General questions on web designers

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Hello,

I name is Toby and I am wanting to become a web designer. I am currently 14 and I started when I was around 11, yet I only made super basic websites with headings and just a plain background, no CSS involved.

I only recently got back into it (around 3 months) and I now would like to say I know the basics of HTML and CSS. I know about divs, positioning, links, styling and a lot more, but I am obviously years off being a professional web designer.

My dad is an IT Manager, and has been for around 10-15 years. He doesn’t know any website coding, such as HTML. He once made a forums a long time ago but I know more than him now. When I asked him if web designing was a good job to go into, he told me that if you want it to be a well paying job, you have to be extremely good at it since most of the work is done cheaply overboard from other countries who don’t mind getting payed a lot. He also said that it is a risky job, as you will most likely be freelancing.

So my main question is, what is it like to go into web design? How long will it be if you spend a lot of time before you get to a professional stage? What qualifications would you need, (if any)?

Also It would be nice if I could get some pointers. I have learnt all of the basics now, and if you know of any books, or websites which take you further than w3schools that would be appreciated greatly. I would also like to know what programs I should be using. As I am 14, I do have money but not a huge budget. I would say up to £40 for good software. I am currently using notepad++ and just google chrome to load the files up on.

One last thing, how skilled do you need to be as a graphic design? I have a good friend from school who wants to be a graphic designer or film maker as a job and he is currently making mock ups/logos and stuff that I need. He has been doing it for a few years and is of a decent level, and uses photoshop. I am unable to get photoshop illegally, and as it costs £644 I might have to do a bit of saving. But when should I start learning graphic design (I can’t rely on my friend forever) and what are some good software I can use.

Sorry for all the questions, I have a lot of my mind recently. Thanks for reading!

Toby

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I also forgot to ask, should I be using wordpress? I have been on a few contest design sites like 99designs.com and they all seem to want you to make websites in wordpress.

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Great questions, @TobyHall2000! Welcome to the forums!

As your dad says, people can head off to cheaper countries for basic stuff these days, and there are also lots of services—like SquareSpace—that let you set up your own website without knowing anything about code etc.

But you can still make a great living in this field, as those options above don’t cover the whole field. For example, there is a lot of need for programmers to do the more complex, custom things that drive the web.

There are lots of books out there, courses etc. that teach you all of the technologies on offer. You are at the perfect age to get into this big time, so good luck!

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Thank you :slight_smile:

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I work for an Environmental charity as the web master and build and maintain about 4 websites (not a huge salary but safe/regular). I learnt everything from scratch from reading tutorials, asking questions and trial and error. i’m still learning for sure but i can say that i have built websites that have over a million users a year and have been promoted on most of the UK national news. Also did a map layer for Google Earth 5 which shipped with the program back around 4 years ago. Which made me extremely happy to have my work accepted at that level. So with training you will probably be even better, quicker.

As said above if you can get into the techy stuff that ‘overseas/build a website sites’ can’t do. Eg If a company needs a booking system it is more difficult to get that off the shelf than a 5 page ‘who we are’ type of site. So learning how to use databases will be essential along with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as its no good building a site no one can find, another selling point of you building the site (if you get it right). Mapping is another area that i think sells. A lot of sites need mapping especially things like property sites.

Something i do struggle with is sitting in front of a computer all day. Get into good habits of taking regular breaks and do exercise outside of work. There is more to life than computers despite what Apple will tell you.

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Sounds like a cool job then. Just wondering, at what age did you start learning how to code?

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This is a good book:

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That looks like a great book but I’m a little hesitant buying it because a lot of the reviews say it is very simple and states the obvious a lot. Have you personally read the book?

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like most jobs it has its highs and lows. I started learning at about 25. I was temping and my Boss said can you update the 400 static html pages of the then site. I said ‘um probably’ (i had no idea how a webpage was even made at this point) and went from there. By the following year he had asked if i could learn the new fangled database way of doing it and just learnt as i went…

:slight_smile:

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Its for starters, your a starter correct? It is very simple and clean youll learn better.

There are good reviews: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118008189/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=httpwwwhtmlan-20

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Would it teach me more than that?

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yes it has CSS3 and HTML5. They also make a javascript book that seperate though

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I was planning on buying both books as they are £25 together on amazon

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yeah not bad

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The two books I’ve been working through recently are these:

My experience of them so far has been very positive. There is downloadable code to support the learning on the Treehouse website. Whilst I did pick up a couple of errors, both authors were very quick to respond with solutions via Twitter. I feel they’ve been very useful, though it’s worth saying that I didn’t start from zero knowledge - I know a lot more now though.

