Workshop: Website Development

Course Objective:

To equip learners with the practical skills and theoretical knowledge to design, build, deploy, and maintain modern, responsive, secure, and accessible websites using standard web technologies and content management systems.

Target Audience:

Aspiring web developers, career changers, designers looking to add development skills, entrepreneurs, and marketing professionals.

Outline

Module 1: Web Technologies and Tools

• How the Web Works: Clients, servers, HTTP/HTTPS protocols, and DNS.
• Development Environments: Setting up a local development server (e.g., XAMPP, WAMP) and using code editors (e.g., VS Code).
• Version Control with Git: Repository basics, committing changes, and branching for project management.
• Browser Developer Tools: Using inspector tools for debugging HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
• Web Standards and Accessibility: Introduction to W3C standards and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Module 2: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Programming

• HTML5: Semantic HTML, forms, multimedia elements (audio, video), and embedding content.
• CSS3: Styling, the box model, advanced selectors, and modern layout techniques including Flexbox and CSS Grid.
• JavaScript Fundamentals: Variables, data types, functions, control flow, and DOM manipulation.
• Interactive Web Pages: Handling events, validating forms, and dynamically updating content without page reloads.
• Introduction to APIs: Fetching and displaying data from third-party RESTful APIs.

Module 3: Responsive Design and Mobile-first Approaches

• Mobile-First Philosophy: Strategy and benefits of designing for mobile devices first.
• Media Queries: Using breakpoints to adapt layouts for different screen sizes.
• Responsive Images: Using modern HTML tags (srcset, sizes) and CSS techniques to serve optimized images.
• Fluid Layouts: Using relative units (%, em, rem, vw, vh) for flexible component sizing.
• Cross-Browser Compatibility: Ensuring websites function correctly on different browsers and devices.

Module 4: Content Management Systems (CMS)

• Introduction to CMS: Understanding the benefits of using a CMS like WordPress.
• WordPress Installation & Configuration: Manual installation and using hosting control panels.
• Theme Development: Converting HTML/CSS templates into custom WordPress themes; understanding the template hierarchy.
• Plugin Integration: Sourcing, evaluating, and customizing plugins to extend functionality.
• Content Management: Creating and managing posts, pages, and custom post types for clients.

Module 5: Website Optimization and Security

• Performance Optimization: Techniques for minification, lazy loading, and reducing HTTP requests to improve page load times.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): On-page SEO techniques, including meta tags, semantic structure, and sitemaps.
• Website Security: Common vulnerabilities (e.g., SQL injection, XSS), implementing HTTPS, and best practices for securing a WordPress site.
• Web Hosting & Deployment: transferring files via FTP/SFTP, managing databases, and deploying a site from a local environment to a live server.
• Analytics: Integrating tools like Google Analytics to track website traffic and user behavior.