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We get a lot of questions about learning, but part of getting a job is also experience. Volunteering is not just a way to get experience but also built up a body of work and employers do tend to like people who volunteer. So how can I get experience? What are you thinking with volunteering? 1. Teaching: This will depend on your experience and area. In Germany I helped Youth Club staff build good web sites. Here in Juneau I did a seminar for local businesses. Here at Killersites I have learned things or made “mental connections” as I have tried to teach or help many of you with your issues. Often when helping others you realize other ways of doing things that you never considered before, you learn things answering other’s questions. Maybe teach a local high school computer club good web design. 2. Free web work: Like many others I did web work for some non-profit sites. I did the work for free, so they got a cheap web site and I had a web site to show besides my own and a professional reference for my application. Look around at charities, churches, and other non-profit entities online or your area. 3. Volunteering: Naturally any place you volunteer will aid you. I will stick with IT work here though. Even if it is not web design, you have more computer experience than most average folks to you can be of great help just doing basic IT stuff. You will also learn new skills and experience other IT areas you like more. I started in web design, then went to programming and am now my divisions cyber security person. So, do not fear volunteering for “other” IT work. A. Red Cross/Crescent – The Red Cross works differently is different countries, so I can only speak to the American Red Cross (ARC), but my guess is that the Canadian Red Cross, Deutsches Rotes Kreuz e.V., etc. will have the same needs, just other terms. i. Disaster Services Technology (DST): The ARC is going digital more each year, many of the tools they use are online. Every time ARC volunteers deploy to a disaster, some of the first ones in are DST, and there are never enough DST volunteers. So, as long as volunteers are in the field at disasters, so are their technical support. Computers: There is a sub-team that handles passing out, setting up, managing and maintaining and collecting computers. Also support for the apps used. Networking: A sub-team that specifically deals with networking, connectivity, and Servers. Big disasters like this fall will have field servers deployed, many communications may be down, so we set up satellite internet connections. We use wired and WiFi connections, routers, switches and set up printers. Communications: This sub-team passes out and supports smart phones, tablets, handheld and mobile radios, radio base stations, antennas etc. Customer support: This is basically the help desk folks who help the users. [NOTE: these are the four official jobs in DST, but the disaster decides the actual build. You may find yourself doing multiple jobs if the disaster is not as big or there are not enough volunteers. DST from hurricane Harvey is still in the field from all over the country, and it is usually a two week deployment, so they constantly need people, so there may not be enough. I am the only DST member for all of SE Alaska] ii. IT End User Services (IT EUS) – Another ARC group to consider for those times between disasters. This is really just the IT shop for the ARC broken into regions. I am currently going through the process. As an EUS volunteer I will be dealing with maintenance and troubleshooting of ARC computers in my area, helping other volunteer and staff with their computer problems, running updates etc. Again, I am the only EUS person for SE Alaska, the nearest are almost 6 miles away in Anchorage. iii. There are many other volunteer jobs for logistics, shelter workers etc. with any of the Red Cross/Crescents as well both day to day and disaster situations. B. CyberPatriot – CyberPatriot is a national youth cyber education program run each year by the Air Force Association (AFA) and partners. The AFA sees the lack of cyber security trained people on the US workforce to be a National Security Issue. They want to get more youth interested in STEM and computer jobs and increase the number of women in the IT sector. You can volunteer as an assistant coach for teams in your area, or you can contact schools or organizations in the area to coach your own teams. This competition is not just for the geeks, it is built for people, teens or coaches with no idea about computers and or cyber security to be able to comete as the whole idea is to get kids not interested in computers to reconsider. It is a two-part program. i. The education part entails teaching youth to use the internet in a safe manner. They support schools or others running cyber safety summer camps and such activities. ii. Part two is the CyberPatriot Cyber Defense Competition where teams from across the US (I think Canada too) made up of teenagers, compete nationally for the best score finding vulnerabilities and securing a server system. Teams can be from schools, military organizations like JROTC or Civil Air Patrol Cadets for instance and other groups like boy scouts. They are even pushing for all-female teams. C. Civil Air Patrol – Quite wide spread down south, CAP is a civilian corporation owned by the US Air Force. Its task is the primary Search & Rescue agency in the US. Primarily for missing aircraft, but also hikers, boaters, etc. They are all volunteers and always need pilots, air crews, ground search personnel and those to run the search. Among other squadron jobs, there is an official job for IT personnel. So, check your local CAP squadrons, volunteer and maybe be their IT shop or if they have Cadets, offer to coach a Cadet CyberPatriot team. D. National Collegiate Cyber Defense Championship – I have not dealt with this group, but it is a college version of CyberPatriot more or less, just for college students. If you live in a college town this may be another possible point to help out. This is just a partial list based on what I generally have had experience with. Anyone else have suggestions, even from their own countries, go ahead and add it. Just remember that when you volunteer you help your community and yourself. You can gain much broader experience that can only help you get jobs or pad your university application. Getting into cyber type stuff will give you a deeper grasp of computers and servers and help ensure your future web design customers have secure web sites.

