Surely just about one of the most mis-understood and over-worked labels within the I.T. market today has to be the term 'Web Designer'? Website Design incorporates a number of different facets, & an understanding of these may help anyone seeking to get into the market. Effectively, there are 2 key sides to web-design; the 'creative' side & the technical side. The typical PC user believes web-site designers determine how a site looks & feels. Quite simply, they see web-designers because artists on the whole. However, a commercial 'web-designer' will in fact be as occupied with the 'technical' side of things as they are with the 'creative' side. If you break web-design down in to its different roles, then it becomes much more obvious how everything fits together.

Graphic-artists come first - these people design & construct the icons & images for a site. They're not really web-designers per-se, & generally are multi-media artists using graphic layout & 'animation' software, (like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe 'Flash'.) The majority of graphic-artists went to university or college, and have a qualification in artistic drawing. More than anything else, this kind of role demands a good artistic ability.

Second of all, there are the web-designers, who employ design environments like Adobe 'Dreamweaver' to set-up the lay-out & feel of the web-site. Using visuals from the artist, they'll construct the 'navigational' framework of the site, working together with the clients to be sure the 'feel' is correct. A novice web designer tends to start with the form of a web-site, instead of the function. Yet, to actually produce an effective web site, you should begin with an understanding of the things you require the website to really do. Is it largely an E-commerce website, which requires to have the capacity to receive payments securely, or is it perhaps a web based product or service brochure listing? Or potentially it will consist of lots of video & heavy graphics. On the other hand it might be predominantly an information web-site, where it's essential to supply straightforward access to relevant pages of wording. Quite simply the web site must have the facility to meet its requirements - whatever those requirements are. A lot of web-sites look amazing but are a headache to 'navigate' and find what you want - and so people give up & never return. A professional web designer must essentially create a web based 'experience' that is both pleasurable & user-friendly for those visiting the site - that way they'll come back again and again.

Web-developers are essentially the most technically apt of all. They will not just know 'HTML', 'CSS' and XML, but will have also trained in more official programming-languages such as PHP, 'ASP.Net', 'VB', 'C#', Java and others. Many also possess a very good understanding of 'SQL', the database language - because the data on many sizable modern web sites is stored in this particular 'language'. A typical e-commerce web-site doesn't have a bunch of web-site designers who have produced its 1000s of pages in lay-out format. Instead, a place holder 'template' will have been built, & the details will be 'dynamically' loaded from a database. This makes not only the construction, management & up-dates vastly more straighforward, it also creates a far more consistent web-site.

Naturally you'll find cross overs with many of these roles - in-fact we have interactions with quite a few web-designers who are capable in most of them. Nevertheless, it will take quite some time to develop that level of knowledge. An appropriate commercial web design program therefore needs to instruct on a number of things: Firstly, an introductory tutorial to basic web-design, followed by teaching in Adobe 'Dreamweaver' & an overview of the main components of Adobe Flash. The languages of 'HTML' and CSS should be taught next, with some E-commerce instruction included here. 'PHP' should be taught in order that 'dynamic' web sites can be constructed (ASP.NET is actually much more involved, & 'PHP' is easier to get into initially,) & a basic understanding of Databases & SEO should be mastered. The reason why you need these elements is they will give you the technical grounding to be effective on a range of web site builds. Much like anything, we need to learn how to actually do the physical skill-sets first, & then build greater 'finesse' as a result of experience and practice. The majority of people can work through a flexible training course such as this within a year - based on part-time study and practice of close to 400 - 500 hours. A professional advisor will be able to help you plan your path through this quagmire of professional training, and we highly recommend that you allow time to plan your path carefully before you start your web design training.

The most important tools used by web-designers are their design-environments, with 'Adobe Creative Suite' (presently in Version 4 as of '09/10) staying essentially the most popular commercially. Whilst Adobe Flash offers access to interactive & animated graphical content material, 'Dreamweaver' is the software which builds websites. You could actually state that 'Dreamweaver' is the Word Processor of the Adobe CS series. Text and graphics can be placed (within certain limitations) & then a basic interactivity can be established via page-linking. Dreamweaver (or any other web design environment) creates 'HTML' (Hyper-Text-Markup-Language) program code behind the scenes. 'HTML' is a 'script' which in simple terms 'draws' & controls the web page displayed on your monitor. It's the language of web browsers. Lay-out 'tag' languages like XML & CSS are paired with 'HTML'. As they are 'standardised', these tag languages can work on multiple platforms to allow more streamlined 'HTML' code & more efficient lay-out techniques. So which-ever web-browser someone uses, (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, 'Opera' or anything else.) the web page will hopefully look exactly the same. As a result the graphic blocks you're laying & the text you're putting in is being converted into coding in the background by Dreamweaver. A well-rounded understanding of these various languages is critical if you're to be a commercially-viable web designer.

The thing you need to grasp is no training course can actually make a web-designer out of you. The actual program will simply teach all the skills and techniques. As you get into your training-course, take some time to put together and develop a large selection of your own web sites to build a profile of your work. A craft or other interest can be a very good starting point, or maybe your favourite pet, or a holiday-resort you especially liked. Start inter-active sites and generate 'traffic' on to them. 'Adobe' certifications are useful, but showing how you can apply the knowledge says a lot more about you as a web-designer!

Professional web designers may also up-grade their offering if they branch-out in to areas such as project management and e-commerce for example. Another field - that is not to be underestimated - is SEO ('Search Engine Optimisation'). This concerns how to optimize site listings on search engines like 'Google' and 'Yahoo'. And behind the scenes but very crucially we have the web server installers & administrators that ensure that everything operates as it should. Technically speaking these people are network administrator experts though.

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