Creative Web Design

By contracting a creative web design company to design your new website as opposed to a more traditional web company, you give yourself an unmeasurable edge over your competition in the eyes of your potential customers.

Traditional design companies focus on purely getting a site put together with relevant information, that functionally works. Enter Web 2.0 and more traditional marketing avenues venturing into the marketplace, and creative web design companies have come into the game.

By 'creative web design', I refer to websites which still have the functionality and relevant information consumers have come to expect, but have a huge focus on the aesthetic aspect, and use traditional marketing 'wow factor' to capture the users attention, and last longer in their mind than those of the competitor.

Picture a billboard with great graphic design and immaculate choice of imagery, compared with an ad on the side of the road simply with a name and number. While you may have chosen to look at both, the creative approach will prompt you, the audience, to remember the creative billboard.

Now picture two websites, side by side. One with a flash intro page, immediately showing a montage of images and grabbing y our attention; which leads into a visually beautiful website where every pixel is perfectly crafted into alignment. Next, a bland website showing you purely text and a basic navigation. The difference is so enormous it's like comparing Black and White TV with a 3d Movie Theatre.

Through the use of the latest and greatest technology, a creative web design company will use Flash, jQuery, and HTML5 to visually engage the user; however this is where the pitfalls of a creative web design can come into play.

Many years ago, around the year 2000, many graphic design companies started to see an emergence in the marketplace for web services. Many of these companies had employees with a little web experience, enough to get by, and as such they began offering web services. What they didn't understand was functionality, valid mark-up, cross-browser compatibility, or SEO - all things which a more traditional web design company would take into account.

While this would be classed as a creative web design company, often their creative web design's wouldn't be successfully converted from a design into code, and having mis-alignments in a design (especially cross-browser) became commonplace. Without experienced developers on-hand, many of these problems became overlooked, and many substandard creatively designed websites are still around today, with more and more being sent live on the world wide web every day.

For this reason, when looking to hire a creative web design company, you should always be sure to look into their operation, most reputable companies won't mind you asking a few questions. In a creative web design company, the people building your site should be working as a team. The days of all-rounders are over, and when creativity is to be combined with functionality, it is essential to have a 'designer' as well as a 'developer' work on your project.

A designer is generally artistically minded, and may have worked as a graphic designer in the print world at some capacity. Thei r goal is to create a visually appealing design for your approval. This will be a static image of what your website is going to look like, as it is much faster to edit a graphic than to edit a coded website. Most creative web design agencies work in a similar fashion, as this allows for the complete artistic talent of the designer to be used, and complete use of the imagination of not only the designer, but also the client.

Once a design is approved, a developer steps in to convert this to a web format in standards compliant code. This may include implementation of a Content Management System (CMS), and generally involves some mild Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as well as cross-browser compatibility. Once this is done, your brand new creative web design is all ready for the World Wide Web.

You need to choose a creative web design company that can fulfil all of your needs from creating a website which suits your brand image and captivates the user, to something which will navigate easily, rank well on search engines, function the same across your entire user-base, and ultimately lead to more conversions in your market.

The main things to keep in mind when choosing a creative web design company are their design to implementation process, their cost, their portfolio, and ultimately the level of service you can expect. I am an online consultant, and can help you shoul d you have trouble finding an agency, or even if you would like me to help in assessing another agencies ability to meet your needs to come up with a creative web design that will fit your needs and help in squashing your competition.

Jared Codling from Creative Web Design Blog [http://www.creative-web-design-blog.com/]

27 PHP/MySQL Tutorials for Building Web Applications

One of the most adaptable web development languages has to be PHP. An enormous number of open source projects are built on the PHP/MySQL database stack. Spending a bit of time learning these languages will help tremendously when customizing a WordPress or Pligg CMS project. But it’s difficult to pinpoint where you should start.

I’ve collected 27 brilliant tutorials which are perfect for beginner-to-intermediate web developers. You can pick up programming knowledge from these tutorials which usually stays with you forever. Understanding how to read PHP or SQL is almost more important than learning to program. Be sure to go through a few of these tuts and share your thoughts with us in the post discussion area.