A few things will cause your site to not appear in the search engines. First thing is to be sure this line of code IS NOT in your pages: <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"> ... The above code tells the search engines to ignore your page and any links in the page. Instead, use this code: <meta name="robots" content="all"> You can learn more here: https://developers.google.com/search/reference/robots_meta_tag Check out this screenshot for details:

Hi, I was playing with the Galaxy tab recently and I have to admit that I was reasonably impressed - I'd say 86.4% impressed. So along with iPad, iPhone and Android phones, we are now looking at a pretty big group of people on the Web using these new types of Web surfing devices. I think web designers will have to take notice. ...HTML5 and CSS3 comes to mind. Fortunately though, if you are using standard HTML 4 and CSS2, your pages will look fine on all these devices. HTML5 and CSS3 just take things to a whole new level. Anyone developing for iPads or Android devices around here yet? Stef

Understandably, videos are a great way to connect with your audience. A site like YouTube, with over 30 million visitors a day, has great ranking power and that’s something to take advantage of. Assuredly, youtube is the 2nd most frequent queried search engine(after Google). So, by ranking your video on youtube you can easily convey your insights and ideologies in a way faster. But how to make your youtube video findable, right? Here are a few tricks and tips which would surely work for you: -The videos must be of high quality. -To rank YouTube videos, you first need to decide what keywords to go after. It’s not enough to just pick a random keyword. It must be relevant, searched for, and have low competition. -Share your videos on social media, Social media can be a powerful asset to bring in substantial outside traffic to YouTube videos. -Write a good description of the video, include your keyword into the first 156 symbols of the description. Your video description helps YouTube and Google understand the context of your video.

Hi! I'm Robin and I have been engaged in web design for over a year. It's a short term, but I already have some experience in this area and I want to launch my website on this topic.

Yes indeed. I've teaching about this for years. Knowing the foundations of coding will make you much better with Wordpress because at some point you will be working with code. And knowing code will give you a deep understanding you would have otherwise. The IWD course will kickstart your career either way.

Hi! First page of every course has the source files with all the codes of the CSS course.

Book nor needed with the HTML5 course. All my courses are designed to stand alone.

Type "Site: your domain" in the google search and they will show you the pages which are indexed.

You tell them that you are a web developer, not an SEO consultant. Go hire an SEO consultant. If they want you to do it, there's an extra charge - get them to pay you a monthly retainer to manage their SEO needs. If they don't like the results they can cancel anytime. This falls into the bracket of managing customer expectations. Also putting people off getting you do silly work. If you don't want to do it, put your price up so they don't ask you to do it... or you're happy to do it because you're getting paid well.

Hmmm ... Sounds like a MAMP specific setting issue. Worst case, you can put that code into a separate file, and use PHP includes to include it.

