To make sure that the person is doing their job right, there are tons of information out there that is just waiting to be found to help the person do their design right and make sure that it is going to satisfy everyone.

One of these sources is the various web development forums that are out there. The web development forum is a collection of people talking about things concerning web development. For example, there may be categories of design, such as color, layout and so forth that can help the person to get a good idea of what they want with their web format, as well as help them to not make mistakes that others have made. There are also going to be technical categories that are going to explain to the person that parallel programming is something that the person wants to make sure that they have on their web page to make it run properly, as well as other technical terms that people may have a hard time with.

Another source is a programming forum and this is going to be extremely useful for those programmers out there that may have run into a glitch with their program. They are going to find that usually, the fix is simple, though at the time they cannot see it because it is so simple, which is a common problem. However, with the use of these programming forums, the person can get the advice that they need. So why should people use forums when they require advice?

One of the first and probably the most popular reasons for using these forums is the fact that the person is getting some great advice for free. Most people are going to find that if they were to go to a professional or a service they would be paying for this. Why pay, when the person can find the same information for free? Secondly, these forums are a great place to bounce ideas off of one another. In this way, you may prevent yourself from going down a dead-end path because someone else has already tried that and failed. Plus, if you have a problem, even if there is no clear-cut solution, some of the best minds in the business are passing ideas back and forth that may fix it.

Finding these forums is relatively easy since most people have the Internet. They simply need to search these types of forums and they are going to have numerous results that pop up that they can utilize.

Okay so, over the years I’ve written several articles on Internet topics, and to do this I have to do a lot of research. I’ve read countless books from the best of breed in the industry. Not just those who are doing it, but also the research papers from the computer sciences putting forth their philosophical theories and math. One thing that I do not see enough of is articles that help website designers and developers integrate everything. Let’s spend a few moments talking about this.

If you have some background in building websites or web development, there is a specific topic that I can’t find a whole lot of information on, although I do recall going to an Internet business seminar in Las Vegas once and one of the symposium breakout sessions had to do with the best ways to manage Internet forums on Internet portal websites. Although I was busy and couldn’t attend that particular session because it conflicted with another one, now I wish I had. You see there’s a lot to know about the psychology of keeping a community together and preventing catfights.

Perhaps you’ve experienced this where you write something on an online Internet forum, and immediately someone comes by and calls you something terrible, rather than discussing the topic or debating the point. When this happens, feelings are hurt, people’s reputations are flamed, and it creates a negative user experience. It causes people to no longer value the website, or wish to participate. This ruins the chances for solid interactivity, the building of community, and increasing traffic. Whereas a little bit of controversy does indeed build traffic, the wrong type of bickering and bantering on Internet forums destroys all that and more.

It quickly becomes an issue with the brand name of the website, and sometimes people get so upset that they hunt down the Internet forum organizer and start in on them, or start complaining about the other party to them, and demanding that various posts get deleted. That’s unfortunate because as soon as you start deleting posts, everyone realizes what’s going on, and everyone claims their free speech has been violated. No matter that a portal website does not necessarily guarantee free speech, especially personal attacks.

No matter how much you put in your user agreements that people must get along, they will always push the limits and beg for forgiveness, next thing you know you spend all your time dealing with various personalities and conflicts as they drag you into their drama. There is a right way and wrong way to handle all this, and we need more online quality content and carefully constructed and authored articles to help website developers with these issues.

If you know anything about this topic or you have a degree in psychology, there are plenty of Internet readers who would love to read what you have to say. Please consider all this and think about it.

Web development is a complicated procedure that involves a sequence of processes. To be a part of web development, one must have technical proficiency and skill in the online market. One must also be familiar with strategies for marketing promotion and writing tasks. Aside from creating an attractive web design, the website must also be an addition to the core objectives of the web business and seek to achieve the same purpose. To ensure all this, effective web development processes are required, and also need to be followed by web developers.

Market Research

This is the first step of the whole process. Does your website have a purpose? What do you want your website to offer the world? Once you have an answer to these questions, do some quality market research based on it. Also, gather information about other websites that serve the same purpose as yours, and analyze how they organize their information and website. You should also do some research on your desired target market, so you will know what kind of information they want to see. This will give you an insight into how to develop a website, for example, what kind of features should be incorporated into your site to make it effective, what will work, and what doesn’t work in the online market.

Decide on a Unique Selling Point (USP)

Your website must stand out and be different from your competitors. How can you bring traffic to your website if you will just offer the same thing that others can offer too? Decide on a Unique Selling Point for your site, then develop and improve on it. Your USP can be anything from a promotion to a free giveaway. Whatever your USP is, it should make your site stand out in a good way from the others.

Website Content

It is one of the most important things that you should focus on because it is the first thing that people will look for when they open your website. You must offer the information that your target market wants, otherwise, they will just click that red “X”, and look for another site. That is why quality research needs to be done, which is the first and foremost step of this whole process. The information you provide must be of good quality i.e. detailed, reliable, relevant, and informative. You also need to write sales letters and create autoresponders. Keeping in constant touch and making a connection with your audience is essential too, and this can be done by creating newsletters, etc.

