Its reasonable to say that one of the most broadly interpreted & badly understood terms within I.T. is the label Web-Designer. For anybody wanting to get in to the marketplace, an explanation about the distinct facets ought to help to clarify things. There are fundamentally 2 elements to web design - the technical process and the 'creative' design side. Many people believe that a web designer is somebody that designs the visual areas of the site. A lot of people might consider a web designer a form of 'artist'. In spite of this, a modern 'web designer' will actually be as occupied with the technical element of things as much as the 'creative' side. When you break down web-design into its various tasks, then it becomes much more apparent how each thing fits together.

First, there are graphic artists, that design and put together the graphic symbols & pictures which we see on a web-site. They most frequently bring this about by using graphic layout & 'animation' software (like Adobe Flash & 'Photoshop'), and are not strictly web-site designers as such. The majority have been through further education, typically with a degree level art qualification. Obviously, this work involves a solid artistic bent.

Secondly, there are the web designers, that use design environments like Dreamweaver to create the lay-out & 'feel' of the site. Through the use of graphics from the graphic-artist, they'll assemble the navigational structure of the web site, working together with their client to confirm the feel meets their needs. A web designer with only limited knowledge may well focus on the form rather than the function of a site. However, you need to actually start with a grasp of the 'functions' it's required to perform to develop a really successful site. Perhaps it's basically a web-based inventory, or an e-commerce site where goods can be bought directly. Or perhaps it will incorporate a lot of video and graphics. On the other hand it might be principally an information website, where it's important to provide straightforward entry to specific web-pages of wording. Whatever the customer wants from a web site, the basic necessity is that it actually addresses the basic specification. People will give up on a website and not come back if its too tricky to 'navigate' - however attractive it looks at first glance. The over-riding aim of every good web-designers is for people to visit their website on a regular basis - therefore it really needs to be a happy & gratifying experience.

The one thing it's essential to understand is that absolutely no training course can make a web designer out of you. The actual program will merely cover all the techniques and skills. Build as many websites as you can whilst you go through your studies - the practice will be invaluable and you'll have something to show just what you can do. Your sites should be about anything you like - your local music scene, farm pets, an author you like or performance cars. You might even set up inter-active web sites and get 'traffic' on them. Adobe qualifications are useful, but how you can apply the training says far more about you as a web-designer!

A lot of free-lance web designers can handle several of these functions themselves; in fact we liaise with several who can regularly. Then again that level of understanding takes some time to master. A web-design course therefore that can equip you to enter the market must consist of the following disciplines - A basic introductory tutorial to web design, followed by how to utilise Adobe 'Dreamweaver' & have a basic understanding of Adobe Flash. The languages of HTML & 'CSS' need to be taught next, with a level of e-commerce instruction built-in here. Some Database & 'SEO' know-how is crucial, & a knowledge of the programming-language PHP (as opposed to the more complicated ASP.Net) so that you can create dynamic sites. The main reason you require each of these aspects is they will give you the technical grounding to be effective on a range of site builds. Just like learning to drive, you must first obtain the physical skills, before you can effectively progress beyond them & gain a degree of 'finesse'. Most people can get through a versatile training course such as this inside a year - supposing part time study and practice of close to 400 - 500 hours. A professional expert will be able to assist you to prepare your path through this quagmire of commercial-learning, and we strongly recommend that you take the time to plan your route with care before you begin your training.

The most technically-trained internet experts are normally the web developers. In addition to a sound grasp of 'HTML', 'XML' and 'CSS', web developers will understand other highly regarded programming-languages such as VB, 'PHP', Java, C# and ASP.Net etc. And as most contemporary web-sites of any kind of size store their data using SQL database technology, they are likely to have a firm handle SQL as well. Most E-commerce web-sites aren't the result of a large crew of designers who've built 1000s of pages in lay-out form. Instead, a place-holder template will have been produced, & the details will be dynamically inserted from a database. So as well as much greater efficiencies with the site build, using this method also provides for a much more consistent look & feel as well.

The Adobe Creative Suite is regarded as the most commercially-popular design environment employed by web designers today. These key programs are now ('10) on Version 4. The software program that builds website pages is Adobe Dreamweaver, & 'Adobe Flash' accesses graphical content which can be interactive & animated. 'Dreamweaver' might be considered a 'glorified' Word-Processor in a great many ways. It lets you place graphics and text according to particular parameters & rules, & then build basic inter-activity through page linking. 'Dreamweaver' (as with any web-design environment) produces HTML ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program code behind the scenes. This is the language of web browsers, & is a 'script' that in essence 'draws' and controls the web page you are looking at. Paired with HTML are the layout 'tag' 'languages' like CSS & XML. As they are 'standardised', these tag languages will work on multiple platforms to facilitate more streamlined HTML coding & more efficient layout techniques. So whatever internet browser someone uses, (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and so on.) the web page will ideally look the same. And so though you are placing graphic-blocks and text, behind the scenes, Dreamweaver is converting this in to 'code'. It's important to gain a thorough comprehension of these various 'languages' if you would like be a website designer at a commercial level.

Alternative skills which are relevant to web-site designers in the commercial market are a good grasp of e-commerce & project-management. 'Search Engine Optimisation' ('SEO') is another area that handles how the website is listed with Search Engines - so it may be found more easily (this is almost a whole job in itself.) And behind the scenes but hugely important we have the web server administrators & installers who ensure that the whole thing operates as it should. Technically speaking they are network-administrator specialists though.

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