Hi all. I'm new to Killersites, so I'll give my, hopefully, quick intro. I have a career in broadcast audio but started thinking about programming for fun, and maybe a side job. I have been doing an open courseware class on programming with python, which has been good. Although you don't get tested and there's no feedback. On my YouTube feed I see programming videos and recently Stefan's videos came up. I was impressed by his direct manner and how he speaks with clarity. I wrote him for some advice on programming vs. web development as a freelance job. He responded quickly, which impressed me. So I just signed up for the web developer course. Once I get a little further into it I'll probably get the freelancer course, because I will need help with that! I am going to finish off the programming with python class. But my focus will be on the web development course. My goal is to have a side hustle that I find satisfying and I can make some good money.

Template is a layout that can't be modified. Where as a website layout can be built using different codes.

Finally i can say that i found a home - this community... So I am 32 y old junior web developer that bumped into many walls and obstructions and never got full commitment to start freelancing career. Since 2002 I am working with computers. Started as Computer Repairs guy in neighborhood installing Windows XP ( cracked one ) for a 10$ price. Yea in Croatia it was not a problem to use Torrents and enjoy the world of stolen software Well in my Country it was hard to find a work in IT, and because i needed to bring food to my family i started working as a Heavy Truck Driver. I now live and work in Germany. Well my education goes really on many sides and now its the time... This is what I know as a junior guy (finished some boot-camps in Croatia and drop off after 2 years of University): HTML, CSS C#.NET, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, MSSQL ( i left those technologies 5 years ago cos in that time VisualStudio IDE needed to be payed (funny-now i pay for PHP Storm )) PHP, MySQL ( did not work with it for a last 3 years-yea long brake) Photoshop, Lightroom ( I was doing some professional photography - Canceled subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud ) Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo ( best switch ever ) So after a long brake and with a support of my family i will use my next 2-3 months (maybe more) to come back at a track once again... I had bought Interactive Web Development Course and i know it was the best thing i could ever do! ( also using books from Jon Duckett - HTML&CSS; JavaScrip&JQuery) My plan is to work as WordPress web developer - but who knows: “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.” I will do my best to be active in this community and support other users with my basic but overall all around knowledge - While helping others i help myself as well... I will share all my experience during this road trip - especially because i will do it from Germany ( EU ) and i really don´t know German language ( only basic ). So i need to find solutions to register small business in Germany, find all EU translations, find coworkers, find a ways to contact costumers who do not speak English etc... Who knows: Maybe it will be helpfully to someone... Well I am sorry that i had written Harry Potter Book over here Wish you all the best

Good stuff.

I'm new to web development, but I do presently run my own lawn service business with my wife. Getting customers is the hardest part, of probably most businesses. From what I have heard and tried myself, creating content is the best way to get customers. First off you need a site, then you need to optimize it for SEO, meta tags, keywords, relevant terms in the text of the site. You'll need to set up Google My Business to recognize it. Including a blog on the site for you to publish short articles and images would help. You'll also want to set up a Facebook page for the business, and accounts through Twitter, Instagram, Google+. Videos on Youtube would also help. All of this stuff will point back to your site and should slowly increase your ranking on Google. These are just some of the basics. You'll have to do some other things to get the flow of customers started. Try getting on Upwork, maybe try Craigslist, Youtube videos giving advise to non-techies about websites, with a little helpful self-promotion, would probably be a good way to start funneling people to your site. Stef has some courses on this stuff. I haven't tried them yet, still learning the basics of web dev. John Morris on also has a TON of videos about getting customers through Upwork, you might check those out. I have a close friend who works for a SEO service firm. I plan to eventually give them a shot once I start the ball rolling. He says they are very good. This is kinda my general game plan anyways.

Thanks for the reply. I should have been more patient since the box model of CSS was my favourite part of the course, exactly what I was looking for.

