You can never get enough advice when you’re starting out. There is so much you can learn, but when you’re starting out, you shouldn’t stretch yourself too far and reach for the stars too soon. Start small, start with the basics, and gradually, you will become a great web designer.
How to Be a Web Designer
Web design demands a lot of creativity, time, and effort. If you’re just a rookie then you have to have several things in mind before you start designing a website. Practice, knowledge, and experience are the only things that are going to make you a great web designer. It’s also important to stick with the trends and pay attention to how other, popular websites are designed.
We are all used to some basic website concept: a menu, the main body of content, maybe a search bar. If you threw out these things users would probably get confused, so no matter how creative you are, some things need to be done by the book.
Everything is important, so don’t skip certain things to save up time or effort. Maybe those exact things are something you’ll need later. Don’t try to learn everything in one day. To master the programming languages and tools you’ll need a lot of time and you’ll need to put in a lot of effort. Also, don’t ever settle with what you’ve learned so far, always keep learning more.
CMS, HTML and CSS
CMS is the easiest and simplest way of making your own website, so you should start with that. Install some CMS like WordPress or Joomla and start working. You’ll see that it doesn’t take long to have your own website.
After CMS, it’s best to start working with HTML and CSS and learn to make a design for your website. Try making the same design you had on your CMS website.
Once you’ve experimented with CMS, you’ve probably become familiar with Plugins, and now it’s time to add that to your website. For that, you will need some knowledge and skills in JavaScript and jQuery. Try making your own slider, or even simply find a free one and adapt it to your needs. After that, you’re not an absolute beginner anymore and you can try learning PHP, ASP, as well as some Frameworks like MVC or Zend.
You can’t be best at everything, so you should always leave some things to the experts. You don’t have to spend time making a logo because there’s surely somebody who can do it much faster and better. In the time it takes to make a logo, you can create the structure for your website and start designing.
Once you have these basics down, you can graduate to some more advanced things.
And remember, never be satisfied, always strive to better yourself, learn something new every day!
