Without doubt one of the most misinterpreted and generalised expressions in the I.T. market today must be the words Web Designer? Website Design takes on board numerous distinctive aspects, & a good understanding of these may help anybody looking to get into the market. Web-Design involves the 'technical' elements of a successful website along with the creative elements. Many people presume a 'web designer' is somebody that is responsible for the visual aspects of the website. Which means a 'web designer' is essentially an artist who has had some 'technical' training. But in actuality, within modern web-design its becoming increasingly difficult to separate the technical side from the creative aspect, as both of them are so inter-twined. It will become a bit more obvious how things fit together when we split the profession down into its various roles.

Graphic artists should come first - they design and construct the icons and images for a site. Most often they bring this about by making use of graphic lay-out & animation software (like Adobe Flash & 'Photoshop'), & aren't actually web-designers as such. Most have been through higher-education, with typically a degree standard art background. This role is much more about artistic ability than any other function.

Next there are the web-designers, who generate the lay-out and overall 'feel' of a web-site by using a design-environment such as Adobe Dreamweaver. They utilise the actual graphics which are made by the artist, and talk with their client to start to create the 'feel' & 'navigational' composition of the site. A lot of novice web-site designers focus to start with on the 'format' of the web site, as opposed to its function. But, to truly develop a valuable web site, you should begin with a clear understanding of what you need the web-site to actually do. Is it mainly an E-commerce web site, which really needs to have the capacity to take payments safely and securely, or is it perhaps a web-based product catalogue listing? Or potentially it will include a lot of video & heavy graphics. On the other hand it may be largely an info web site, where it's necessary to supply straightforward access to relevant web pages of copy. No matter what you require from a web-site, it must - at it's most basic level - fulfil the function for which it is intended. There is no value in making a visually inspiring web site that is impossible for anyone to navigate! A good web designer must essentially create an on-line experience that's both gratifying and instinctive for the people visiting the website - then they'll come back over and over again.

The 'Adobe Creative Suite' is regarded as the most commercially popular design environment utilised by web site designers nowadays. These valuable tools are currently (2010) on Version 4. The software program that builds web-sites is 'Adobe Dreamweaver', & 'Adobe Flash' gives access to 'graphical' content that can be interactive and animated. 'Dreamweaver' may be looked at as a rather fancy Word-Processor in many ways. It helps you to lay graphics & text in accordance with specific parameters and rules, & then create basic inter-activity via page linking. 'HTML' (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) program code is produced in the background with 'Dreamweaver', much like any web design environment. 'HTML' is a 'script' which in essence 'draws' and controls the web page on your monitor. It's the 'language' of web browsers. Lay-out 'tag' 'languages' like CSS & XML are paired with HTML. Because these tag 'languages' are standardised, the smoother & more efficient results work successfully on many different platforms. So regardless of what internet browser somebody uses, (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, 'Opera' and so on.) the web-page will hopefully look exactly the same. Consequently the graphic-blocks you're placing and the text you are putting in is being converted into coding in the background by 'Dreamweaver'. Its important to have a thorough knowledge of these types of 'languages' in order to be a web designer at a commercial level.

Extra skillsets that are very useful to commercial web-designers are a knowledge of project management & e-commerce. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is another area that handles how a site is listed with search engines - so it may be more easily found (this really is almost a whole job in itself.) And whilst they typically come from a network administration background, we mustn't forget the valuable job of the web server installers & administrators, who keep everything working in the background.

The one thing it's essential to realise is absolutely no training course can make a web-designer out of you. The actual program will simply cover all the techniques & skills. All through your training and study, you have to spend time constructing & developing as many websites as you possibly can, to practice and build your own portfolio. Create web-sites about your hobby, your family, a favourite band or Television show. You might even build interactive websites & get traffic on them. All this will seem more constructive on your Curriculum Vitae, and in your Portfolio, than a qualification from 'Adobe' will!

The most technically trained internet experts are generally the web developers. Not only will web-developers understand the languages mentioned above, they will also have mastered other languages, such as 'C#', VB, 'PHP', 'Java', ASP.net and others. And because most modern sites of any kind of size 'store' their data using SQL database technology, they are likely to have got a firm grip on this too. In reality, its unlikely that a big E-commerce web-site has been built in layout format by a bunch of web-designers. What generally happens is a place-holder 'template' is produced, & the details are automatically fed from the Database to the web site. So as well as significantly better efficiencies with the site construct, this method also provides for a more uniform look & feel as well.

Several of these roles can and certainly do cross over needless to say, we use various freelance website designers who each can handle most of the above functions. You will need time though to develop such a variety of professional skill-sets. You'll need to be trained in a number of things on a commercially feasible web design training package: A synopsis of the basic fundamentals of web design first of all, then straight on to using Dreamweaver to a commercial standard & the primary technicalities of 'Flash' as well. Next you must learn the 'coding' languages 'HTML' & 'CSS', and after that be taught a synopsis of just how e-commerce operates. 'PHP' has to be learned to ensure that 'dynamic' sites can be created (ASP.Net is actually much more involved, and 'PHP' is easier to get into initially,) and a simple idea of databases & SEO should be achieved. The reason why you require these aspects is they will give you the technical wherewithal to work on a range of website builds. Similar to when you were taking driving lessons, you must first learn the actual physical skills, before you can ultimately push past them and achieve a degree of finesse. You'd have to allow about 400 - 500 hrs to study & properly master a broad-ranging program of this nature - so if your plan is to accomplish this along with a job it could be completed within twelve months. A skilled expert will be able to help you plan the right path through this quagmire of commercial learning, and we strongly suggest that you take the time to plan your path with care before you start your web design training.

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