Anyway, as long as we process the most desirable skills, they will have to learn to respect us even in a employers market, like now!

ASP.NET

ASP.NET is a web application framework developed and marketed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web sites, web applications and web services.

Microsoft is still the GIANT  and ASP.NET is friendly to use and very easy to learn too.

RoR

Ruby on Rails is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language. It is intended to be used with an Agile development methodology that is used by web developers for rapid development.

WordPress Theme and Plugin Development

WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

Javascript

JavaScript is an object-oriented scripting language used to enable programmatic access to objects within both the client application and other applications.

PHP

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor is a widely used, general-purpose scripting language that was originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages.

Mobile web site design

As mobile devices are getting extremely popular, mobile web site design skills are becoming  very desirable too.

Last but not least:

CSS+ State of the Art Design Sense

JQuery Curvy Corners

The author recently updated the plugin:

As from 2.0.x, CurvyCorners allows you to put rounded corners on your page elements using CSS.

This means CSS3 for mozilla and safari will work on IE  as long as you link the Curvy Corners plugin. You don’t event need to write anything in java script !!

CSS3

.rounded {
  -moz-border-radius-topleft:3ex;
  -moz-border-radius-bottomright:3ex;
  -webkit-border-top-left-radius:3ex;
  -webkit-border-bottom-right-radius:3ex;
}

Check it out!!

WPshout provided two levels of detailed tutorials with source code. Worth checking out!

Create An Awesome WordPress Theme Options Page (part 1)

Create An Advanced  Options Page

Wordpress Theme Design with Options Administration

How to : Make a control panel for your wordpress theme

Create an Theme Options Page for Your WordPress Theme

tziag.com

A great site with PHP, SQL and HTML tutorials

SAS

W3c SQL tutorial

I would suggest w3c try to explain their tutorials a bit more. It is more like a command dictionary, great for intermedium level.

SQLcommands

firstsql

SQL tutorial

SQLcourse.com

Great tutorial site of SQL, DB2, Oracle and many others

Light CMS

These two CMS do not require database set up, simply add specific class in your HTML code, they will change your static website editable for your clients. Isn’t it the simplest solution?

Unify

CushyCMS

• Allow clients to safely edit content
• No software to install, no programming required
• Takes just a few minutes to setup
• Produces standards compliant, search engine friendly content
• Define exactly which parts of the page can be changed

Next I would like to mention three well designed simple CMS. I once tried using WordPress as CMS along with many CMS enable plug-ins. However, I found it was really a waste of time trying to configure it into something it is not mean to be. For those who are looking for a real solution for flexible CMS you should really check out these three.

TextPattern

Textpattern is a flexible, elegant and easy-to-use content management system.

Sample site using textpattern: http://chinavarts.com/en/visit
Admin panel theme: http://txpadminthemes.desandro.com/

FrogCMS

Admin panel of Frog CMS. You can create your own snippets.

Getsimple

The Simplest Content Management System with flexible components configuration features.

Make your AD look like sidebar navigation

Style your text ad same as sidebar navigation and don’t say anything like sponsor or AD

Place text ad under title and above content

This place isn’t good for banners cause people expect to see some text right after title. Banner will only make this skip the section.

Place text AD under search form

pretend it is part of the search form or search suggestion

Banner ad above image content

If you have some content images, it is good to mix banner with them.  Real content can be even smaller than the AD

Expand the ad but not the real content

Get a expandable area? Show the visitor the AD but not real content. People usually rush into clicking what they see.

Place ad as part of the navigation

Make your text ad links look like a navigation. This usually works

Place text AD above breadcrumbs

This is another good place to make the ad looks like navigation.

Here I have listed the theme options I think are very necessary and well designed. Please feel free to vote for the theme option on the sidebar (you can have maximum of three choices).

Woo theme Theme Options

Take the free theme Mainstream as an example, the javascript enabled admin panel contains:

1. General settings
2. Navigation options
3. Dynamic image option
4. Author info
5. Top ad options
6. sidebar ad options

In my opinion these options are very carefully chosen and well designed. I especially like the part that it allows user to upload logo directly and put in a cache folder. It is much better, compare to some other themes which you have to upload the logo with FTP software.

Fusion Theme Options

Fusion is a very dynamic theme, No wonder so many people are using it. The admin panel contains

1. Navigation option: people can choose between using pages or categories
2. Simple CSS: instead of messing with style.css it provides user a more convenient way for customizing the theme

K2 Theme Options

k2 has an well designed header image feature at admin panel. Please read this for more details.

Play with jQuery

This is how this “game” works. The flashing text says “LOOK AT ME”. When you hover just underneath the text it reveals a little cartoon girl. It covers the girl again when you move the mouse away quickly. When you click the “LOOK AT ME” text the sliding animation will end. Refresh it if you wanna see the animation again.
To see the Demo

Simple HTML

<div id="nav">
<div id="girl">
	<a href="#">LOOK AT ME</a></div>
</div>

CSS to add background image

#nav{background:url(images/girl-11.png) no-repeat;width:150px;height:150px;top:100px;left:400px;position:absolute;}
#gate{position:absolute;background:#fff;width:50px;height:50px;padding:50px;}
#girl a{position:absolute;top:-20px;left:10px;color:pink;font-weight:bold;font-family:arial;text-decoration:none;font-size:18px;}

Javascript

• jQuery Infinite Loop from line 2 to line 9:basically you make a loop start with show end with hide. Put anything you want in between and put this in a runIt function. This is also useful if you wanna do a warning sign.
• Sliding effect from line 10 to line 25:This is very similar to my previous tutorial on Make fancy light up RSS button with jQuery I changed fadeTo to slideUp and slideDown, inserted line 21 cause it has slide down from a hiding state.

$(document).ready(function() {
function runIt() {
		$("#girl a").show(100);
		$("#girl a").fadeTo(500,0);
		$("#girl a").fadeTo(500,1);
		$("#girl a").fadeTo(500,0);
		$("#girl a").hide(1, runIt);
		   }
		    runIt();
		$(function () {
			 $('#girl')
			    // create our new span.hover and loop through anchor:
			  .append('<span id="gate" class="hover">').each(function () {
			   var $span = $('&gt; span.hover', this).css('opacity', 1);
			   // when the user hovers in and out
			   $(this).hover(function () {
			    // on hover
			     $span.stop().slideUp(1200);
			      }, function () {
			        // off hover
			 $span.hide();
			$span.slideDown(1500);
			      });
			    });
			});
	 });
</span>

Conclusion

You are welcome to copy the code and experiment with it. I believe the next web trend will be “game like” interactions and jQuery is a great framework to do all sorts of fancy effects. Learn more and prepare yourself for the challenge.