Ship & Earn Academy

Curriculum — From First HTML Tag to Deployed Project

Twelve weeks. Six hours a week. You start by writing a heading in a plain text file, and you finish with three real projects on live URLs that you can send to a client, a teacher, or a parent.

This page lists every week, every tool, and what the whole thing costs — including what we do not teach. Read it all before you pay for anything.

Ask a question first See the earning path

Overview: what twelve weeks actually buys you

Six hours a week is the honest number. Roughly two hours of lesson material, three hours of building, and one hour of review and feedback. Some weeks you will spend more because a bug will not let go of you. That is part of it.

Length
12 weeks, split into three four-week stages
Weekly time
6 hours, and you choose when
Projects shipped
3 live sites, plus about 20 small exercises
Software cost
$0 — every tool we use has a free tier
Group size
8 students per review group, maximum
Prerequisites
A laptop, home internet, and typing confidence

By the end of week twelve you can

  • Build a multi-page site from a sketch

    Given a one-page brief and a rough drawing, you can write the HTML and CSS for a four-page site that works on a phone and a laptop, without copying a template.

  • Make a page respond to people

    Tabs, filters, form validation, a fetch from a public API, and a clear error message when the network fails. Plain JavaScript, no framework.

  • Put it on the internet yourself

    Git commits, a repository, a deploy that takes under two minutes, and a custom domain if the client bought one.

  • Read your own code a month later

    Naming, file structure, and comments that make sense to future you. This sounds boring. It is the skill clients pay repeat money for.

  • Quote and scope a small job

    You will have written one real estimate with hours, a price, and what is excluded. The full earning material lives on the earning path page.

  • Explain a technical choice out loud

    Every project ends in a three-minute walkthrough to your group. Clients hire people who can say why, not just what.

What this course does not cover

We would rather you know now. No React, Vue or Svelte. No Node backends, databases, or user login systems. No design theory beyond spacing, type size and contrast. No WordPress. No app stores. No data science or AI model training. Twelve weeks is not enough for those, and beginners who skip the fundamentals to reach them usually stall. Week twelve includes an honest map of what to learn next and in what order.

Stage one — Foundations (weeks 1–4)

You write everything by hand. No frameworks, no page builders, no starter templates. It feels slow for about ten days, then it clicks and it never un-clicks.

  • Week 1 — Structure before style

    Elements, nesting, and what the browser actually does with your file. Headings in order, lists, links, and one page about something you care about. Homework: a five-section page, valid HTML, no CSS yet.

  • Week 2 — CSS and the box model

    Selectors, the cascade, inherited values, margin versus padding, and why your two boxes will not sit next to each other. You build a stylesheet for week one's page and see it transform.

  • Week 3 — Layout with Flexbox and Grid

    Real layouts: a header with navigation, a card grid, a footer that stays put. Media queries and a mobile-first habit. You will resize the window constantly from here on.

  • Week 4 — Accessibility and devtools

    Alt text that says something, labels tied to inputs, keyboard-only navigation, and contrast you can prove. Then the Elements and Styles panels, live editing, and device emulation. Project one ships: a four-page site for a real or invented local business.

Week two nearly broke me. I had two divs and they would not line up. Then in week three Flexbox showed up and I felt like I had been given a cheat code I'd earned.

Naomi A., cohort 4, now builds sites for two Oakland dance studios

Stage two — Interactivity (weeks 5–8)

JavaScript, taught slowly and in the browser. We do not start with tooling. We start with a variable and a button.

  • Week 5 — JavaScript fundamentals

    Variables, types, conditionals, loops, functions, arrays and objects. Written in the console first, then in a file. Roughly thirty small exercises so the syntax stops being noise.

  • Week 6 — The DOM and events

    Finding elements, changing text and classes, listening for clicks and key presses. You build a filterable card list and a working tab panel that a keyboard user can operate.

  • Week 7 — Forms and data from elsewhere

    Form fields, validation that helps rather than scolds, and fetch against a free public API. Loading states, empty states, and a real error message when the request fails.

  • Week 8 — Debugging without panic

    Reading a stack trace, breakpoints, console.log used well, and the difference between a typo, a logic error and a wrong assumption. Plus how to ask a question that gets answered. Project two ships: an interactive tool — a study timer, a bus-route lookup, a menu filter.

The honest bit about week eight

Most students say debugging week is the one that changed how they feel about coding. Before it, a red error message means the day is over. After it, a red error message is just information. We spend the whole week on deliberately broken code so that the first bug you meet in your own project is not the first bug you have ever met.

Stage three — Shipping (weeks 9–12)

Code on your laptop earns nothing. This stage is about getting it onto a URL that someone else can open, and making sure it is fast and usable when they do.

  • Week 9 — Version control

    Git from the command line: init, status, add, commit, log, branch, merge. Then a remote repository, push and pull. What to do when you break it, because you will break it once.

