Udacity is free online university and offers a CS253 intro to web development class.  Since I am currently a web developer/architect in ASP.Net (and recent project has brought me back to Java) it is a bit light.  However, it does offer me a nice problem set and my first exposure to writing cloud apps with GAE and Google Datastore. Steve Huffman, who developed reddit, is the instructor and does offer nice real-life stories.  Give it a look.