Hi, Sometimes people have trouble downloading. Please email me directly and I will arrange a special download: stefan at killersites.com

I would love to try and help you out - however, I'm still not clear what exactly you want. I gather some posts on the website you provided the link for - but which posts? Where? What? Would applying a class to whichever parts you want highlighted do it? My mindreading skills unfortunately are not nearly as well developed as my sarcasm skills :-) --- However - aside from your background question, looking at your site briefly, I noticed all kinds of grammar and punctuation issues. You might want to get someone to look things over - stuff like that leaves a very unprofessional taste in one's mouth. Here's a short list of things I noticed: Logo on top usually takes on to the home page - yours is not a link On your landing page, under 'Get in touch' it says: We are based in [geolifycontent id="18283"]. The line height under Dedicated IT Australia is larger than the rest - looks mismatched. The big 'Though our 16 yrs of experience ....' probably should be 'ThRough our... and I'd spell out years and put a comma after experience. At the bottom "Bad SEO practices is missing a 'to' between lead and Google. On my browser (Chrome on PC) in the blue 'Our Offer' box, it cuts off the end of the word 'commitment' Good luck with things - looking forward for some more details from you, so we can help better.

SEO means Searach Engine Optimization. Google search engine robots works with specific algorithms and as per those rules your website must include meta tags like description, keywords and alternate tag for images. If you want to know in details then Google it with "Seo trends"?

Well remember Rule # 1 - When in doubt do whatever LSW tells you to do, he is the best thing since sliced bread. First a reply to: Why does that not surprise me? I have yet to deal with a class that actually teaches you good coding habits, by school taught the same mistakes. Simply ask yourself Why? Why would I want to repeat what I already have? <a href=”whatever” title=”Cause LSW says so”>Cause LSW says so</a> What possible argument can there be for repeating? As for the screen readers, yes... It will read out "Cause LSW says so Cause LSW says so". Now if that would not get redundant for vision impaired users on each and every one on each and every page. So for SunnyOne, you can see the issue with adding a title to every anchor. If you are still in the class, you should point this out to the instructor and the school needs to consider covering web accessibility issues. There is no requirement for titles, they are only to be used when they have value for the user. In the example above, is their other content than the Main Content or would not Content imply the main content? If there is another secondary content, it would likely be in side bar or sub-box in which I would still expect Content to be main content and something else would be Box content or side content etc. Of course the best thing in this case is simply to say what it is, rather than "Content", why not simply state "Main Content"? Now I assume this is just for example, but the question is what is keeping me from stating what I want to say? Can't I say it clearly so I do not need to explain it further? The issue I have with the forum comment you made is that people once again do not understand that there is no SEO vs Accessibility, they are the same thing. SEO is optimizing for a SE spider, a "machine" that records pages and contents. It is as blind as many disabled users. If you optimize a site for special needs users, especially the vision impaired, then at the same time you are optimizing for the blind machine you want to make life easy for. Just remember folks that you are building web sites for the user, the human. They have to be able to use it. No. 1 ranking is of no use of the user arrives and can't easily find what they want. People are the priority and not machines. But anything done to make the site easier to use for humans will make it better for the machines and up your ranking. So no, you should never use the title attribute unless it is NEEDED to better clarify a target that you cannot clarify in the actual anchor text. As a side note to it's cousin alt=" ", the alt attribute should always be present for every image, but left empty if just for decoration. This will indicate to the screen reader user that there is an image but it is of no importance. If you do not use the alt attribute the screen reader may (depends on age and user preference) read the name of the image "ksikodjsk.jpg" which is as irritating as anything. So always use the alt attribute, even when empty & at least use decent names for images so they get "image topLeftCorner JPG" rather than "image ksikodjsk jpg". The alt attribute is for passing along information the user cannot get visually. So "image LSW recieving the 'What a good guy' award from President Obama" instead of "image ksikodjsk jpg" or "image Bar chart showing 56% increase this year compared to 43% increase last year for this quarter" instead of "image ksikodjsk jpg" Both the alt and the title attributes are really simple to use once one considers what they are for and who they are for. Once again a spider will get more out of an alt attribute than an image file name, so accessibility for the impaired user is accessibility for the spider hence SEO. So to finish off my usual seminar length post: Titles. If you have an :image title" under (or wherever) the image that says "LSW recieving the 'What a good guy' award from President Obama", you do not need to use it in an alt attribute or the user will here "LSW recieving the 'What a good guy' award from President Obama image LSW recieving the 'What a good guy' award from President Obama." If your content is rather clear that I received and award from President Obama, you can cut the alt or image title back to "LSW recieves award". So I strayed a bit off, but only because title and alt are much the same and both can result in irritating repeats for screen reader users or repetitive tool tips. Understanding one helps understanding the other. Disclaimer: If you do not know me, this was with humor and not arrogance.

