The demand for web developers is expected to grow 16% from 2022 to 2023, a “much faster” growth than average, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. With that demand in mind, web development could be a lucrative first (or second) career.
We’ve gathered a list of convenient courses to help you start or further pursue work in web development. Courses can provide structured learning and certificates that can prove work ethic and skills to a potential employer. In order to select the best web development courses, we chose courses that had positive reviews on their platforms and on Reddit and courses which covered contemporary web development in a way that would lend itself well to inclusion on a resume.
To start out in web development, you’ll need to learn how to build a website using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Many web development skills can be learned for free. For instance, I learned some HTML for free by making forums as a teenager, and I still sometimes use it for work. Also, the CSS tutorial from W3Schools has a lot of good information and a very easy-to-use sandbox that helped me become more familiar with CSS.
In order to become a web developer, learn to solve real-world problems as soon as you can and create personal projects that expand and display your skills. That way, you can learn at the same time as you build a portfolio for potential employers.
| The Web Developer Bootcamp (Udemy) | ||||
| The Complete 2024 Web Development Bootcamp (Udemy) |
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| Web Applications for Everybody Specialization (Coursera) | ||||
| IBM Full Stack Software Developer Professional Certificate (Coursera) | ||||
| HTML and CSS in Depth (Coursera) |
The Web Developer Bootcamp course is taught by Colt Steele, a developer and teacher who primarily teaches web development on Udemy and YouTube. He even worked full time as a course developer at Udacity for a bit. Reviews praise his teaching style and the course’s comprehensive material. This course was last updated in June 2024.
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This course costs $149.99. It can be accessed through a Udemy plan, which is $21 per month for individuals with a seven-day free trial.
The instructor, Dr. Angela Yu, is another Udemy teacher with good word-of-mouth reviews. She teaches both this course and an in-person programming bootcamp. The Complete 2024 Web Development Bootcamp is praised for Yu’s teaching style and the course’s understandable and entertaining approach to the fundamentals of the field. Plus, this course is up to date with current technologies, versions and use cases.
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This course costs $109.99. It can be accessed through a Udemy plan, which is $21 per month for individuals and has a seven-day free trial.
Building web applications brings the prospective web developer into the world of the details you need to use web servers. In this course, you’ll learn the basics of how web browsers interact with web servers, then work your way up to building database applications in PHP and database design in SQL. The PHP and SQL sections may be particularly useful for people who manage databases at work and want to be sure they understand the fundamentals of web development first. The last course in the specialization covers JSON, the jQuery library and JavaScript.
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This course costs $49 per month after a seven-day free trial.
This is one of the longer courses on this list, with a robust curriculum of 12 courses taught by the IBM Skills Network Team, including one on web development. This certification is approved for inclusion for college credit in some online degree programs, too. Because this is a relatively lengthy and rigorous course, it might be especially helpful to show this certification on a resume, especially because the certification guides you through a project that can help build out your GitHub portfolio. This certification covers many of the front-end languages the other courses on this list touch on, including HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
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This course costs $49 per month after a seven-day free trial.
As the title suggests, this course from Meta focuses on two of the building blocks of web development: HTML and CSS. You can complete this course within the time span of Coursera’s free trial, so signing up for it is a relatively low-commitment option. An assessment at the end tests what you have learned. Reviews for this course are mixed, with the relatively brisk coverage of the material not working for everyone, but we chose to keep it on our “best” list because of the number of positive reviews, Meta’s pedigree and the convenience of one module covering both basic programming languages.
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This course costs $49 per month after a seven-day free trial.