View the original article here

Web Site Development - The Roles of Web Designers and Web Programmers

A web site is a software package. By definition, a package is a ready-made program that is available to users for use to perform some tasks. These users include non-IT professionals. Thus, a web site qualifies to be a package like Microsoft Office, Peachtree Accounting packages.

Before the revolution of The Web (WWW), development of software package was the exclusive preserve of skillful programmers. Programmers or software developers develop the logic of programs which a package will eventually use to function. This logic building aspect of software development requires high level of intellect. This together with the intricacies of mastering programming languages made the development of packages uninteresting and unattractive to a large spectrum of people.

Following the revolution of The Web, it became possible for non-programmers to develop packages right from the inception. These are web-based packages and of course, web sites, requiring no programming skills. The result was the creation of a new type of profession called Web Design. A web designer is someone who organizes a web page by arranging texts, pictures, animations, forms etc on a page and formats them to produce good presentation. All he needs do is to make use of any of the appropriate web development tools like Macromedia Visual Studio and Microsoft FrontPage. Through the Design section of Macromedia Dreamweaver, for example, you can design a whole web page without using HTML codes. What you have is a web site. A web site is one or more web pages. These web development tools are the equivalent of what the popular package Adobe PageMaker does which is to organize and format pages of books, magazines, newspapers etc. No programming is required.

The limitation of web designing is the creation of static web sites which may be suitable for some applications but not all. They produce non-interactive and non-dynamic web sites that are unsuitable for certain applications and needs. For example, online registration. The role of a web designer stops at this point and that of a web programmer begins. As a result of the limitation of static web sites, the need to move further arose. People wanted sites where they could post forms for tasks like creating accounts online and authentication of passwords. This led to the development of web programming languages otherwise known as scripts. Examples are JavaScript, ASP, ASP.NET, JSP, PHP, ColdFusion etc. The result was the creation of the profession of web programming. A web programmer is someone who develops programs for the purpose of performing automated tasks on a web site. Some prefer to call them software developers. Example of such tasks are:

Data validation.
Form submission.
Sign Up.
Database search.

Thus, it became possible to develop dynamic and interactive web sites capable of doing what conventional software could do on stand-alone computer and network using non-internet technologies. Online banking, stock broking are examples. These functions can now be carried out entirely on internet. To develop functional scripts for such automated tasks, logic building and mastery of the programming language to use in terms of syntax are required. Most of the programs are written from scratch.

Can you be a web designer and a web programmer? Yes, you can. There are people who double as web designer and web programmer but specialists are noted for doing better in their respective fields of specialization than non-specialists. Some sites do not require more than web designing but many sites nowadays require both web designing and web programming like the multi-tier applications that have presentation layer, the logic layer that interfaces the presentation layer with the database, and the data layer that contains the database. There are even database specialists who design database and write what is called stored procedures and triggers right inside the database. The use of stored procedures increases the overall efficiency of site execution as it minimizes the number of times SQL statements are parsed, compiled, and optimized during execution. You can see that site development is quite deep.

The roles of web designers and web programmers are complementary in the development of web site. You need to identify where your ability lies and allow that to inform your choice of area of specialization. If you know you have the ability to write programs, you can go beyond web designing and become a web programmer but if it is otherwise, stick to web designing and continue to grow and sharpen your skills. The truth of the matter is that programming is not for everybody.

If you are a conventional graphic artist, you will find it easy to crossover to web designing and if you are a conventional programmer, you can readily crossover to web programming. What I mean by conventional graphic artists are those who have the expertise in the use of tools like CorelDraw, Photoshop, and PageMaker to perform Desktop Publishing tasks. By conventional programmers, I mean the experts in programming languages like C++, FoxPro, COBOL, and Dbase.

As long as you can determine where your ability lies, you will surely overcome frustrations in your tasks of developing web sites and you will continue to enjoy what you are doing. If you are a web designer and you have a job that involves programming which you cannot handle, look for assistance from a web programmer. If you are a web programmer and you are having issues with web designing in your task, seek the assistance of a web designer. If you can handle both areas to a very large extent, well and good.

