It's fair to say that one of the more broadly interpreted and poorly defined definitions within I.T. is the expression 'Web Designer'. Web Design incorporates quite a few distinct aspects, & a good understanding of these could help anyone wanting to get into the industry. There are essentially 2 elements to web design - the technical process and the 'creative' design part. Many people believe that a web-designer is somebody that designs the visible areas of the website. Lots of people will consider a 'web designer' a sort of 'artist'. In reality the modern web designer's job is an 'inter-related' combination of technical know-how & design creativity - and the two things are becoming quite difficult to separate. We'll illustrate this with greater clarity if we break web-design down in to it's component parts.

Individuals that design & put together the images and graphic-icons to go on a web-site are known as graphic-artists. They most often make this happen by making use of graphic layout and 'animation' software (like Adobe Flash and Photoshop), and are not actually site designers per-se. Usually, they will have come from an art background, and might have studied at university level. More than anything else, this kind of role involves a sound artistic ability.

Secondly, we have the web designers, who utilise design-environments such as Dreamweaver to generate the lay-out and 'feel' of the web-site. Using visuals from the artist, they'll construct the navigational composition of the web site, working with their client to confirm the feel is correct. A web-designer with fairly limited understanding might focus on the 'form' instead of the 'function' of a web site. But, to genuinely create a valuable website, you should begin with an understanding of what you need the web-site to really do. This could be an online inventory of products and solutions, or maybe it is an E-commerce web-site which requires to have the facility sell directly from the site. Possibly much like this web-site the principle purpose is easy access to relevant details, or perhaps it'll be a show-case for products by way of video & a heavily graphical inter-face. Whatever the client would like from a website, the fundamental requirement is that it meets the basic needs. Visitors will leave a web site and not come back if it is too difficult to get around - however pretty it looks at first glance. The goal of any reputable web designer is first & foremost to come up with an event that people enjoy and feel happy with - so they come back again and again.

Alternative skill sets which are relevant to web-site designers in the commercial marketplace are an in-depth understanding of E-commerce and project management. 'SEO' (Search Engine Optimisation) knowledge is also extremely valuable for web-experts - this deals with the skill of getting sites at or near the top of the Search Engines like Google for commonly used search terms. And even though they strictly speaking originate from a network-administration background, we should remember the valuable work of the web-server installers & administrators, who keep the whole thing working behind the scenes.

Web-developers are essentially the most technically apt of all. In addition to being proficient in 'HTML', 'XML' and 'CSS', web developers will understand other highly regarded programming languages such as VB, PHP, Java, C# & ASP.net etc. They'll generally also have a strong understanding of SQL database technology, as this is how most contemporary substantial websites store their information. A normal E-commerce web-site does not have a group of web designers who've produced its 1000s of pages in lay-out format. Rather, a place holder template will have been produced, and the material will be dynamically inserted from a Database. In addition to being vastly more efficient to build, manage & up-date, it also aids in the 'feel' of the web-site being constant.

A lot of independent web designers can carry out several of these jobs themselves; in fact we work with several who are able to quite frequently. Although that level of understanding will take some time to master. A web design program therefore that can prepare you to enter the work-place must include the following - First of all, an introductory tutorial to basic web-design, followed on by training in Adobe 'Dreamweaver' and a summary of the primary aspects of Adobe 'Flash'. This would then lead on to an understanding of HTML & CSS, and then some training into the field of E-commerce. PHP has to be taught so that 'dynamic' sites can be designed (ASP.NET is far more involved, and 'PHP' is very simple to get into at first,) and a basic understanding of databases and 'SEO' should be mastered. All this is merely to get to a level of competence technically where you are able to deal with a diverse enough array of websites. Much like anything, we must learn how to really do the physical skillsets initially, & then acquire increased finesse through practice and experience. Most trainees can get through a variable program such as this inside a yr - based upon part-time study & practice of about four to five hundred hrs. Careful preparation to get the appropriate training package for you is a worthwhile investment in your future - knowledgeable career advisors can help you sort the wheat from the chaff before you get started.

The most important point to stress is that the training alone won't make you a web designer; it will merely educate you on the methods. As you work on your training course, take some time to construct & develop a broad range of your own web-sites to produce a collection of your work. Your web sites can be about anything - the local music scene, horses, a writer you admire or motorbikes. Start to build inter-active web sites & create 'traffic' to them. All this will look much more favourable on your CV, & in your Portfolio, than a document from Adobe will!

The design environments used by web site designers are their most valuable resources. Adobe Creative Suite 4 is the most commercially utilised in the market these days (as of 2010). Dreamweaver is the software program that builds web sites, with Flash providing usage of animated and interactive graphical content. You could actually claim that 'Dreamweaver' is the Word-Processor of the Adobe CS series. It lets you lay graphics and text according to certain parameters and rules, and then create basic inter-activity via page-linking. 'Dreamweaver' (as with any web design environment) produces 'HTML' ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program code in the background. This is the language of web browsers, & is a script that basically 'draws' & controls the web-page you are looking at. Alongside 'HTML' are the lay-out tag languages - such as XML and CSS. As these 'tag' 'languages' are 'standardised', the streamlined and rather more efficient results function effectively on many different platforms. The theory is that the web-page will look identical on any web browser, whether it's Mozilla Firefox, 'Internet Explorer', 'Safari', 'Opera' or anything else. So even though you lay the graphic blocks & add the text, 'Dreamweaver' is turning this in to code in the background. Its very important to achieve an in-depth knowledge of these types of 'languages' in order to be a web-designer at the commercial level.

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