I am sharing my experiences on how internet and blogs changed me as a developer and helped me to start my freelance career.
Days are gone when you had to completely rely on books to learn something. Today is the day of internet. The main idea lies behind the fact to find the niche of web where you want to excel and finding the proper resources and blog that can help you grow as a developer.
Blogs are precise and when you follow blogs of higher standard you get to learn from a blogger or author with broader knowledge and adequate experience of what they are writing of. A good and well written blog are always to the point, properly explained, well criticed and well backed up to the point.
How can I find a niche
Well that's you have to ask yourself. Do a proper study on what you want to excel on. For me being a web developer and passionate about PHP as backend developer, I had to find blogs that
discussed about front end and backend development.
How can I find a proper blog
A good research is always a good option. Google is the key tool to find it. With SEO ranking google helps to trace out high quality blog in its search list. So most of the time article
listed on google are in terms of quality of articles and how often its been sort out for.
My personal favourites
As mentioned above,I am a web developer. I like to learn about Front and Backends.
I rank tuts+ as my favourite blog. Reasons being, the site is diverse, authors are experienced and articles are always to the point with the focus being learning as much as possible with
less time spent. There is never a day that I wouldn't spend without going through this site.
Another blog, I read very frequently is Smashing Magazine. Reasons being its a great collection of amazing blogs and articles, well written by authors who are experienced and well respected
in their niche.
Apart from the development related blogs, I look for inspirations around variety of sites such as awwwards, chris spooner and pixeden. These are my favourites, but the blogs you read or follow varies in terms of types of content you look for.
Follow inspiration people in Social Media
Following people in social media can help. Twitter, google plus and facebook can be source of various important updates and articles. Here again following the influential people of targeted niche can be very vital.
Sign Up for Premium Membership
Signing up for the premium membership can be very helpful. With premium sign up, you get access to the resources that are only viable for the premium user. Most of them contain detailed tutorials, video tutorials, premium ebooks and various other resources.
So you might be asking how do I know what kind of resources I will have access to or what if I don't like them. The answer is pretty simple. Most of the sites gives you an option to be a member on ongoing basis or with an option of money back
if you are not happy. To top them up, they do provide a free or demo content that you can access before you make your decision. Here below I list some of the site I am member of or I had been a member in the past.
Tuts+
Tuts+ had been very helpful for my personal growth as a developer. There are amazing collections of free tutorials But premium memberships stands out. I get access to various resources such as video tutorials, PSDS, detailed tutorials,
chance to interact and communicate with author etc. Tuts+ provide 30 day money back guarantee as well as monthly and yearly membership. Just to make your life even easy, there is a free premium course.
Codeschool
Code School also offers variety of courses related to web development. Codeschool also provide month to month basis membership with an option to cancel or suspend anytime.
There are free courses by codeschool as try ruby.