What is the best way to become a website designer?

Question

I want to start my own website design where people ask me to design their websites. Need advice

Answer 1

First go to college and get a degree in Experience Design. There are too many web design-hacks producing horrible sites and giving the design industry a bad name.

Answer 2

The BEST way is to get a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science but obviously that will take some time. In the meantime (or instead if you must) you can learn a lot of stuff on your own. Start by using something like Microsoft Front Page, it's pretty straightforward. Then you'll need to learn all or most of:

HTML
XML
SQL
JavaScript
PHP

checkout amazon.com and buy some books. Some of my recommendations are:

"HTML for the World Wide Web" (Castro)
"Head First HTML"
"PHP and MySQL Web Development"

When considering books, remember a lot of them will be highly rated because they are REFERENCES but what you need to start are tutorials.

Once you're pretty familiar with the fundamentals, do a few things for yourself or for free to have work to show off.

And remember the one thing I wish more people realized which is explained so well in the book "Why Software Sucks" (yes that's a real book): Your user is not you! Get a lot of feedback from people and use it to improve your sites and yourself as a designer.

Good luck!

Answer 3

Start by designing websites for family and friends.

Answer 4

Hello, actually you have 2 questions to answer:
1. How to become a web site designer
2. How to make the business successful
Even it is a great market you must know that there is a lot of competition. For big companies you have big agencies, so they will not get your design very fast. For small companies they have friends that can make it for them maybe for free or for an exchange of favors. For medium size companies you might be unable to make what they request for a lack of experience (databases, programming, etc).
To become a web site designer is not the difficult part. There are many resources available for free. I assume that you feel like you have the skill for graphic design and a over the average taste for colors. If not... you can use web site templates (look for that on the Internet) or services like http://pages.google.com, http://www.homestead.com that solve the problem of hosting and design.
To make your business successful you need to have a clear target (web sites for schools, doctors, etc.). Start in your own town or neighborhood. Then step by step grow. Keep a good web site for your business with testimonial of satisfied customers and links to their site. Avoid working for free. be creative for advertising: Blogs, local radio (can be free if you offer them to give tips to their listeners), friends, new friends. Make yourself easy to "get", offer a kind service and be up to date with what is going on the Web. Learn about new services, new trends, you can visit http://tips4uall.blogspot.com/ or http://webborg.blogspot.com/
Good luck!

Answer 5

Well you could always start teaching yourself some HTML and such, there are online sites that can do that for free...

Next, you will probably want to go get webmaster certified.

Not to mention you may want to go to a tech. school and take classes there on web design.

Answer 6

you want to do what seta_souj said and try just posting documents on the web from Microsoft word. learn about making tables and the tools then down load extra things like colors and wall paper. I don't know how to make pitchers thou.
then post the site (that's when you start loading updates to the site to make it bigger and bigger)

for example you e-mail account and maybe even a small e-mail net work.