Category: Web Design

We all want to make as much money as possible and it can be very easy to take on more work than you can actually manage. If you are a self-employed programmer or run your own business, you need to carefully consider if you have the time and knowledge to take on a project before you agree to it.

Website projects can vary drastically from a simple brochure site to a fully-fledged ecommerce site that will be a lot more complex to build.

If you are only just starting out, then it may be worth doing a few smaller projects first to see how you get on with them and to check that your costing structure works and is accurate.

If you do take on a project and then realise that you can’t manage you either need to find someone that you can pass the work on to that is reliable or you will need to tell the customer that you can no longer work on. The son you can sort this out, the better.

You can always do online or classroom training courses to further your understanding and ability in areas such as design and programming.

As a website programmer, you are not required by law to have any qualifications, but some companies do ask applicants to have some sort of qualifications such as computer science or design and programming. Many programmers are self-taught or learn on the job as this is often the best way to pick up programming techniques and skills. Many employers look more at the experience a programmer has got rather than qualifications when it comes to offering job opportunities.

You can chose to do a computer programming course at college or university which will teach you a good overview of many different programming languages. If you continue on to become a web developer then you may find that you only ever program in one particular language anyway so this is not always necessary.

You can start off as a programmer by editing code that has already been written. Often then you can quickly advance to writing your own code and building websites from scratch. Some of the more advanced programmers even write their own content management systems.

If you are wanting to make changes to your website but are not a confident programmer then you need to take extra care. So many people believe that they know how to successfully change elements of their site and end up losing a lot of the structure or the content. They may also do something that causes the site to get penalised by the search engines.
When making changes to a website firstly you need to make sure that you take a full back up of not only the files that make up your website but also the database that stores all your information. Also make a note of any settings that you may need to re input should you have to reinstall a backup of your website.
Ideally always get a professional to make big changes to your website and even for smaller changes, check with your programmer if you are unsure as to what you need to do.
If you do make a mistake, then do not try and fix it yourself as you may end up making it worse, instead call your programmer as they may be able to sort it out quickly.

If you are a web designer then you will already know how important visuals are to a website creation process. Every website should be visualised prior to programming to ensure that all parties (i.e the client, designer and programmer) agree on how it should look and function. At this stage it is relatively easy to change things around but if left until it has been programmed it can take a lot longer to do incurring more costs for the client or the web management company.

Ideally present your client with a few variations of the website visual to allow them to see how it could look. I would advise showing them on a computer screen (not just printed visuals) as the colours often look different when printed.

Colourways can make a big difference to the way a website looks so you may want to experiment with these to show your client.