The seven tracks

Learn more about
our seven tracks
of instruction!

Click on the links below to learn more about the school's seven tracks of courses. Each of these contain courses taken in the Basic Certificate program as well as in the Advanced Certificate program.

Design Software

Design Application

Web Programming

The Web Programming track

This track introduces students to the most important programming languages and technologies used by web designers.

The basics

All webmasters need to know HTML 4.0, XHTML, and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Therefore, the first two modules in the Basic Certificate program cover these essentials.

Next, students are introduced to the basics of programming in the Intro to Programming module. This module covers such concepts as data types, logic, looping, arrays, etc. These are concepts shared among all programming languages, although the particular expression of them varies by language.

Another three modules in the Basic Certificate program cover core programming languages for church and parish webmasters to know: Javascript, beginning PHP (a language widely used in open-source applications), and beginning ASP.NET (a language widely used with Microsoft web servers).

Finally, students are introduced to MySQL, an open-source database solution. (Relational databases in general are covered in the Web Development track.)

Advanced Certificate modules

Students in the Advanced Certificate program study MySQL, advanced PHP, and other important programming languages for the web, including Python, CGI, Perl, Ajax (actually a combination of technologies), and Rails.

Students are given an overview of other proprietary languages such as ColdFusion and Java in Module 13 — Survey of Proprietary Web Programming Languages.

Finally, templating engines are surveyed in Module 14 — Intro to Templating Systems.

Modules in this track

Modules in the Basic Certificate program:

Module 1—Designing to Web Standards: HTML 4.01 & XHTML

Module 2—Designing to Web Standards: Using CSS

Module 3—Intro to Programming

Module 4—Intro to JavaScript and the Document Object Model (DOM)

Module 5—Intro to PHP

Module 6—Intro to ASP.NET

Module 7—Intro to MySQL

Modules in the Advanced Certificate program:

Module 8—Intro to Python

Module 9—Intro to CGI & Perl

Module 10—Intro to Ajax

Module 11—Intro to Ruby on Rails

Module 12—Advanced PHP Programming

Module 13—Survey of Proprietary Web Programming Languages

Module 14—Intro to Templating Systems

Status report

As of August 2008, the courses for this school are not developed yet. Doing so requires many tens of thousands of dollars to be raised first.

Therefore, the purposes of this website in its current state are threefold:

1. To get volunteer church and parish webmasters interested in the school.

2. To obtain input from experienced church and parish webmasters regarding the courses to be offered by the school.

3. To provide information about the school to potential financial donors. This is part of my goal to raise money to launch the school.

If you're interested in helping to make the school a reality, please email me using the "Contact us" link below.

We will need money (donations), people who'll be paid to create the courses, and individuals to serve on an advisory board.

— David Gillaspey
President,
Great Church Websites, Inc.