It is reasonable to say that perhaps one of the more broadly interpreted and improperly perceived definitions in IT is the label 'Web-Designer'. In fact, web-design does include quite a few distinct aspects, and so it might help to simplify things a little if we go through each one. Web-Design incorporates the 'technical' components of a successful website plus the 'creative' elements. The typical PC user considers web-site designers are responsible for how a site 'looks' & 'feels'. Many people will consider a 'web designer' a kind of artist. But in reality, within contemporary web-design it's becoming more and more difficult to split up the 'technical' part from the creative aspect, as both are so inter-twined. When you break down web design into its component tasks, then it becomes much more apparent how each thing fits together.

Individuals who design and assemble the pictures & graphic-icons to go on a web-page are known as graphic-artists. They most often accomplish this by using graphic layout & 'animation' software (like Adobe Flash & 'Photoshop'), & aren't actually web designers as such. Frequently, they will have come from an artistic background, & might have studied at university or college level. Evidently, this role requires a solid artistic bias.

Web site designers come next - these people make use of design software such as Dreamweaver to prepare and design the look & 'feel' of the website. They take the work completed by the graphic artist, & in partnership with their client create an emerging look and 'navigational' composition for the brand-new web-site. A web designer with little knowledge may well start with the form rather than the 'function' of a website. And yet, to genuinely develop a useful web-site, you have to begin with an understanding of what you need the site to actually do. Potentially it's basically an on-line catalogue, or an e-commerce website where products can be bought there and then. Or potentially it'll include lots of video & graphics. Then again it may be predominantly an information website, where its essential to provide simple entry to specific web-pages of text. Whatever the purchaser wants from a web-site, the essential requirement is that it addresses the basic needs. A lot of sites look wonderful but are a headache to get around and get where you need - and so users move on & never come back. The purpose of any reputable web-designer is to first and foremost design an event that people enjoy & are comfortable with - so they come back again & again.

Professional web-site designers may also up-grade their offering if they choose to branch-out into fields like project management & E-commerce for example. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is another discipline which tackles how the site is indexed with search engines like google - so that it may be easily found (this really is sometimes an entire job in itself.) And whilst they typically originate from a network-administration background, we should remember the incredibly valuable role of the web-server installers & administrators, who keep the whole thing working behind the scenes.

The main point to stress is the fact that training itself will not make you a web designer; it will simply coach you on the techniques. As you get into your training course, make an effort to put together and develop a broad range of your own web-sites to produce a profile of your work. Your sites should be about anything you like - the local music scene, farm pets, a writer you like or cars. Build an inter-active web-site, & begin building 'traffic' towards it. 'Adobe' qualifications are helpful, but showing how you can apply what you've learned says far more about you as a web-designer!

Several of these roles can and certainly do cross-over of course, we use a number of independent website designers who each can handle a lot of the above roles. You will need time though to acquire such a variety of professional competencies. A web-design course then that will prepare you to enter the workplace must contain the following disciplines - A basic introduction to web-design, and then how to use Adobe 'Dreamweaver' & have a basic knowledge of Adobe 'Flash'. The languages of 'HTML' & 'CSS' need to be taught next, with some e-commerce training included here. Some database and SEO expertise is important, and an understanding of the programming-language PHP (as opposed to the more complicated ASP.Net) so that you can construct dynamic web sites. All of this is merely to reach a standard of technical ability whereby you can work on a diverse enough variety of sites. Much like taking driving lessons, you first have to develop the physical competencies, before you in essence push past them and accomplish a certain amount of 'finesse'. An all-encompassing training-program like this could require close to 400 to 500 hrs of part time study & practice and therefore can be successfully finished part time over 12 months. As there are so many points to consider, its worth finding the time to look carefully at any training programs that interest you. Speak to a person with industry knowledge to help you sort things out.

The design-environments used by web-designers are their most valuable resources. 'Adobe Creative Suite' 4 is really the most commercially popular in the market right now (as of '10). Dreamweaver is the software that builds web sites, with 'Flash' providing access to interactive & animated graphical content. Dreamweaver might be looked at as a rather fancy Word-Processor in lots of ways. In accordance with particular rules and parameters, it lets you place graphics & text, and then through a process called page-linking you can create basic inter-activity inside the web-site. As with other web design-environments, 'Dreamweaver' creates the program code HTML in the background ('HTML' is short for Hyper Text Markup Language). This is the 'language' of web-browsers, & is a 'script' which basically draws & controls the page you're viewing. Alongside HTML are the layout 'tag' languages - such as XML & CSS. Because they are 'standardised', these will work on multiple-platforms to allow more stream-lined 'HTML' coding & more effective lay-out techniques. The concept being that the web-page will look identical on any web browser, whether it is 'Mozilla Firefox', Internet Explorer, 'Safari', 'Opera' or anything else. Subsequently the graphic-blocks you're laying & the text you are adding is being converted into coding in the background by Dreamweaver. It's important to gain an in depth understanding of these various languages to be able to be a website designer at the commercial standard.

Web developers are members of this group, and the most technically-trained. Along with a sound grasp of HTML, XML & 'CSS', web-developers will know other respected programming languages such as 'VB', PHP, Java, C# and ASP.net for instance. They'll generally also have a good understanding of SQL database technology, since this is how most contemporary significant sites store their data. A normal e-commerce website does not have a team of web-designers who've created its countless web pages in layout form. Instead, a place holder 'template' will have been created, & the details will be dynamically fed from a Database. This process not only makes the building, management and upgrades massively more efficient, it also makes for a far more consistent site.

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