It is fair to state that perhaps one of the most broadly interpreted & badly understood definitions within I.T. is the expression Web Designer. Website Design incorporates quite a few distinctive facets, and a good understanding of these may help anyone wanting to get in the industry. Essentially, there are 2 principal sides to web-design; the 'creative' side & the technical process. To the person on the street, a web-designer is someone that creates the 'look' and 'feel' of a website. Many of us may consider a 'web-designer' a sort of artist. But in reality, within modern-day web-design it's turning out to be more and more difficult to split up the 'technical' side from the 'creative' side, because both are so intertwined. It becomes a little more apparent how things sit together when we split the profession up in to its component parts.

Graphic-artists are 1st - these people design and build the icons and images for a web site. Strictly speaking, graphic-artists are not really web designers. More usually they are multimedia artists who make use of software such as Adobe 'Photoshop' & Flash to bring about their end results. Most graphic artists have been to university, with a background in art & design. Clearly, this particular work calls for a keen artistic bent.

Then there are the web designers, who generate the lay-out and overall feel of a website using a design environment such as Dreamweaver. They take on the visuals done by the artist, & together with their client develop an emerging look and navigational framework for the brand new site. A web-designer with fairly limited knowledge may well begin with the form rather than the function of a site. But, you need to actually start with a grasp of the 'functions' it's required to carry out to develop a truly productive web site. Maybe it's in effect an online inventory, or an e-commerce web-site where products and services are sold directly. Or potentially it will have a lot of video and graphics. Then again it might be principally an information web-site, where it's necessary to supply simple entry to specific pages of wording. Quite simply the web-site must be able to meet its required needs - whatever those particular needs are. Such a lot of web-sites look amazing but are a headache to navigate and find where you'd like - & so visitors move on and never return. A good web designer must basically create a web-based 'experience' that is both enjoyable and instinctive for the people visiting the web site - then they will come back again and again.

The Adobe Creative Suite is the most commercially popular design environment utilised by web-designers these days. These key tools are currently (2010) on Version 4. Dreamweaver is the software which builds website pages, with 'Flash' providing usage of animated & interactive graphical content. Dreamweaver might be considered a rather fancy Word-Processor in lots of ways. Graphics & text can be displayed (according to certain limitations) & then a basic inter-activity can be established by means of page-linking. 'Dreamweaver' (as with any web design environment) creates 'HTML' (HyperText Markup Language) program-code behind the scenes. This is the language of web browsers, & is a 'script' that essentially 'draws' & controls the web page you are seeing. Layout tag 'languages' like CSS and XML are matched up with HTML. Because they are standardised, these tag languages will work on multiple-platforms to facilitate more stream-lined 'HTML' coding and more efficient layout techniques. The concept being that the web page will look exactly the same on any web browser, whether it is 'Mozilla Firefox', 'Internet Explorer', 'Safari', 'Opera' or whatever. So although you lay the graphic-blocks & put in the text, Dreamweaver is converting this into code in the background. If you are going to be a commercially feasible web-designer, you'll need an in-depth understanding of these 'languages'.

The thing you have to understand is that no training-course can make a web-designer out of you. The actual training course will simply cover all the skills and techniques. Throughout your study and training, you have to spend time building and creating as many websites as you possibly can, to practice and build your portfolio. A craft or other interest is a good starting point, or maybe your favourite pet, or a holiday-resort you especially loved. Build an inter-active website, & begin generating traffic towards it. Every little thing you do will add to your Curriculum Vitae, & demonstrate much more to an employer than an Adobe accreditation.

Needless to say there are cross-overs with many of these jobs - in-fact we have connections with quite a few web designers who're proficient in most of them. However, it takes quite some time to acquire that level of expertise. You should be taught a number of things on a commercially viable web-design training program: A basic introduction to web-design, and then how to use Adobe 'Dreamweaver' and have a basic understanding of Adobe 'Flash'. This should then move onto an understanding of HTML & CSS, and then some training within the field of E-commerce. Some Database and SEO know-how is crucial, and an understanding of the programming-language 'PHP' (as opposed to the more complicated ASP.Net) in order to build 'dynamic' sites. The main reason you will need these elements is so that you have the technical wherewithal to be effective on a range of web site builds. The physical skills must develop first of all, before you can fine-tune them to a more natural flowing style - similar to when you were learning to drive a car. You would need to give yourself approximately 400 - 500 hours to study & effectively master a broad ranging program like this - therefore if your plan is to achieve this along with employment it could be carried out within a year. As there's a lot of things to consider, its well worth making the effort to look carefully at any training programs that interest you. Speak to a person with knowledge of the industry who can help you sort things out.

Web developers are members of this group, and also the most technically trained. As well as an understanding of 'HTML', 'XML' & CSS, web-developers will understand other highly regarded programming languages like Visual Basic, PHP, Java, 'C#' & 'ASP.Net' etc. They'll also generally have a solid knowledge of 'SQL' database-technology, since this is one way most contemporary significant sites store their information. A normal E-commerce web-site doesn't have a bunch of web-designers who've created its 1000s of web pages in layout form. What usually happens is a place holder 'template' is produced, & the details are dynamically inserted from the Database to the web-site. This process not only makes the building, management & upgrades massively more straighforward, it also makes for a more consistent website.

Extra skill-sets which are very useful to commercial web-site designers are an understanding of project management & E-commerce. 'SEO' (Search Engine Optimisation) know-how is extremely useful for web experts - this is the art of getting internet sites at or near to the top of the Search Engines for commonly used keyword phrases. And although they technically come from a network administration background, we should remember the valuable role of the web server installers and administrators, who keep everything working behind the scenes.

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