Olumide Bola holds a bachelors degree of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and is currently pursuing chartered membership of the Computer Professionals Registration Council of Nigeria (CPN). He is also a member of Nigeria Computer Society (NCS). He has trained scores of people for well over a decade in programming and non-programming courses. He is currently a Software Developer and the Managing Director/CEO of Victolay Technologies Limited.

How to Learn Web Design - 8 Must-Have Steps

You want to get started with web design. Perhaps to create your own site or create web sites for other people. The questions are: What is the best way to learn web design? How do you decide what is vital to learn, and possibly what you don't need to know at all? This article will dwell in-depth on the vital elements you need to learn in web design, and focus on some of the ways you can employ to find out more. To make a web site that will work you need very valuable we design skills. They include:

• Marketing

Simply put, web design is marketing; a process of matching markets to propositions. The more successfully you do that, the more effective your web design will be. Your web site cannot be successful if people who visit your web site cannot get what they are looking for. Search marketing, advertising, and email marketing are all interwoven with your web site, and should be viewed as fraction of the marketing mix. Learning and applying the fundamental principals of marketing is crucial for effective web design.

• Branding and positioning

Branding is the discipline of choosing what you want your communication to say about you or your product(s), or your client web site. A strong brand creates a strong impression that communicates vividly what is unique about your site and helps people to differentiate your offering from all other thousands of options out there. It is pointless to create another web site that resembles other sites in your target market. If you want to create a powerful web site, it should be built around a clear identity. It should display a personality that your visitors can connect to. And that is the work of a web designer.

• Traffic generation

For a web site to prosper it must attract the right number of the right visitors, and at the same time convert those visitors into customers or friends. If your site does not appear on the first page of search results for a range of terms, it won't be getting a lot of attention. Build your site from ground up and focus it at the right market sector. Ensure your site is search engine friendly. Any web designer who does this will be far more valuable and successful.

• Information architecture

A competent web designer should be able to build sites that are easy to navigate. Helping your visitors find their way around is vital to that experience. In addition, the way you build your site will have impacts on its ability to convert prospects to customers, and even more significant its ability to compete for your target search terms.

• Graphic design

Graphic design is very vital as it covers use of imagery, styling, typography, page layout, ease of navigation and iconography. Learn how to use features that are easy to understand, and should look appropriate for its message and its audience.

• Production

Web page production is the process of converting your graphical design into a working web site. A well produced web site is quicker and easier to build than a trashy one. It is also easier and cheaper to edit the web site when the need arises. Furthermore, a good produced site will transfer well to other user agents, especially mobile browsers which mean more people can interact with your site.

• Accessibility and usability

Web accessibility is the process of making your site usable by every one-disability not withstanding. On the other hand, web usability is the process of testing how easy it is to accomplish what you want on a site. To create a successful web site, you have to be familiar with the principles of accessibility and usability. In addition, creating a web site that is readable to somebody using a text-to-speech reader is a bonus because your content will accessible to search engine spiders.

• Copy-writing

Copy-writing is the ultimate skill in making effective web pages; it impacts on everything that matters. A web page should have the ability to grab visitors' attention and encourage them to keep moving forward confident that they will attain what they want. The language you use should be simple and easy to understand. All these fall under the remit of copy-writing. Any web designer who can't yet write a good copy is a half baked designer.

In conclusion, the best way to go about this is to practice. You can further enhance your knowledge and skills from other resources such as tutorials, blogs, on-line courses, local courses, seminars, private groups and pro-web design courses.

Discover the web site design person in you. You can find more information and tips for how to learn web design at http://www.webmastercourse.com.

Are You Being Scammed By Your Web Design Company?

This is a growing concern amongst many business owners. Does your web design company own you? This may be possible if you've allowed them to host your web site for you and also register your domain name for your company.

Web design companies have a lot of control over their clients. I refer to this as "False Power". The sad reality is that most of their clients don't even know they are stuck in this potentially painful predicament. This power is usually exercised when a client of a web design company finds a better deal on hosting for their web site and they simply want to switch their hosting provider, or when the "client" wants to upgrade their web site for a better rate than their current web development provider is offering.

