Surely one of the most mis-understood and over-worked expressions in the I.T. market nowadays has to be the term 'Web-Designer'? In truth, web-design does contain a lot of distinctive areas, and so it may well help to explain things a little when we go through each one. Web-Design incorporates the 'technical' elements of a site as well as the creative aspects. Lots of people believe that a web-designer is someone who is responsible for the visual aspects of the web-site. Many individuals may consider a web designer a kind of artist. But in reality, in modern-day web design its getting more and more difficult to separate the technical part from the 'creative' aspect, as both are so inter-twined. If you break down web design in to it's component roles, then it becomes much more obvious how everything sits together.

Graphic artists come first - these people design & build the symbols and pictures for a website. Most often they bring this about by using graphic layout & 'animation' software (such as Adobe Flash & Photoshop), and are not really site designers as such. Most have been through further education, with typically a degree-level art qualification. This area is much more about creative ability than anything else.

Next come the web-designers, who create the lay-out and overall feel of a web site by utilising a design-environment such as Dreamweaver. By using artwork from the artist, they will create the navigational composition of the web site, keeping in touch with their client to ensure the 'feel' is right. A novice web designer often starts with the 'form' of the site, instead of the 'function'. In order to build a good web site however, its crucial that you first look at what you really want the website to accomplish. It could be it's essentially an online catalogue, or an E-commerce site where items can be purchased there and then. Maybe you want to present items by means of video and a heavily 'graphical' interface, or it could be its largely an informational site where the necessity is simple access to essential text content (like this particular web-site.) No matter what you require from a website, it must - at it's most basic level - carry out the function for which its intended. Consumers will give up on a web site and not go back if it's too complicated to 'navigate' - however great it appears on the surface. The purpose of any reputable web designer is to first and foremost design an experience that visitors enjoy and are comfortable with - so they will come back again.

The most technically-trained web experts are normally the web developers. Not only will web developers know the languages mentioned above, they will also have studied other languages, for instance C#, Visual Basic, 'PHP', 'Java', 'ASP.Net' and so on. They will generally also possess a solid knowledge of SQL Database technology, because this is one way the majority of large web sites store their information. Most e-commerce sites aren't the result of a large crew of designers who've constructed thousands of web-pages in a lay-out form. More commonly, after the formation of a place-holder 'template', the contents will be taken from a database and dynamically inserted. Besides being vastly more efficient to create, manage & update, it also aids in the 'feel' of the website staying consistent.

Commercial web designers may also upgrade their offering if they choose to branch out into areas such as project-management and E-commerce for example. 'Search Engine Optimisation' ('SEO') is another area that deals with how the site is indexed with search engines - to ensure that it may be found more easily (this is sometimes a whole job in itself.) And even though they typically come from a network-administration background, we mustn't forget the valuable job of the web-server installers and administrators, who keep everything working in the background.

The design-environments utilised by web-site designers are their most important tools. Adobe Creative Suite 4 is the most commercially popular in the industry these days (as of '10). The software which builds website pages is Adobe Dreamweaver, and 'Adobe Flash' gives access to 'graphical' content material which can be interactive & animated. In a great many ways we could look at Dreamweaver as a glorified Word-Processor. It helps you to place graphics and text in accordance with particular rules and parameters, & then build basic interactivity through page-linking. 'HTML' ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program code is produced behind the scenes with 'Dreamweaver', just as with any other web design-environment. Essentially, this language of web-browsers is a script that draws & controls the page being viewed. Lay-out tag 'languages' like CSS and XML are associated with 'HTML'. Because these 'tag' languages are 'standardised', the streamlined and more efficient results work successfully on a number of different platforms. The concept is that the web page will look identical on any web browser, whether it's Mozilla Firefox, 'Internet Explorer', 'Safari', 'Opera' or whatever. So although you place the graphic-blocks & put in the textual content, Dreamweaver is converting this into coding in the background. If you are aiming to be a commercially feasible web designer, you will need a thorough knowledge of these languages.

It's important to understand that even the finest web-design courses can only teach you the techniques & processes - not one can actually convert you into a bona fide web designer. During your study and training, you have to spend time constructing & developing as many websites as you can, to practice & assemble your own portfolio. Build web-sites about a special interest, your pet, your favourite music group or Television programme. Create an inter-active web site, & start building 'traffic' towards it. This will all appear more constructive on your Curriculum Vitae, & in your portfolio, than a certificate from Adobe will!

Naturally there are cross overs with a lot of these jobs - we ourselves have contacts with quite a few web-site designers who are competent in most of them. Although that level of understanding takes a while to master. You'll need to be trained in a number of things on a professionally viable web design training course: A basic introduction to web-design, followed by how to use Adobe 'Dreamweaver' and have a fundamental understanding of Adobe Flash. This should then move onto a comprehension of HTML & CSS, and then vital insights into the area of E-commerce. PHP should be mastered so dynamic web sites can be created (ASP.NET is far more involved, and 'PHP' is more straightforward to get into at first,) & a basic idea of Databases & 'SEO' should be achieved. Grasping these skill-sets will provide you with the ability to begin working on a good cross-section of sites. Much like anything, we must learn how to really do the physical skills initially, & then build increased 'finesse' via experience & practice. An intensive training program of this sort would probably involve close to 400-500 hours of part-time study (and practice) & therefore can be viably accomplished part time over a year. A professional advisor will be able to assist you to prepare the right path through this labyrinth of commercial learning, & we highly recommend that you prepare your path with care before you start your training program.

Microsoft Office Computer Certification Training Courses >>