Web Courses Bangkok - The bigginng

So how did Web Courses Bangkok all start?

"I wish I could do that", "Is it hard doing web design?", "I could never do that, wish I could though"...and the list goes on.

People can and want to do Web Design themselves. A lot of people are under the false impression that it's hard. It can be, don't get me wrong, but I can also be very simple if you have the right course,tutor and passion.

Anyone can start right now by logging onto Wordpress, Blogger, Joomla, Google Sites, Yahoo SiteBuilder and any number of others out there... but its still not YOUR site. A site that you designed from the paper up.

My name is Carl Heaton, I started WCB from the idea above; that anyone can be a web designer but with our course you can be a great web designer. I wanted people who have ideas to come to the course and grow these ideas into a working, standard complient, easy to use, effective web site that they can be proud of and even make money from.

I was working away at the TCDC (Thailand Creativity and Design Centre - http://www.tcdc.or.th/membership.php ) and thought what a perfect place to hold the course! It is full of creativity and creative people.

The meeting rooms would act as a great place to teach in small groups. The library would be a gravitational pull for people as its a nice place to learn and easy to find situated on the 6th floor of Emporium Shopping Centre.


Like all stories there is a start, here is one of the early plans for the actual WebCoursesBangkok.com site.


Once this was done, I could plan out the design. The design brings in lots of aspects like the layout, the rythem and feel of a site. It has to highlight the important areas of a the content whilst making the lesser more specific accessible....but more on that in the course.


"Content is King" we are told over and over again but the other part of that is "Design is Queen". If users come to your site and not see what they want, they will leave. So I had to get across all the benefits and features of the the site effectively.

I then began writing all my content, writing down what I thought was important for a web designer to know. I had an article posted in .net magazine (www.netmag.co.uk) and put my ideas up for scrutiny on various forums. Throw in a lot of personal experience and some magic and I came up with my Course Outline.

As a designer by heart I could not help start mocking up designs for the branding and feel of the site, so I came up with a few ideas and ask friends and work mates to give opinions.

Finally I came up with the, well, final design which we will be launching soon.