Incorporating examination fees with the course fee then including an exam guarantee is popular with many companies. But let's examine why they really do it:

You'll pay for it by some means. It's definitely not free - it's just been rolled into the price of the whole package. People who go in for their examinations when it's appropriate, funding them as they go are in a much stronger position to qualify at the first attempt. They are mindful of their spending and so are more inclined to make sure they're ready.

Isn't it in your interests to hold on to your money and pay for the exam at the appropriate time, rather than coughing up months or even a year or two in advance to the training college, and to do it locally - instead of the remote centre that's convenient only to the trainer? Why borrow the money or pay in advance (plus interest of course) on examinations when you didn't need to? A great deal of money is netted by organisations getting money in early for exam fees - and then cashing in when they're not all taken. Many training companies will require you to sit pre-tests and with-hold subsequent exam entries from you until you've proven conclusively that you can pass - which makes an 'Exam Guarantee' frankly useless.

With average prices for VUE and Pro-metric exams costing in the region of 112 pounds in this country, the most cost-effective way to cover the cost is by paying when you need them. It's not in the student's interests to fork out hundreds or thousands of pounds for exams when enrolling on a course. A commitment to studying and the use of authorised exam preparation tools are actually the key to your success.

The thing you must grasp is that absolutely no training course can in fact make a web-designer out of you. The training course will simply cover all the techniques and skills. Throughout your study and training, you should spend time building & creating as many websites as you possibly can, to practice and build your portfolio. Your own web-sites should be about anything - your local music-scene, farm pets, a writer you enjoy or even performance cars. Start interactive web-sites & generate traffic on to them. This will all seem much more favourable on your CV, & in your portfolio, than a certificate from 'Adobe' will!

Workshops get pushed as a great facet by some trainers. When you talk to the majority of computer industry hopefuls who've attended a few, you'll discover that they're really a major problem because of many things:

- Many round trips - often hundreds of miles at a time.

- Weekday accessibility to classes is typically the case, and with 2-3 days to book off work, this can be difficult for most working students.

- And don't overlook the lost holiday days. Often, we get 4 weeks off each year. If half is given up to classes, then there's very little left over for us.

- Training classes sometimes reach their maximum intake very quickly, giving us the only option of a slot that doesn't really suit.

- The pace of the workshop - workshops can consist of students of varying aptitude, therefore tension can run high between students that want a quicker pace to those who want to go a little slower.

- Add up the cost of all the travelling, accommodation, food and parking and you may be surprised (and not pleasantly). Attendees talk of increased costs of between several hundred and a couple of thousand pounds. Sit down and add it up - then you'll know.

- Most attendees want their training to remain private thus avoiding all repercussions at work.

- Raising questions in front of other class-mates can make us a little self-conscious. Ever avoided asking a question as you honestly thought you might seem thick?

- It's a fact; events are pretty much impossible to attend, if you work elsewhere in the country for part of the week.

The best possible solution is based on viewing a ready-made, videoed lesson - with instructor-led learning available whenever it's convenient for you. You can study anywhere you want. If you own a laptop, why not get a bit of sunshine outside while you learn. Any issues that arise just logon to the 24x7 support facility. Just go back and re-cover all the elements as often as you want or need. There's also no need to write any notes because the class is available whenever you want it. Could it be simpler: You avoid travelling and wasting time and money; plus you've got a much more peaceful training setting.

Being a part of the information technology industry is one of the more stimulating and innovative industries you could be involved with. Being a member of a team working on breakthroughs in technology is to be a part of the massive changes that will affect us all over the next generation. Society largely thinks that the increase in technology we've been going through is easing off. This couldn't be more wrong. Massive changes are on the horizon, and the internet significantly is going to dominate how we conduct our lives.

And keep in mind that the average salary in the IT industry in Great Britain is a lot greater than in other market sectors, which means you'll probably receive a lot more as a trained IT professional, than you could reasonably hope to achieve elsewhere. It seems there's not a hint of a downturn for IT development throughout this country. The market sector continues to develop hugely, and as we have a significant shortage of skilled professionals, it's highly unlikely that it will even slow down for a good while yet.

The key resources used by web-site designers are the design environments, with 'Adobe Creative Suite' (now in version 4 as of '09/10) staying essentially the most popular commercially. Whilst 'Adobe Flash' provides access to interactive and animated 'graphical' content, Dreamweaver is the software program that builds sites. Dreamweaver may be considered a rather fancy Word Processor in many ways. Text & graphics can be layed (according to known parameters) and then a basic interactivity can be produced by means of page-linking. 'HTML' (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) program code is developed behind the scenes with 'Dreamweaver', much like any other web design environment. HTML is a script which in essence draws & controls the web page displayed on your screen. It is the 'language' of browsers. Together with HTML are the lay-out tag 'languages' - for instance XML & CSS. Because these tag languages are standardised, the smoother and rather more efficient outcomes work effectively on many different platforms. So whatever web-browser someone uses, (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and so on.) the web-page will hopefully appear exactly the same. So although you place the graphic blocks & add the text, Dreamweaver is converting this in to code in the background. A comprehensive understanding of these various languages is critical if you're going to be a commercially-viable web-designer.

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