Did you take any courses in high school/college/technical school, that you feel helped you be a better webmaster/forum owner? If so, which course and why?

I'm going to be enrolling back in school this summer (after a year off) and on the side of my current academic goals I'd like to take a few courses that would help me develop my webmaster/forum administration traits and skills.

Any suggestions?

i took tech drafting in high school and went right to work as a piping and mechanical designer. none of that helped with my online ventures, other then (this is stretching) i use autocad for work which has some similarities to photoshop which i use a lot online.

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I took web design 1 and 2 but it was a waste I learned nothing I didn't already know except how to do it in more efficient ways.

I took some programming classes but it was all C# or C++ which doesn't do anything for my websites but did allow me to create some neat windows apps that I use to retrieve new posts and info from my sites without having to go to all of them.

All in all though, I would say it was through trial and error and just looking at code and figuring out what that particular line of code did and used functions that did basically the same thing and just replaced variables and changed the sql query.

I would suggest reading PHP MySQL Bible, that was what really helped me understand the relationship between PHP & MySQL. I knew nothing but HTML prior to 2006. I'm not a programmer by no means but I can typically get done what I need to with my skills. I can't create something from scratch but I can modify existing code to do what I want... probably because that's how I learned. I didn't learn from scratch, but by looking at already written code.

If you want to learn how to do things from scratch I would suggest reading books and doing courses as looking at sites and code that is already there and looking at what it does just makes you really good at modifying code, not creating it. Just my personal experience, hope that helps.

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Thanks for the replies.

And thank you mh0825 for your unique reply! I've posted this question at a number of forums and you're the first person to explain to me why I shouldn't take a couple of specific courses. I will take that to heart and remember that when choosing my summer/fall courses.

I am currently back in school for Web Design and Interactive Media. It has taught me a lot, but I am also sure I could have learned everything on my own through different books. If you don't want to spend the money on classes, I would suggest buying the "Classroom in a Book" series for all of the Adobe products. Each book is reasonably priced and it comes with a CD to help you learn. This is what some of my instructors recommend and we have used them. They are great for beginners. Hope that helps!

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I'm majoring in Information Systems and it has some courses on internet stuff, in the winter semester I'm taking internet media and programming which is basically advanced web design so that should help with online stuff. And the general business classes in the degree should be good for the business side of things.

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I know courses differ between universities/countries, but do you think information systems is any good? I've been thinking of doing a major in Business Information Systems, I'd like to be some kind of IT Consultant

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In the US I would say computer science and information systems majors are some of the best majors to go with as there are a lot of jobs in those areas, they just seem to be popular choices right now. I would guess they are in similar situations around the world. To be honest I'm starting to become a little undecided on what I want to do, some of the required courses I'm not interested in at all and I'm not very motivated when my desired profession doesn't require a degree. But in answer to your question I'd say an IS major is the best way to go for what you want to do, make sure to talk to a professor or something if you have questions though because I'd hate to give you wrong information.

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Oh, I'll definitely ask lots of questions, I'm a long way off really starting to think about uni anyway.

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No problem. Glad it was useful

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