Today, almost all the successful companies promote their products and services online. Such a tendency has led to the brisk demand for web design professionals on the labor market. Whether you want to start a career in this field, get promotion or just build a site for personal purposes, you’ll need to take an easy yet detailed course. Choose one from our fresh set of the best online website design courses, both paid and free.
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Web design is a broad field that embraces a lot of diverse concepts. When designing a site, it’s not enough to focus solely on its visual side. There are also many other interrelated aspects that you must deal with. In fact, coding and web design go hand in hand, which requires understanding at least the main languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. For that reason, our selection has a lot of courses revealing secrets of coding in an easy-to-understand manner.
Online courses are perfect for self-motivated individuals who want to study in the comfort of home. E-learning can be as effective as traditional, face-to-face education and, additionally, provides enormous flexibility. You are free to learn anything, anytime and anywhere you want, staying beyond any time or place limits. If you’ve never undergone online training, you are advised to give it a try with the best online website design courses featured below. In our hand-picked selection, you can find the right solution regardless of your budget and skill level. To begin with, you can take a free course and bring your skills to an advanced level using a premium one.
Browse through our selection, and get ready for better career prospects and bright future. Keep in mind that the most important thing is to begin!
Premium Online Web Design Courses
Let’s start with the premium course providers, each of which has an excellent reputation and large student base.
Lynda
Lynda is an extensive resource comprising over 330 web design courses and nearly 9,500 video tutorials. It has courses for everyone, whether you are a beginner or an experienced designer. They cover topics including web design basics, foundations of UX, child themes, responsive design, and much more. There are also courses for various kinds of software, e.g. Bootstrap, WordPress, Adobe, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and Zurb tutorials.
Becoming a member of the Lynda community, you’ll have an unlimited access to any online course from its weekly updated library. You can also download project files and tools used by instructors for teaching. Premium members, unlike standard ones, have an opportunity to watch video courses offline via iPhones and iPads. When it comes to searching for the necessary courses, you can sort them by the release date, title, author, skill level, and kind of software. For convenience, it’s possible to organize the preferable courses in custom playlists.
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Team Treehouse
Team Treehouse offers a constantly updated library of courses highlighting web design fundamentals such as branding, coloring, typography, CSS, HTML, Sass, etc. What makes this resource convenient is its track-based structure. The web design track consists of 14 courses that last 51 hours all together. To test the acquired knowledge, you can practice live by means of quizzes and code challenges. Along the way, you will earn points for gaining new skills and badges for completing entire stages. In such a way, it’s easy to track your learning history. Pro members also have an access to conference recordings and some other extra content.
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StackSkills
StackSkills is a cool resource with top-shelf courses on web design. It has different categories related to the target subject, particularly web development, WordPress and design. The latter category is composed of Photoshop tutorials guiding through various aspects such as fundamentals, color management, typography, PSD to HTML, etc. In the category of web development, there are courses on jQuery, JavaScript, creation of mobile-first websites, and much more. The category of WordPress offers courses on WP theme design, security, backup, online selling with WooCommerce, membership site building, and other issues.
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CreativeLive
CreativeLive is another premium source of the top online web design classes. Expert instructors can educate you on multiple aspects of the target field, e.g. custom lettering, branding, creation of color schemes, and optimization of graphics for the web. To list some more examples, CreativeLive offers classes on building responsive WP sites, editing WP themes with HTML and CSS, designing sites in Illustrator, etc. If you are involved in eCommerce, you can find useful tutorials related to this field. As you see, the choice is really wide. For easier search, it’s possible to sort classes by the popularity and date.
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SitePoint
SitePoint is an educational hub for web professionals including designers and developers. Video courses are divided into HTML & CSS, JavaScript, design & UX, mobile, and some other categories. In the library of this resource, you can find a lot of introductory courses meant to give beginners a kick-start in mastering popular web techniques and tools. To list some of them, it’s worth mentioning Photoshop, WordPress, Joomla, Foundation, Bootstrap, and more. There are also courses for people with an intermediate level of skills. They can help you learn about using CSS3 selectors, advanced WP features, Sass and Compass concepts, etc.
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KelbyOne
KelbyOne is a premium online training resource for creative individuals. The section of design offers courses whose authors teach different things using different tools. For example, you can learn how to create sites with Adobe Muse, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver. There are also tutorials on building online portfolios with InDesign and Lightroom. If you want to leverage the power of Photoshop in your web projects, you will also find a diversity of courses taught by industry experts. For a monthly membership payment, you’ll get a limitless access to the full library of KelbyOne. Moreover, this resource provides an option of offline course viewing on the go, via iOS devices.
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Skillshare
Skillshare provides online training in a wide range of web design concepts. Here, you can learn how to build effective marketing homepages, WP landing pages, layouts for content-heavy sites, interactive HTML5 & CSS3 animations, cohesive palettes, etc. Skillshare classes work as follows: you can watch them at your own pace and learn by doing. The majority of classes won’t take more than an hour of your time. If you have no Internet connection, you can watch video lessons offline. Just make sure you download them to your tablet or mobile phone beforehand. The resource is supplied with an option to filter tutorials by trending, best and new ones. Keep in mind that some of Skillshare courses are available for free.
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Free Online Web Design Courses
Now, let’s proceed to providers of free online web design training courses. Take an opportunity to study an in-demand subject without spending a cent.
