I am a jack of all trades (and master of none) who is becoming more and more of a web specialist because it's the most saleable of my skills... I was originally involved in the "information architecture" (as in, someone else did the actual coding) of a website for Tucson Friends of Traditional Music (tftm.org, now sadly neglected). With an admin. asst. job at the University of Arizona I got into doing it all myself. Self-taught. Several sites I didn't start from scratch, but upgrade the code and maintain the content.

How best to learn depends on how you best learn... lately, I'm feeling like the more I know the harder it's getting. I think that's because I know more of what's possible, and what's possible often isn't particularly easy.

I use Dreamweaver + hand-coding (Dreamweaver has some handy shortcuts, and I always have hands on the code).

The Drupal (and others) content management system (with a web interface for php-MySQL functioning) is a great thing for having something that non-techies can maintain content for. But, someone has to build it and keep the back-end up to date. The TFTM folks are mostly using some blog host for the pretty part of the site - a similar idea, but more limited in its functioning.

1)        eebweb.arizona.edu/faculty/moran/
2)        www.biochem.arizona.edu/ochman/
3)        flyendo.arl.arizona.edu this one's the fanciest in functioning - hand-coded php with MySQL
4)        amadeus.biosci.arizona.edu/~bjn/flyendo/DENTRY/de_start.php (password-protected)
5)        eebweb.arizona.edu/faculty/moran/private/index.htm (password-protected)
6)        www.genomics.arizona.edu/553/ (defunct)
7)        cis.arl.arizona.edu
8)        cis.arl.arizona.edu/PERT/
9)        insects.web.arizona.edu
10)        insects2.web.arizona.edu (Drupal CMS-based site in development)
11)        ag.arizona.edu/ento/
12)        ag.arizona.edu/ento/faculty/stock/index.htm
13)        cals.arizona.edu/ento/courses/ento310/index.htm
14)        ag.arizona.edu/classes/ento415/
15)        cals.arizona.edu/ento/courses/ento446_546/index.htm
16)        www.tftm.org

~ Becky in Tucson