main motivations is to teach you web design skills that are practical, marketable and in the end, will make you more money. We want to teach you how to make a living with those skills.
… Yes, web design for cash is a good thing – in fact, it’s the goal for many of us!
How to beat the competition:
Though the Web is growing faster than ever before, you still have a lot of competition out there when it comes to web design jobs. In fact, there are many more web designers today than ever before. Fortunately, we have a couple of big things going for us:
- The Web is many times bigger than it was in the 1990’s.
- Like the 1990’s, the key to getting ahead of the competition is not all that hard because (as always) we have one thing on our side: laziness! Yes, people are lazy.
The more you learn, the more you earn:
The key to getting ahead is found in learning. The more you know, the easier it will be to find work, to land that contract and to charge more for your time. It is important that you as a web professional continue to develop your skills and to look to what is coming around the bend – those who jump onto the next web technology trend, will be able to monetize that upside.
… Since most people are lazy and will only learn new techniques when they absolutely have to, all you need to do to get ahead, is to continue to the learn.
So, what are the web skills for today and tomorrow?
- HTML 5 and CSS 3.
- Tablets and smart phones: iPad, iPhone, Android.
- CMS development: WordPress, Drupal.
More later,
Stefan Mischook
read more
June 1, 2011
I am happy to announce yet another screencast tutorial for all you nerds out there: Build A Content Management System.
OK, not the most exciting title, but still an exciting course for those PHP nerds who want to go from PHP basics and get into building a full-fledged PHP application from scratch.
Learn how to build a content management system that provides a website all the tools needed to allow basic web users to manage the website content with ease. Over 6.5 hours of tutorials over 41 videos!
Here are some details about the video tutorial:
This course is aimed at intermediate level web developers, demonstrating how to build a basic PHP based content management system that uses object oriented programming techniques and implements the MVC pattern.
Along the way, I cover a wide range of technologies, including HTML and CSS, a bit of javascript/jQuery/AJAX and PHP/MySQLi. I also show how to integrate Colorbox (a jquery plugin) and TinyMCE (for the WYSIWYG functionality.)
Read more: Building a PHP based CMS
Check out the CMS course sample videos
Thanks,
Stefan Mischook
read more
May 24, 2011
Not web design related but I’m a nerd and I do have both the iPad 2 and the Blackberry Playbook. Before I get into my tablet review, please let me point out that I am a big-time Apple user. I have the MacBook Air and it is hands-down, the best computer I’ve ever used.
I rate tablets on the following criteria:
1. Quality of the OS
2. Quality of the hardware
3. The tablet’s ecosystem … apps!
The Playbook has superior hardware and the OS is better. iPad’s OS is clunky by comparison. Blackberry has a smaller screen (7inch vs. iPad’s 9 inch) making the Playbook easier to hold and handle but less attractive when viewing big pages.
That said, I use the Playbook all the time to browse the web. Oh yea, Playbook runs Flash with NO problems. Finally, the Playbook’s OS is much more stable (I’ve crashed the iPad 2 three times within 4 days) and the navigation is superior.
iPad’s Ecosystem is Amazing
iPad on the other hand, has a big advantage with the Apps. There are so many cool apps for the iPad, that no one else can compete in that regard. Playbook being very new, has just a little more than none.
Conclusion – should you get iPad 2 or the Playbook?
It is really use-case specific; if you plan on casually browsing the web and watching videos etc … then the Playbook. If on the other hand, you are interested in games and maybe apps related to education etc … then iPad.
Oh yea, Playbook has MUCH better sound. For reasons unknown (drunkenness perhaps?) Apple choose to put the speaker on the BACK of the iPad!! And finally, the Playbooks screen is sharper.
I personally got the Playbook for fun and the iPad for work.
Stefan
read more
May 10, 2011
Hi,
From a recent email sent to me:
Hi I am subscribed to Killersites University. I need to add a section on my website that members only can access with a password. Can you tell me where to look to learn how to do this?
Many thanks
There are a few ways to approach this and the way you choose depends on how complex this needs to be. Your options are:
– use php
– use htaccess
– use wordpress or another cms/blog engine .. it can do this for you.
In video library, you can look at:
Htaccess & Mod_Rewrite (4 Videos):
OR
The WordPress section.
OR
Learn basic PHP … The video section in the library is: Beginners PHP (16 Videos):
Another thing you should do is to post the question on the forum so others can jump in.
I hope that helps,
Stefan
read more
