Possible Promotion Prep

Hi, everyone! I haven’t posted in a long time, but I used to post a lot.

I’ve been working as a junior dev at a place for a couple months. The work has all been front-end and design-heavy, thus far; mostly just HTML, CSS, little bits of JS. The company is using PHP/Apache server-side to host their clients’ sites. When I first started, I was interested in doing universal React applications (universal/isomorphic to comply with their SEO standards), but was told their server (Rackspace) would not support Node…

Anyway, my supervisor, the one who has been controlling all the company’s hosted sites, doing server configuration, SEO, etc. is leaving, and the boss has implied I may be able to fill this role with the proper training. Without going into too much detail about the company/job, what courses could I take online to most efficiently learn all I would need to fill a role like this? Basically, I learned to code through fCC (self-taught) and have no background in CS besides a CS50 course I took online a while back.

Is this a conversation you could have with the boss or supervisor? They’d know the actual skills required for the particulars of the role, surely?

Good to see you again, and glad to hear of your employment!

My strategy would be to show how quickly you can learn. I would start by spinning up PHP/Apache servers in VirtualBox. Try to get a site accessible on your local network, and work exclusively in the command line. You’ll need to set up SSH, and it’d be best to get comfortable with Vim, though Nano can work as well. There aren’t a whole lot of good video tutorials on setting up Apache servers, so I’d look into getting an up-to-date-ish book from your local library. Looking through some current config files should give you an idea of which topics to tackle.

SEO is a concept that’s either beneath or beyond me - I haven’t figured out which yet, but for whatever reason, I can’t learn it. Wish I could offer more help there, but I know Lynda.com has some videos on the subject. I think it’s difficult to get practical experience with SEO before having to launch an actual project.

Good luck!

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