what skills/qualifications are required?

I'm 25 and have been building websites since I was about 18. Most of my knowledge is self taught although some have come from doing free training courses during employment.

I studies a BTEC National Diploma at college but this didnt teach anything about websites.

I want to build on my knowledge so that one day I may be able to progress into a web developer role.

What qualifications are best to get, what would an employer look for? I've been looking at doing an open university course titled Web Application Development.

I'm working as an IT Manager for a travel agent at the minute, designing and developing their website, along with php and mysql coding in the site to access databases etc. I suppose this will do me no harm at all when it comes to experience.

Thanks for any advice.

ned

Employers (freelance mainly) dont look for such "qualifcations" - a great portfolio will get you the jobs.
However - some jobs require formal qualifications...some vary as to which you need (ive found the most common one is a degree in computer science...but it depends on the job / role etc etc )

Seems you already have the skills to get out there!

I was very lucky getting the job I have, because I was working in IT support but got made redundant. A friend worked for a travel agent and mentioned that the IT guy there was leaving so I sent them over my C.V. They wanted me to look after their computers, homeworkers and update their existing website. Since starting 9 month ago I'v exceeded these expectations drastically, including saving the company over 20k a year in fees they were paying for hosting, internet connections, homeworker internet connections, website search facilities and other IT related areas. I redesigned the website and included a holiday offers database. Now we're going to use another company to provide the search facility on our website and are re-designing the website yet again, which I've done yet again. I'm in the process of building an admin tool using php and mysql which will replace paper booking forms submitted by the staff and automatically send out email booking confirmations to the clients, which will save money as all booking confirmations are sent by post at the minute. The system will hold all the details of the clients bookings so I'm going to incorporate a login section on the website so that a client can login and view the details of their holiday and view a help section etc, which should save on alot of silly calls coming into the office, freeing time up for staff to make more money.

In my own opinion I'm a massive benefit to this company and appreciate the fact they've given me the chance to get some experience and really show what I can do, but the only problem is that I'm only getting 15k a year, where the last guy was getting 27k a year. The company have just made 6 people redundant so there isnt much change of getting any addition pay from them.

So as you can see, eventually as my skills develop, I'll probably want to look to develop into better employment as well.

well - once your on the ladder, you can certainly climb. You have an impressive story as it is - and whethewr you wanted to freelance or full-time im sure youll find work

Thanks for the vote of confidence.

Do you think doing the open university course I mentioned will be an advantage to me? It'll probably cost around a thousand pound to do and take a couple of years. I should be able to do enough work outside of my employment to cover the cost.

If you feel it will help you then yeah, go for it. Look around at jobs and see what they require. Some need Formal Qual's some dont..if you have it you cant loose it i suppose. You have all the skills to make a killing freelance though

And if all else fails, start your own business

I'm trying to do a little work myself now actually. I'm on building 2 sites, one for a financial advisor and another for a furniture maker.

I tend to find that small businesses are not willing to pay near on a thousand pound to have a website build, they simply dont believe they will see a return for their investment. So I'm trying to target small businesses.

The financial advisor site I'm doing has 10 pages, is pretty basic and costing the company 300-400 pounds, they got a quote from a few "professional" companies who quoted around 1400 pound. I checked out the website of one of the companies, and I couldnt believe how bad the site was, it looked very very basic and badly put together. So obviously the financial advisors think they've got themselves a good deal, I make a little bit of cash outside of work and get a website to add to my portfolio.

As my work gets better and my portfolio increases so will my prices, but I think there's a market out there in the small business world, only problem is you've got the build more sites to make any decent money.

Yep thats the way to start.

Theres lods of freelancers out there who produce very poor sites, so when a good web design comes along and approaches the business they feel blessed

that or they think ive done it

lol