  • Week 10 — Deploy to a live URL

    Connect the repository to free static hosting, deploy, and see the change go live. Custom domains, DNS in plain language, and HTTPS. You get a link you can text to your family.

  • Week 11 — Performance and mobile checks

    Image sizes, font loading, render-blocking files, and a pre-launch checklist you keep. Test on a real phone on mobile data, not just a narrow browser window.

  • Week 12 — Portfolio and handover

    Write three project case studies: the brief, your decisions, the result. Practise a client handover. Project three ships: your portfolio site, on your own domain if you want one.

The path, end to end

The twelve-week path in three stages A horizontal timeline. Weeks one to four are Foundations, ending in project one, a four-page business site. Weeks five to eight are Interactivity, ending in project two, an interactive tool. Weeks nine to twelve are Shipping, ending in project three, a deployed portfolio. Weeks 1–4 Foundations Project one: four-page site Weeks 5–8 Interactivity Project two: interactive tool Weeks 9–12 Shipping Project three: live portfolio

Tools and setup

You need a laptop that can run a modern browser — a five-year-old machine with 4 GB of RAM is fine. A Chromebook works for weeks 1 to 8 and needs a Linux container enabled for week 9 onward; we will walk you through that in week 8 if you need it. Tablets and phones are not enough.

Code editor
Visual Studio Code — free
Browser
Firefox or Chrome, current version — free
Version control
Git plus a free repository account
Hosting
Static host free tier — no card required
Total software cost
$0.00 for all twelve weeks
Optional extra
A domain name, about $12 a year

The domain is genuinely optional. Free hosting gives you a working public URL like your-name.pages.dev, and plenty of students land their first paid job with exactly that. Buy a domain in week 10 only if you want to.

Week 0 is a free ninety-minute setup session, run twice before each cohort starts. We install the editor together, check Git works, and fix the odd permission problem before it costs you a lesson. Self-paced students get the same session as a written walkthrough with screenshots described in text.

Assessment and support

There are no exams, no grades and no certificates. Your assessment is the same one a client uses: does the thing work, and is the code something a person can maintain?

  • Weekly code review

    You push your work by Sunday night. A mentor reads it and returns written comments within 48 hours: two things that are working, two things to change, one thing to try next. Usually 300 to 600 words.

  • Office hours

    Two live sessions a week, 60 minutes each, one evening Pacific and one Saturday morning. Bring a bug or a question. Sessions are recorded for anyone who cannot attend.

  • Small-group format

    Eight students per group for the whole twelve weeks. You get to know their projects, they get to know yours. Reviewing another beginner's code teaches more than you expect.

  • Chat between sessions

    One group channel per cohort. Mentors answer on weekdays, usually within a few hours. We ask you to try for fifteen minutes and show your attempt before you post — that habit is worth money later.

  • Project sign-off

    Each of the three projects gets a longer review against a published checklist: works on mobile, keyboard accessible, passes the HTML validator, deploys cleanly, readable file structure.

  • If you fall behind

    Life happens. You can pause a live cohort once and rejoin the next one free, or keep going self-paced with the same materials. Nobody is dropped for missing two weeks.

The reviews were the whole thing for me. Someone actually read my CSS and told me my class names were a mess. Nobody had ever done that before. I stopped guessing.

Devon P., cohort 2, university student in Sacramento

Formats and pricing

Same curriculum in all three formats. The difference is how much live human time comes with it. Prices are in US dollars and include everything listed — no upsells, no separate materials fee.

  • Self-paced — $180

    All twelve weeks of written lessons and exercises, the three project briefs, the sign-off checklists, and access to the cohort chat archive. Two code reviews included, used whenever you like. Lifetime access to updates. No deadlines, which suits some people and sinks others — be honest with yourself.

  • Live cohort — $540

    Everything above plus a start date, a group of eight, twelve weekly code reviews, two office hours a week for twelve weeks, and the week 0 setup session. One free pause and rejoin. Cohorts run four times a year and cap at 32 students total.

  • School or club licence — from $1,200

    For a teacher or club lead running this with a group of up to 20. Includes the full curriculum, lesson plans with timings, a marking rubric, two mentor drop-in visits by video, and a termly call with the teacher. Quote depends on group size and term length — email us.

Payment, discounts and refunds

Live cohort can be paid in three monthly instalments of $180 at no extra cost. We hold eight need-based places per year at $60 for the live cohort; the application is three short questions and we do not ask for tax documents. Full refund within 14 days of a cohort starting if it is not for you — just say so in an email, no form to fill in.

Under 18? A parent or guardian needs to sign the enrolment email, and we are happy to answer their questions directly before anyone pays.

Still deciding?

Tell us your situation — how many hours you really have, what laptop you own, what you want to build first — and we will tell you honestly whether self-paced or a live cohort fits. If neither does, we will say that too.

Email or call us Read student stories