Generating Traffic

After developing and designing your website, you now have to promote it. One of the best methods to promote your website and generate traffic is through search engine optimization (SEO). You need to optimize your site such that it ranks high on the search engine results pages (SERP) so that a lot of people will notice it. You must ensure that you have increased the number of relevant keywords on your website so that when people search for information that you happen to offer, your site will automatically be one of the first ones to show up. You also must increase the number of backlinks and pages that your website has if you want to make it popular and become a certified competitor to other websites.

Testing

Before launching your website, you must test it first. Test various combinations of your site elements and fix anything that requires improvement to make it better.

Fortunately for me, I have a tiny bit of experience with web design, I used to run a couple of websites way back in the day but that was so long ago that when I decided to pick it up again I found that everything changed! HTML was a lot different then. There were codes that I used back then that are dead now and everyone went from coding layouts by manipulating tables to making columns by floating divs. So I had a lot of questions coming into this again and now here I am trying to answer the same questions I had for someone ready to start their journey of becoming a web designer.

So the first question I had was where do I start?

Well, I had a basic understanding of HTML even though a lot of the tags that I used back then aren’t around anymore now, I still understood it pretty well. So for someone brand new to web design/development I would strongly recommend learning HTML/XHTML thoroughly I mean front to back because it is a huge part of building websites. Directly after you learn XHTML start learning CSS there’s not a web developer out there that doesn’t know both of these things.

What tools do I need to apply HTML/XHTML and CSS

An HTML Editor like notepad or notepad++ a word processor won’t work. There are plenty of free ones out there just do a Google search for text editors and pick one. If there’s one I recommend its notepad++

Ways to learn XHTML and CSS

• Read a lot of books on the title
• Get on the web and research XHTML like there’s no tomorrow
• Read up on everything and anything you can
• Practice your new skills on a text editor like notepad or notepad++
• Sign up to become a member at some web development forums where you can ask live people for help

What tools do I need to design layouts?

A photo editor likes Adobe Photoshop or Gimp…I highly recommend getting Photoshop whether it’s Photoshop 8 or Photoshop CS5, Unfortunately, Photoshop isn’t cheap, but it is a very good investment that’ll pay off once you get good at it. For someone who can’t afford Photoshop, I suggest downloading gimp, it’ll be good enough just for the basics, and it is free.

Anyone can learn XHTML and CSS it’s not Chinese or English for Chinese people but how do you apply what you know with XHTML and CSS to make layouts and websites? Well, this is what I did but maybe you can develop your way to practice. Download a free CSS template and mess with their style sheet to see what happens, try to customize it to look more how you prefer. Look for anything in their code that you don’t understand and research it until you understand it yourself. And then try to take what you’ve learned from their code and apply it to one of your own.

Make up your design from Photoshop… start with something really simple and then try more complicated designs as you complete them. I’ve coded at least 25 different layouts before trying to get one online… One common practice is to create a website for an imaginary client, Make up a mock business and create a website for your fake business, or go to your friends and family and ask them if they would like you to make a website for them just for kicks and no charge.

Nobody can become a web designer/developer overnight it is going to take a lot of hard work! To be successful in this field you need to commit yourself and don’t let yourself get discouraged, there are going to be times when you feel like you’ll never figure something out and you want to just quit but its the ones that don’t quit after running into a wall at full force that becomes web designers/developers.

Start On The Cheap

When you decide to learn web development, do not run out and buy the most expensive set of programs on the market. Although Adobe makes outstanding web development titles, the startup developer should learn to write code with more basic products. In essence, it is best to learn the hard way. Software such as Dreamweaver can encourage rookies to lay out everything in tables because it is easy to just drag your elements on the screen. In the beginning, you may learn to make a few websites that look okay, but you still won’t know how to lay out a website the correct way. Products like Dreamweaver become more important when you advance. At that time, you will be able to use the high-end software to your advantage.

Learn The Basics: XHTML And CSS

It is tempting to first learn technologies such as Flash or Flex. These are some of the most exciting technologies on the web. For the rookie developer, it makes more sense to start with XHTML, and then move on to CSS. XHTML is the most basic and widely used coding language on the web, and CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) is a presentational language that was designed to make the content look good. It is impossible to be a real success in the web industry without having a firm grip on these two technologies.

Visit Tutorial Websites

Although printed media is a great place to learn about the design side of building web pages, it is very difficult to learn complex computer code by flipping through the pages of a book. When you do this you are only learning in one way, by reading. Tutorial websites are a better answer. You will see an expert web developer work on the project. You will hear their voice. You will open up a browser window, and do the project yourself. Nothing is more effective than this method of learning. It is possible to find a tutorial from a world-class teacher on any quality software program available today. Memberships to tutorial websites are much less expensive than the most affordable design school. Chances are the lessons will be more up-to-date as well.

Hang Out On Web Development Forums

Everyone needs feedback, and technology is changing all the time. It is easy to get left in the dust. The best way for a rookie developer to get quality feedback and stay up to date is to hang out at web development forums. It is important to see what other developers around the globe are doing with web design. Forums allow you to ask questions from others that have already been there. They also give you a place to show off your work and get critiques from people that know what they are talking about.

Web developers have done a good job promoting and helping those in their medium. Take advantage of the free and inexpensive online tutorials, learn the basic coding languages, and hang out with those further down the road. You don’t have to shell out $300 or more per credit hour to learn the web development trade.