If you fancy a career in web design, then you need training in Adobe Dreamweaver. The complete Adobe Web Creative Suite should additionally be studied in detail. Doing this will familiarise you in Flash and Action Script, amongst others, and means you'll be in a position to take your ACP (Adobe Certified Professional) or an ACE (Adobe Certified Expert) accreditation.

Creating a website is just the start of the skill set required though - in order to drive traffic, update content, and work with dynamic database-driven sites, you will need other programming skills, for example PHP, HTML, and MySQL. You should also have a good understanding of E-Commerce and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

If you're considering a training company that is still pushing workshop days as part of their program, then consider these problems met by almost all IT hopefuls:

* Lots of round trips - sometimes hundreds of miles each and every time.

* If you're working, then weekday only workshops cause problems at work. Often you're contending with two or three days together to make it worse.

* Lost annual leave - many students only get 4 weeks annual leave. If over half of it is swallowed up by training classes, you haven't got a great deal of holiday time remaining for the student.

* Training classes normally become over subscribed.

* The pace of the workshop - classes typically have students of varying skill, so tension develops between the quicker-learners and the ones who need a little longer.

* You shouldn't overlook the extra financial outlay of driving or taking public transport or over-night bed and breakfast either. Often, this will cost many hundreds of pounds more - sometimes thousands. Take some time to add it all up - you may be surprised.

* Not wanting employers to know about the training will be of paramount importance to a lot of trainees. Why throw away potential advancement, wage increases or accomplishment in your job just because you're retraining. If your employer knows you're putting yourself through certification in a completely different market, what are they going to be thinking?

* Most of us find that, at times, it's uncomfortable to raise questions in a class full of other students - so we don't appear ignorant.

* You should remember, events become basically undoable, when you work away for some part of the year.

The perfect situation is to watch a ready-made, videoed workshop - enabling you to learn whenever you wish. You can train wherever you want. If you own a laptop, take in a bit of fresh air in your garden while you study. Any problems and get onto the live 24x7 support. It really doesn't matter how frequently you want to re-do a section, video teachers are never going to run out of patience! And don't forget, as an added bonus, note-taking becomes a thing of the past. It's already there for you when you need it. Could it get any simpler: Time and money is saved and travelling is avoided altogether; plus you end up with a more comfortable study environment.

Be careful that the certifications you're considering doing will be recognised by employers and are the most recent versions. The 'in-house' certifications provided by many companies are usually worthless. If the accreditation doesn't feature a big-hitter like Microsoft, Cisco, Adobe or CompTIA, then chances are it will be commercially useless - as it'll be an unknown commodity.