Three Questions:
1) If I wanted to improve my l33t \\/3b 5ki11z by taking online courses, are there specific sites/groups/organizations that are more favorably recognized by employers? Online "universities" are preferable to books/cd-tutorials for me.
2) If I had to pick only one or two skills to persue, which ones would gain me the most ground, and would be more applicable to future jobs (as opposed to becoming outdated sooner than later)? Choices include: Flash, .NET, PHP, CGI, SQL, ASP, Cold Fusion, higher-level JavaScript. My current skillset is almost entirely HTML/DHTML/XSL/CSS, with a wee tiny bit of JavaScript -- hardly anything more involved than making date generators or image flippers. i already know rudimentary Flash, and have poked at PHP, but I have virtually no knowledge of back-end or middle. My brain seizes up at the thoughts of learning actual languages like Java or C or stuff like that, so I don't think Real Programming is going to be an option.
2a) If I had to learn one front-to-back path, what'd be best? Front I have covered.
Suggestions?
1. University of Phoenix is amongst the best known, but I don't know how employers view it. And, it's expensive. Many brick-n-mortar universities have all-online programs also.
2. Hell if I know. As you and I have discussed, having experience in HTML/CSS/XML/.NET/ASP and SQL did me very little good. Lisa's working in web stuff at a place here in A2; lemme know if you'd like to ping her for info on that and I'll pass along her info. She'd probably have better insight for you.
3. I got nuttin' here.
I am of very little use to you when it comes to this.
I used to manage the MI office of westlake and we taught all of the above. westlake.com
Hrm...
1. I actually don't know about online courses. Speaking as someone who's interviewed people to hire within our organization, credibility is really something you establish in the interview. Probably any place you use could be safe on your resume as supplementary learning.
2. CSS all the way. CSS is getting to the point that it's impossible to seperate it from HTML anymore and you have to understand it's concepts just to make sense of a simple 'view source' these days.
Outside of that, I'd highly recommend SQL because it's easy and ubiquitous. Learn SQL and you know database administration for almost every type.
Also: http://www.rubyonrails.com/ has been making quite a bit of traction in the independant development scene. And Cold Fusion can land you a lot of jobs.
2a. If you want to avoid heavy programming the only really viable back-end environment I'm aware of is Cold Fusion. Smaller amounts of programming, PHP and Ruby on Rails are probably next tier. All of these you would want to know SQL before you dove into them. SQL is in the back end of EVERY dynamic web page.
Are you good with self-teaching?
You can purchase a Mastering Cold Fusion book and start with that.
Heck I have a 4.5 book you can friggin have!
I have no idea what version they are on now...
but if you want it to check it out, let me know!
I don't think that the concern is where you learn, but that you learn? My friends in A2 with their own business have developers that didn't get a degree in it. Just a thought
Basically what noysh said. I just disagree a bit on ColdFusion. I did not like coding in it, but that might be because I switched from Perl to CF and was at times pretty annoyed about their coding style (opening and closing tags, strange way to mark variables...).
Re SQL: just about any website with any kind of user interaction that is more advanced than 'sent this form data somewhere' will rely on a database of some kind. Knowing SQL will be a big plus if you don't have a dedicated database administrator around - and even then
Totally agree here.
Apart from that it's hard to tell and depends a lot on where you work. Small companies might not have the big bucks to spend and thus favor low-cost, open source solutions (PHP, MySQL), bigger companies might have money to spare and throw something like .NET / Oracle at you.
Java / Javascript are of course everywhere, especially with the 'new' Web 2.0 aka AJAX.
In the end, SQL would be a safe bet. The front end, be it PHP, CF, ASP or whatever, could change anytime, anyway (during the years I've had to switch from Perl to CF to PHP and could now really use a deeper knowledge of Java).