It's fair to say that one of the more broadly interpreted & badly perceived terms within I.T. is the expression 'Web Designer'. For anybody looking to get in to the industry, some details of the distinct facets should help to clarify things. Web-Design involves the technical elements of a successful site along with the 'creative' aspects. To the average man or women on the street, a web designer is somebody that creates the 'look' and feel of a website. Many of us might consider a 'web designer' a type of 'artist'. The truth is every web designer's function is an 'inter-related' mixture of technical know-how and design creativity - and the two are becoming very hard to split up. It becomes a bit more apparent just how things sit together if we split the job up in to it's component parts.

To start with, there are the graphic-artists, that design and assemble the graphic symbols & pictures that you see on a web page. Most often they bring this about by utilising graphic lay-out & 'animation' software (such as Adobe 'Flash' and 'Photoshop'), and aren't strictly web-site designers as such. Usually, they will have come from an art background, & may have undertaken studies at university or college level. This particular part is much more about a creative artistic ability than anything else.

Then there are the web-designers, who develop the lay-out & overall 'feel' of a web site by using a design-environment like Adobe Dreamweaver. Bu utilising visuals from the graphic-artist, they will build the 'navigational' structure of the web site, working with the clients to confirm the feel meets their needs. A web-designer with little knowledge may well begin with the 'form' rather than the 'function' of a web site. To construct a successful web-site however, its vital that you first of all look at what you actually want the website to do. Maybe it's actually an online inventory, or an E-commerce web-site where products and services are available directly. Perhaps you need to showcase merchandise through video and a largely graphical inter-face, or maybe it's mainly an 'informational' web site where the need is easy access to essential text data (like this particular website.) In essence the website must be able to meet it's required needs - whatever those requirements are. Visitors will give up on a web site & not go back if it is too tricky to 'navigate' - however attractive it appears on the surface. A professional web-designer must in essence develop a web-based 'experience' that is both pleasant & intuitive for those visiting the website - then they will visit over and over again.

The Adobe Creative Suite is the most commercially-popular design environment used by web site designers these days. These vital tools are currently (2010) on Version 4. The software which builds web sites is Adobe Dreamweaver, & 'Adobe Flash' gives access to graphical content which can be interactive & animated. In many ways we could possibly see Dreamweaver as a glorified Word Processor. Within specific rules and constraints, it allows you to display graphics and text, & then through a method known as page linking you can develop basic inter-activity within the website. 'Dreamweaver' (as with any web-design environment) produces 'HTML' (Hyper-Text-Markup-Language) program-code behind the scenes. HTML is a script which in essence 'draws' & controls the web-page on your screen. Its the language of web-browsers. Along with 'HTML' are the layout 'tag' languages - such as CSS and XML. Because these tag languages are 'standardised', the streamlined and rather more efficient outcomes work effectively on many different platforms. This means the web page will look the same on Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, 'Safari' etc. (at least, that's the idea!) So although you lay the graphic-blocks & add the text, 'Dreamweaver' is converting this in to coding behind the scenes. If you are going to be commercially feasible as a website designer, you will have to have a thorough knowledge of these languages.

Further skills that are very useful to professional web designers are a knowledge of project management and e-commerce. Another discipline - which isn't to be underestimated - is 'SEO' (Search Engine Optimisation). This is all about how to optimize web site listings on search engines like 'Google' & 'Yahoo'. And even though they technically come from a network-administration background, we should remember the incredibly valuable function of the web server administrators & installers, who keep everything working behind the scenes.

The thing it's essential to realise is that no training-course can in fact make a web designer out of you. The actual training course will simply teach all the techniques and skills. Put together as many web-sites as you possibly can whilst you work through your training course - the process will be invaluable and you will have something to show what you can do. Your own websites should be about anything you like - the local music scene, farm pets, an author you admire or even motorbikes. Start to build interactive websites and generate 'traffic' on to them. Adobe certifications are of help, but how you can apply the knowledge says much more about you as a web designer!

Naturally you will find crossovers with many of these functions - we ourselves have connections with several web-designers who are skilled in many of them. Nevertheless, it takes time to develop that level of knowledge. A web-design program then that can prepare you to enter the market should contain the following - A basic introduction to web design, and then how to utilise Adobe Dreamweaver & gain a basic knowledge of Adobe 'Flash'. Next you must understand the 'coding' languages 'HTML' and 'CSS', & after that be taught a synopsis of just how E-commerce works. To create dynamic web-sites it's important to gain knowledge of PHP, which is an easier programming language to get into than ASP.NET. You additionally need a basic grasp of databases & 'SEO'. All this is simply to get to a standard of technical ability whereby you're able to work with a wide enough array of sites. The physical skill-sets have got to develop first of all, before you can finetune them to a more natural flowing style - much like the time you learned to drive a car. The majority of people can work through a manageable training course like this inside a yr - assuming part-time study & practice of close to four to five hundred hrs. Detailed planning to get the right training program for you is a good investment of your time - experienced career experts can help you sort the best way forward before you decide to begin.

The most technically apt web professionals are normally the web-developers. Not only will web developers understand the languages above, they will also have studied additional languages, such as 'C#', VB, 'PHP', Java, ASP.Net and so on. They'll generally also have got a solid knowledge of 'SQL' Database technology, as this is how most modern big websites store their information. The majority of E-commerce sites are not the result of a big group of web designers who have created countless web-pages in layout format. What commonly happens is a place holder 'template' is produced, and the contents are automatically fed from a database to the website. So along with much larger efficiency with the website construct, this process also makes for an infinitely more consistent look and 'feel' as well.

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