It's fair to say that perhaps one of the more widely interpreted and badly defined terms in I.T. is the label Web-Designer. In truth, web-design does contain a lot of diverse aspects, and so it may well help to explain things when we break it down. You'll find there are essentially two sides to web-design - the technical process and the creative 'design' part. Most people assume a 'web-designer' is someone who is in charge of the visual aspects of the website. Many individuals may consider a web designer a kind of artist. But in actuality, in modern day web design its turning out to be increasingly difficult to split up the technical side from the 'creative' element, as both of them are so inter-twined. If you break web design down into its various roles, then it becomes much more apparent how everything sits together.

Graphic artists come 1st - these people design & build the icons and pictures for a website. They most frequently make this happen by making use of graphic layout and animation software (such as Adobe 'Flash' & Photoshop), and are not really web-designers as such. Most attended higher education, typically with a degree standard art background. Evidently, this particular role calls for a keen artistic ability.

Second, we have the web designers, who make use of design-environments like Adobe Dreamweaver to set-up the lay-out & 'feel' of the web page. By employing artwork from the graphic artist, they will create the navigational framework of the web site, working together with their clients to make sure that the feel is correct. A novice web designer tends to start with the 'form' of a website, rather than the function. Although, to really develop an effective site, you need to start with a clear understanding of the things you require the web-site to actually do. It could be its essentially a web based brochure, or an e-commerce web-site where products are available there and then. Perhaps you want to accentuate items via video & a heavily graphical inter-face, or perhaps it's mostly an informational web site where the necessity is easy access to essential text information (like this website.) Essentially the site must be able to meet it's required needs - whatever those particular needs are. There is no point making a visually appealing website that is difficult for anyone to find their way around! The overriding aim of every professional web-designers is for people to see their website repeatedly - therefore it needs to be a relaxed & enjoyable experience.

Web-developers are members of the group, and also the most technically trained. Not only will these people know the languages mentioned above, they will also have mastered other languages, for instance 'C#', Visual Basic, 'PHP', Java, 'ASP.Net' and so on. They'll generally also have got a solid knowledge of 'SQL' database technology, as this is one way the majority of large web sites store their data. In reality, its un-likely that a large E-commerce web site has been built in layout form by a crew of web designers. More commonly, after the creation of a place holder 'template', the contents will be extracted from a Database & 'dynamically' inserted. This makes not only the building, management & enhancements vastly more straighforward, it also makes for a far more consistent website.

The key point to emphasise is that the training program itself will not make you a web designer; it will merely educate you on the techniques. During your training and study, it's essential to apply yourself to building and developing as many sites as you can, to practice and assemble your own portfolio. Build web sites about your favourite hobby, your family dog, a favourite music group or TV show. Start interactive sites and create traffic on to them. 'Adobe' accreditations are very useful, but showing how you can use the knowledge says much more about you as a web designer!

The Adobe Creative Suite is the most commercially popular design-environment employed by web site designers right now. These vital tools are currently (2010) on Version 4. The software which builds web sites is 'Adobe Dreamweaver', and 'Adobe Flash' gives access to graphical content which can be animated & interactive. You could state that 'Dreamweaver' is the Word Processor of the Adobe CS series. Text & graphics can be placed (within certain parameters) and then a basic inter-activity can be produced by way of page-linking. Just like other web design environments, Dreamweaver produces the program-code HTML behind the scenes (HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language). It's the 'language' of web-browsers, & is a 'script' that in essence draws & controls the page you are looking at. Along with HTML are the layout tag languages - for instance CSS & XML. As these tag 'languages' are standardised, the smoother and more efficient results work successfully on many different platforms. And so whatever internet browser somebody uses, ('Internet Explorer', Firefox, Opera or anything else.) the web-page will hopefully look the same. So although you place the graphic-blocks & add the textual content, 'Dreamweaver' is converting this into code behind the scenes. If you are going to be a commercially viable website designer, you'll need an in-depth understanding of these 'languages'.

Commercial web-designers can also enhance their offering if they branch-out into fields such as project management & E-commerce for example. Another area - which is not to be underestimated - is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). This is focused on how to optimise website indexation on search engines like 'Google' and Yahoo. And in the background but very crucially are the web-server administrators & installers who make sure that the whole thing operates smoothly. Strictly speaking they are network-administrator experts though.

Many freelance web designers can fulfil several of these roles by themselves; certainly we come into contact with several who can on a regular basis. But that level of knowledge takes a while to master. An ideal professional web design training program then has to teach several things: First, an introductory tutorial to basic web-design, followed on by training in Adobe Dreamweaver and a synopsis of the main elements of Adobe 'Flash'. Next you need to understand the 'coding' languages 'HTML' and 'CSS', & then be trained in a synopsis of just how e-commerce works. Some Database and 'SEO' expertise is important, and a knowledge of the programming-language PHP (as opposed to the more complex ASP.Net) for you to create 'dynamic' web sites. All of this is merely to reach a level of technical competence whereby you can deal with a broad enough variety of web-sites. The actual physical competencies must be learned first, before you can fine tune them to a more natural and flowing style - similar to when you were learning to drive your first car. You would have to give yourself approximately four hundred to five hundred hours to study & effectively master a wide ranging training-program of this nature - therefore if your aim is to do this along-side employment it could be done within 12 months. As there are numerous things to consider, its well worth making the effort to look carefully at any training programs that interest you. Talk to somebody with industry knowledge who can help you put things together.

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