With MySQL PHPMyAdmin is easiest. I haven't learned how to do it the other ways.

Ohhh I get tired of such "articles," they are usually so off it is not funny. (By the way we have a whole accessibility section covering all of this.) Just imagine accessibility being created for SEO and not for those users who actually need it to use web sites. And why push XHTML when IE does not even support it? Clearly the author has no idea of the difference of XHTML. It is more important to use the right MIME-TYPE, if you do not specify it as XHTML, then you are just serving up poorly written HTML. If you do specify it correctly as a XML language, IE will crash. So if you are serving XHTML as HTML then it is logical to write HTML. XHTML is useless until IE supports it correctly. First off it is not an "Alt Tag", a tag is between < >, the alt is between " " and therefore part of a tag making it an attribute. One can question reading an article where the author does not seem to know the difference. But maybe it was a typo. The alt attribute is required to be there yes, but it is not required to be filled out. If the image has actual important meaning, you fill out the text to explain it or to describe it to users without images, such as blind users. It is also useful for spyders, but it does not exist for SEO. If it is just decorative fluff or of no real importance to the content, you leave it empty so users know there is an image they are missing but it is of no importance. Simply wrong. Meta tags have little to do with accessibility, only SEO and finding the page. You can make web sites with no meta tags at all. Language HELPS to specify a language so you can rule out the site if you do not speak the language. A screen reader will already be set for a primary language and that is the sites it will likely visit. The language meta tag can help it possible switch to a different language, or you can use the language attribute to tell it the following text is a different language. Useful for quotes or maybe company names in a different language for instance. Description tags are generally only used by search engines as a description of the site content, however most search engines these days use the first part of the content for that. Meta tags have not been used by search engines for years as they were misused by those sites of questionable morals to lure people in. Something I can actually agree with. Just a but vague. Clear and logical navigation benefits all users, it benefits you as it is a benefit to the search spyder to quickly find the info a searcher would want. It however is a must for those with disabilities, especially cognitive disabilities like autism, ADHD or general concentration issues as well as using keyboards rather than a mouse. Once more shall we. There is only one "correct" DOCTYPE, Strict. Frames are out and Transitional is just that, transitional, meaning not permanent. It was meant as a temporary fix to help people move from one language to another, aka HTML 4.0 to HTML 4.1. It is not a requirement, just a good idea. It only makes a real difference to the validate program. The info in the doctype is already with the server along with the mimeType when you request it, before the web page loads. The only reason to have it in the header is to let a browser know what it is when it has been downloaded to a HD and has no contact with the server. The Doctype in an online page is of no use to the user or SEO, or accessibility. With the help of above mentioned questionable techniques, a person can easily tell that the author really has no bloody idea what he/she is on about, but hey, they have article with their name on it, whoopee.

Thank you everybody, Never mind I manage to fine the Airline and Hotel Reservations System. :cool:

Using a reset stylesheet to set browser default values (along the lines of what Thelma suggested) really helps make things consistent. I'd suggest doing a search for "reset stylesheet" or looking at this: http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/05/01/reset-reloaded/