CIW Foundations for Dummies Book Review
Your Mom always said you should go to college and once you did, your Dad said you should study accounting. You wanted to build and manage websites. CIW Foundations for Dummies by Sharon Roark with Tom Devine helps you study to pass the Certified Internet Webmaster Foundations exam. Once that’s done, you earn the CIW Associate status and can now proceed down a series of certification tracks to earn the Site Designer or one of the more prestigious Master titles. A CIW certification increases your chances of getting that webmaster dream job you’ve always wanted.
Unless you’ve been stuck downloading a really big file from a server in Greenland, you know that the CIW series, created by Prosoft Training, has become the industry standard for webmaster certification. The big selling point is that it’s vendor-neutral or rather, not tied to a specific company like Microsoft, Cisco, Novell, etc. That means that everyone is welcome to join the fun.
The book stays true to the Dummies motif, starting from the ground up and explaining the exam, how passing it can make your life better, and even how to take it. It includes everything except what posture to use while sitting in the chair. After a few chapters of this sort of spoon-feeding, the book moves into the meat and potatoes of what’s needed to pass the exam.
The main thrust of the book’s twenty-three chapters emphasizes the three test sections: Internet Fundamentals, Web Page Authoring Fundamentals, and Networking Fundamentals. Each begins with a Quick Assessment and ends with a Prep Test, both consisting of 10 questions. True dummies will appreciate not having to flip to the back to find the answers.
Most webmasters will find the Internet Fundamentals chapters a bit elementary, even for a Dummies series. Such basic concepts of what the Internet is, connections, e-mail, browsers, and searching are covered. Don’t even thinking about moving forward until you know these.
The web page authoring chapters are where the depth starts to come in. The syntax of the important HTML tags are helpful to non-programmers and serve as a good study reference for more experienced web jockeys. The section on CGI was quite well done. The easy to understand explanations will make you want to immediately implement CGI scripts on your sites, if you haven’t already.
The Networking Fundamentals chapters explained the hardware, protocols, security and the all-important ip addressing concepts well. The book does a fantastic job of separating the need-to-know from the nice-to-know topics. This is especially nice since you are liable to be in either the frantic cram mode the night before the test or the relaxed mode when the boss is on vacation. Towards the end, the networking portion becomes heavy on what-you-need-to-know charts.
Beginning webmasters will benefit the most from the Dummies style easiness of explanations. Seasoned webmasters may tire of speed-reading and want to jump straight into the coffee and practice tests. Most everyone will want to skim the dry humor that permeates the entire book. There will be plenty of time for reading Will Rogers or watching The Three Stooges after you pass the test. My only real criticism would be that more emphasis could have been placed on the heavily weighted Networking Fundamentals section of the exam.
After you finish the book, check out the Dummies test engine CD ROM, which lets you choose up to 298 questions. You may want to pay attention your resolution settings on your monitor so the test engine window doesn’t extend below your screen and prevent you from grading the test. Stay up late, get a good pair of headphones and turn on some relaxing new age music, and you’re sure to learn a lot.
Passing the Foundations exam requires a great deal of memorization for the average person. The bottom line is to give the “best” answer, that is, the answer that Prosoft wants. CIW(tm) Foundations For Dummies(r) gives you what you need to know as well as helps you actually understand what you are cramming for. And that might just help your career. –Emory Rowland, 9/3/02
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