Here's what usually happens to so called "traitor clients":

- Current web design company sends their client a hefty bill for switching

- The web design company cancels their client's account

- They may point the domain name to another place

- They sometimes take down the entire website until further notice

You get the point! Too much power is given to the web design company. I truly believe that it is your right to shop for better prices and it is your right to own your domain name even if you didn't have a hand in registering your domain name.

As the owner of the website, you put your trust into your web design company to represent your business appropriately and honestly, only to find out down the road that honesty isn't in their vocabulary.

I truly believe there should be a law against web design companies that can be summarized as such: For any domain name registered by the web design company on behalf of their client, the domain name may not be disputed or need to be disputed, the domain name is automatically owned by the client and is automatically bound by their web development contract.

With every new venture, there is always going to be loopholes. From the aforementioned example, what if there is no contract? If you are reading this and are in the process of searching for a web design company, please ENSURE that you have a contract drafted, outlining everything you are entitled to and that you have sole rights to your domain name.

See what most business owners fail to realize is that their domain name is as important as registering their business name itself. I will repeat that... Your domain name is "hot real estate", would you want someone else owning your property?

The same applies for your domain name. Don't get caught with your pants down while asking, why don't I own my domain name. It is as important as owning your own company name. There are people out there searching for suckers to take their domain name - don't be the one who gets caught!

How to avoid this "Power Stricken" disaster:

The best solution is to go out and register your domain name BEFORE you hire a web design company. This ultimately gives you the power over your domain name. At any given time, you can go back and log into your "domain name registrant" in order to switch your web site to any hosting company you choose.

When searching for an "all around" package for your web design project, make sure that your hosting is suitable for your needs. 95% of all web design projects don't need a large hosting package that costs between $150-$500 a year. The most you should pay for your hosting in this case is around $100.00 a year, no more.

You only need a large hosting package if:

- Your web site is 1000+ pages in size

- You're going to buy traffic in the 1000's every month

- You need over 25 email accounts setup

Ask questions when shopping for a web design company! Here are a few questions you should be asking right away before you sign any contract...

- Do you provide a contract for all your projects?

- If you register my domain name, will it state in my contract that I own the domain name under all circumstances?

- If I am late making payments, is it your company policy to cancel the account?

- Why are your hosting services so high in price? Why wouldn't I go somewhere else for $100 a year?

- Does it state within your contract that I cannot switch to a different hosting company later on?

- Going forward, am I going to be able to hire any web developer for my website updates, if I am able to negotiate better prices?

This is another important note:

Make sure your web design company gives you the "FTP (File Transfer Protocol)" access to your website. The FTP allows you to hire another web design company to go in and update your website at any time. Without the FTP information, no one can update your website besides the original web development company or hosting company that you hired.

In Conclusion:

Be weary of web design companies that don't provide contracts for all of their projects. Be careful with your domain name; make sure that in the end, you own all rights to your domain name, not someone else.

I hope this article helps you out!

For more of Martins articles, go here: http://www.smartads.info/newsletter

Martin Lemieux
President of Smartads

International: http://www.smartads.info
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Tips And Tricks To Get A Web Design Job And Various Online Job Alternatives

Are you hoping to have a job in web design or web development? If that's the case, I bet you will agree that it's quite effortless to get hung up on the title of the job you happen to be seeking out. Let us take for instance, most of the time web design companies just like website designer Louisville, get requests from people who wished to become "web designers" or "web developers".

The tricky part is that they may already be established to acquire a job in the industry of website design, yet for the reason that wouldn't consider anything which doesn't have the title "Web Designer", they cannot or may find it difficult to get a job.

Seeing that there are a lot of jobs found in the web industry, a person simply would need to figure out how to look for them.

Here are several tricks to finding a great web jobs. The initial thing that you will need to examine is the job titles. Certainly, in the event that the word "web" is in the title then chances are it's a web design or web development type job. But, you must know that there are other titles that might be web related and don't sound like that. Listed here are the following examples:

• Graphic designer

• Layout artist

• Writer or copywriter

• Editor or copy editor

• Producer

• Information architect

• Program or product manager

• Digital developer

So that you can obtain a web design job, you must first of all take a look at the job title. When you find it has a "web" in the title in that case carry on. Nevertheless, if you discover it does not sound like anything of the previously mentioned job titles then continue also. And then, consider looking in the description of the job utilizing the word "Web" or "HTML" or another web technology you are knowledgeable about. In the event that it says that the job is to become a copy editor for an online presence in that case there's a pretty good possibility that you will be doing work in the web industry.