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They look like quite nice books, I have just bought the ones the other person said and they arrived and I may also but these as I want to buy a few.

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Hey guys. I could use a little help here.

My dad just offered me a job to make a website for the company he works for, and I will get paid a few thousand pounds. As I am only 14, this is huge money.

It will obviously be hard for me but from what needs doing I am sure I can do it in the 10 week deadline, but the only problem I have is the SEO that needs doing.

Its an easy divorce website, and it requires to be on the first page of google when you search easy divorce. Now, the most I know when it comes to SEO is metadata tags, with keywords and titles. That’s it. So ANY articles, books, websites or advice on how to use SEO would be extremely appreciated.

Thanks!

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Because you’re only 14, I will let you experiment in your own flesh the huge mistake that it is working for family and friends.

Regarding SEO, using semantic markup and the right attribute is the only thing that you can do as a developer. The rest fall into great content, regularly updated, social media, google/FB/whatever adds…

Do remember you rank per page, no per site, so only page will appear for the term of your chosing. And easy divorce is going to be a tough one, with lots of competitiion

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Thanks for all the advice on SEO, I will research some more on what you said!

Also why would it be bad to work for your family/friends? I think personally its a good opportunity for me as I’ve never done anything this big.

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Working for friends/family can be good or bad. Totally depends on you, them and your relationship.

Software: today and for some time now there has been no reason to spend lots of money if any at all. For coding I use Brackets (found at brackets.io) which is free by Adobe. For designing I subscribe to Adobe CC for $50+ a month but you could get by with just Photoshop for $10+ a month or use Gimp for free until you can afford Adobe stuff.

WordPress is a user friendly CMS that will allow you to hand the site over to your clients so that they can edit the content. Those who ask for such a feature and those that you don’t want to deal with regularly, make this a great tool to use. That being said, a little PHP knowledge is handy.

Because you are so young, sorry to say this but you’ve got all the time in the world to learn all that you need so that by the time you are living on your own, you will be a professional. I didn’t start down this path until I was about 22, just after the dawn of the internet boom. My advantage was learning design and coding at the same time. I was an artist already so Photoshop stuff came pretty easy. HTML and CSS is easy but tricky when dealing with differences in all the browsers.

I started learning the basics of PHP when I saw it, along with all the other programming languages, on job postings. Just learning how to read and edit PHP is what helped me to become more comfortable designing in WordPress and other CMS software.

Programming from scratch took me a while to grasp. No matter how many tutorials I watched or articles I read I just didn’t really understand it until YEARS later. Now I am able to create my own PHP/MySQL programs, which is cool.

Of course you could avoid this by finding a programmer to partner with or even a designer like you have. But only you know what your strengths are and what you’re comfortable with.

Truth is you will never learn everything, certainly not in a short time. And don’t believe you have to. I’ve never touched Sass or Ruby and Flash is just about dead. You could pick up a little bit of everything for now to get you through your current project but web technologies are constantly changing or being replaced. Here’s my list of what to learn and in what order…

  1. HTML5
  2. CSS
  3. Photoshop (basics)
  4. Javascript (basics)
  5. Designing for Mobile Devices
  6. SEO
  7. PHP (basics)
  8. MySQL (basics)
  9. WordPress
  10. JQuery
  11. Javascript (advanced)
  12. PHP (advanced)

SEO: The Description meta tag is the only one to worry about. Google focuses on your content, not your keywords (because people cheat). So your ‘keywords’ need to be in your content and your content needs to be rich and useful. And remember there’s no way of guaranteeing top ranking on a search engine. Tell them this because it’s true unless they are going to sink lots of money into search engine advertising. The more unique your content is, the more it will stand out. If it’s the same blah, blah as everyone else, it will get lost.

I was in the same boat as you growing up. My father taught me everything I knew about computers prior to Windows XP. By the time XP came out, he was asking me questions instead of the other way around. Since he knew how to program in older languages, I thought he’d be a natural at learning today’s languages. But he had no interest by the time he retired.

My first website, okay my second website was for a friend and I maintained it and continuously redesigned it as I learned more and more and it helped me to find more freelance work. Eventually I begged a business to hire me on a trial basis for free and they hired me at a small rate. 3 months later they bumped me up to their normal rate. Today I work for a larger company and make more money while still doing some freelance at home.

So yes you can definitely make a good living. Just be better and offer more than what SquareSpace and people overseas can do and be good at customer service. I achieved all this without going to college (most colleges don’t teach you what you need to know anyway). I only wish I had started as early as you but at 14 I had no idea what I wanted to do and only true nerds had personal computers.

Bottom line… you’ll do fine. Have fun. Web design and coding is fun even if most clients and bosses are not.

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