There has never been a better time to learn web development. What once required thousands of dollars and a six-month or four-year commitment to study is now available for free on the internet. Taking advantage of this opportunity will require motivation and discipline on your part to chart your own learning path and stick with it consistently.

Choose Your Focus

Every website has two types of programming, a back-end and the front-end. The back-end is full of the languages, databases and caches that make the site function on the internet. It works behind the scenes and is the most difficult to learn. Popular languages here include Ruby, Python and PHP. Unless you are a technically minded person, it is probably best to save the study of back-end programming for a later date. There are web hosting websites available on the internet that do this side of the programming for you.

The front-end of web development consists of the website’s design and layout as well as the content. Here you create what your users see when they come to your website. This end is built with HTML coding that forms the site’s layout and CSS coding that adds in the design portions of fonts and colors. JavaScript is also added to enable your website visitors to interact with the site. These three languages are very easy to learn and a great place for beginners to start.

Select Your Course

A quick internet search will help you find free courses to teach you the skill you want to focus on learning first. Choose options with positive reviews from former students. From there, narrow it down further to the one with a learning style that fits your personality, gives you coding assignments to practice your new skills and offers some form of feedback on your work.

Commit to a Schedule

To get the most out of your lessons, you need to commit to a daily course schedule. Even as little as one hour a day can keep you on track, but more time is always preferable. Do all of the quizzes, assignments and projects that come with your course as programming languages are learned by doing them regularly.

Expand Your Skills

Once you have learned one language, find a course to teach you the next one on your list. There will always be a new tool or skill to learn as web programming tends to evolve very quickly.

Learning web development on your own with free internet courses is achievable once you choose an area of focus, select the right course and commit to doing the work.