Of course, it is definitely different to be a copy editor when compared with a web designer, however we are starting small and narrowing our search.

Just in case you might get in for a job interview as copy editor for a particular website, then the thing you need to do is to nail the interview.

Then again, you should bear in mind that there is more to web design when compared with finding a job at a company to build their site. You can find a lot of website design job alternatives nowadays. There are many web site designers just like website designer Louisville that do specialized web design in a non-corporate setting and do effectively in their own business like:

Web content writers

These individuals generally write weblogs which are supported by marketing and advertising. Subject areas may depend upon the client or interest level. Writing on the web could make you a lot of money.

Running your own website

When you have other interest such as health business, making artworks or maybe make and sell templates to local folks in your area you'll be able to enter web design by building and maintaining your own personal site. Websites like these could become complex and considerably interesting sooner or later and given that you are doing it yourself, you can do as much or little depending on what you wish.

Web reviewers

They're somehow similar to web content writers however a web reviewer write reviews of movies, products, services or whatsoever things and post them into the website. The ideal thing in regards to this is you can start small as you like and carry on review items when you have time.

Freelance Web Designers

Needless to say this is rather self-explanatory. A freelance web designer designs websites for some individuals on a freelance basis. Finding something which sets you apart is regarded as the crucial thing here.

Do you need a professional and goal-oriented website? Consider a professional web designer. Professional website designer Louisville company aims to provide a competent website that stands out from the crowd, gain more traffic and generate more sales.

The Contrast And Similarities Between A Web Designer And Web Programmer

The concept of web designing based on the nature and rapid growth of the Internet is nothing to boast of any more. This is because of the large number of web sites published to the Internet everyday, so as to showcase one's presence and dominance on the World Wide Web. You may ask why this is so, well, the so simple answer is the rate at which technology is evolving.

An example is illustrated with the popular Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia's Flash. They are two different web designing software which have the same basic function (to create an interactive website). However, a person who has used both programs would observe that Microsoft FrontPage, which has been existing over quite a long period of time, deals basically with HTML codes. No programming language or knowledge is involved; that is why I choose to term its use in the category of web designing. Almost everybody, who owns a computer with the Windows Operating System along side MS FrontPage installed in it, knows how to design a simple website. This is because of it's format which does not require programming skills, but only requires the user to type the text, copy and paste even drag and drop a picture to the potential website. However, Macromedia's Flash, which was released years after Microsoft's first release of it's FrontPage, shows it's advancement in effects, animations and even graphics. This powerful also shows an advancement in web designing technology. You're probably thinking, "how incorrect". Well, I like you to know the programming and designing are entirely two different things. While designing as been discussed about using Microsoft FrontPage as an example let us look into programming on the web.

Now, unlike Microsoft FrontPage, Macromedia's Flash creates a more animated and effects-filled website that Microsoft FrontPage. However it require programming skills to maximize its use and put it to work. So as a person with ground knowledge of Microsoft FrontPage would call himself a web designer, the other with Macromedia's Flash would call himself a web programmer so as to differentiate himself to a so called 'novice', who may have learnt web designing through the widely believed 'easy-to-use' Microsoft FrontPage. But whichever way a website is created, it is important to note that its primary function is to supply information about services, products and other functionaries. So, whether a web programmer or a web designer; if the same work given to them is to create a website, they symbolize oneness, in the sense that however way the site may be created, or how more interactive one's work may be, compared to the other, they still pass the same information to the website visitors, thus making them both creative in the aspect of 'web designing', which almost every high school kid can do.

Yet as one, who is a programmer, I do not see much of a difference between the web designer and programmer, unless a far more advanced form of web programming than we (web programmers) have now, is created. But till then the so-called web programmers would continue to stretch on their differences from the web designer, irrespective to their similarities.