Startup Hub
Startup Hub is meant for individuals who have no idea, in which direction they should take the first steps in web design. This resource is currently divided into two sections, Startup Basics and WordPress Startup. In the former section, you can find the info about choosing the right CMS, using ready-made themes, making sites mobile-friendly, building an e-store, etc. The latter section is focused solely on WordPress, particularly the creation of a WP site, choice of a WP theme, its installation, customization, security, and more. What’s cool about this resource is a possibility to contact consultants via a live chat and get professional help for free. So, if you are looking for a beginner-oriented course, Startup Hub is definitely a must-see for you.
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Aquent Gymnasium
Aquent Gymnasium provides absolutely free instruction that is focused on in-demand skills and technologies of web design. Taught by experienced practitioners and available 24/7, courses of Aquent Gymnasium are divided into full and short ones. Full courses come with videos of 3-6 hours, assignments, and quizzes, while short courses offer videos lasting less than an hour. In the end, those of you who take a full course are offered to pass a final exam. If you score 85% or more, you will receive a certificate of excellence.
For convenience, you can set the pace for completing each course on your own. Before you start learning, take a look at the checklist of some skills you will gain after completing the chosen course. Full courses of Aquent Gymnasium spotlight the following topics: coding for designers, jQuery building blocks, JavaScript foundations, and others. As for the topics of short courses, they include the basics of Node.js, WordPress theme creation, layout building in Bootstrap 3, use of Sketch, etc.
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Alison
Alison is one of the best resources allowing you to master web design for free. It offers certified and diploma-level courses meeting modern standards. They are also self-paced, which enables you to choose the pace of learning yourself. To find the necessary option more quickly, it’s possible to sort courses by the popularity, date and title. You can take an assessment whenever you like or retake it as many times as you need to achieve a satisfactory result. If you gain over 80% of scores, you will officially become a certified Alyson graduate. As proof of your achievement, you can either download a learner record or order a certificate.
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DevelopPHP
DevelopPHP is an online training center that can help you master the core languages of web development at no cost. Video courses available in this resource guide through the major principles of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and SQL. In addition to the language-focused courses, you can also learn a lot of useful things related to Flash and graphics. All the tutorials are divided into topics and subtopics, each of which features a YouTube video. The most popular DevelopPHP courses instruct on building eCommerce sites, social networks, responsive layouts, and custom CMS website software, to name a few.
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TheNewBoston
TheNewBoston is another resource to learn web designing online for free. In the category of computer science, you will find a lot of video tutorials on a variety of useful tricks such as XHTML + CSS, CSS3 footer, whatever. There is also a special category for courses on using the top software by Adobe, namely Dreamweaver, Flash, Illustrator, inDesign and different versions of PhotoShop. If you are interested in coding issues, you will benefit from Ajax, C++, Java, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, Ruby, Python, and many other tutorials. Courses can be sorted by the most watched videos over the current day, current week and entire period of time.
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Udemy
Udemy is a large online learning marketplace with both paid and free courses. They are available on demand for you to study on your own schedule and using any device. You can filter them by the skill level, features, popularity, ratings, and the “newest” status. Speaking about free options, there are 40+ courses in the category of web design. They can teach you on how to build different kinds of web resources, e.g. blog, membership, game, and academic sites. To prove more examples, there are also courses on creating responsive sites in a code-free manner and using Illustrator for web design purposes. You may also be interested in taking free courses from other Udemy categories. They include 40+ design toolkit courses, 110+ web development tutorials, and 50+ programming language classes.
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Code School
Code School is another resource, where you can find free video courses. They are oriented at individuals who need to acquire some knowledge in coding and other technical issues. Use this resource if you want to learn JavaScript, Ruby, Git, and iOS at no cost. Here is the way Code School works. You watch video lessons with step-by-step instructions and practice coding directly in the browser. As you successfully cope with challenges and complete course levels, you earn points and badges. All the activities can be tracked by means of your personal report card.
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Codecadamy is an online platform offering free classes of web development. Here, you can learn how to build professional sites, structure and style web pages with HTML & CSS and make them interactive with jQuery animations. This resource will also come in handy for mastering the core concepts and syntax of the most popular languages, e.g. JavaScript, PHP, Python and Ruby. If you are interested in managing databases, try a SQL course. Step-by-step instructions make it easy to learn the information.
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CodeBabes is meant for everyone who wants to study in an entertaining environment without compromising the quality of education. The male audience will definitely appreciate this resource, as the instruction is provided by sexy yet intelligent ladies. Video courses for beginners are jokingly called virgin courses and embrace a variety of topics including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SEO, PHP, etc. To start new lessons of each course, it’s necessary to pass funny quizzes. In case you want to skip them, you are required to become a subscriber for monthly payment.
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Star Wars: Building a Galaxy with Code
Would you like to learn coding in a fun and interactive way? Then, you’ll definitely appreciate this cool freebie. On the threshold of the Star Wars VII premiere, Disney and Lucasfilm joined forces with Code.org and released a game tutorial dubbed “Star Wars: Building a Galaxy with Code.” It introduces JavaScript to newbies with the help of the movie characters. You are offered to drag and drop JavaScript blocks in order to make BB-8 collect scrap metal. If the idea to combine playing with learning sounds perfect to you, this hour-long game tutorial is worth a try.
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Have you already used any of these best online website design courses? Which one of them are you going to try? Can you share any other resources with both paid and free courses for web designers? Feel free to list them in the section of comments, please. Your feedback always matters for our team.