How to Become a Professional Web Designer

Web designers and web developers are two of the most sought-after professions these days, and it's not as hard is it may seem to become one. With some free time, a keen interest, and a lot of practice and patience, you could find yourself making world-class websites and earning a nice income from them.

(1) Learn from other great web designers and programmers. Take a look at other well-designed websites, and note how a menu or content area is laid out and then use that knowledge in your designs.

 

(2)Get the right tools. Start by getting a good vector graphics editor such as Adobe Illustrator. Making images using vector graphics is the easiest way to grasp graphics design, so spending some money on something like Illustrator or Fireworks will be a great help. Inkscape is a nice free and open-source alternative for beginners.  

 

(3)Learn the skills you'll need. These skills include XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (cascading stylesheets) as a foundation on which to build. Basically all websites are written in a combination of these two languages. A good place to begin learning them is at W3Schools. Good books on the subject are also helpful. . So far, XHTML controls only the structure and CSS the look of the website. Neither of them cover any kind of programming aspects. Well, XHTM is sometimes considered declarative programming, but that's out of scope of this how-to. A good introduction to actually programming websites (and indeed programming in general) is Javascript. Javascript takes care of all the client-side (scripts that are downloaded with the page and run on your local computer) programming. It will also teach you the fundamental concepts that will prove invaluable when you go on to learn server-side scripting using PHP.

 

(4)Create dynamic websites using PHP and MySQL. These technologies will enable you to create a website that does not require you to make individual HTML pages but allow you to use templates to display multiple pages within the same design. 

(5)Consider using a dynamic web service to improve the user experience (UX). Create a web site that uses AJAX so you can utilise the server-side power of PHP without having to refresh the page thus saving bandwidth and enabling you to create 'interactive' web applications. 

 

(6)Set up your computer as a productive website development environment. Install a web server on your Computer so that you can work on scripts locally without an Internet connection. If you choose the PHP route try http://www.wampserver.com/en/. If you use ASP.NET use IIS available on most versions of windows. 

 

(7)Practice using coding examples. Get yourself some script examples to "tinker" with: Finding a script to dissect is the best way to learn. Try CMS's like Drupal and Joomla

 

(8)Be bold by starting a project when you have idea and some time. The best time to start making websites is as soon as possible, for two reasons; they can take a lot of time to complete, and you learn a lot just by making them. Don't worry too much about making it perfect the first time; one of the best things about websites is that they can always be improved at any time!

Source: Wonderful Dohar