What do I need to be a web developer?

[Josh R.]

Hi everyone

I hope you don't mind a general question.

I'm pretty proficient in HTML and CSS and have a few simple sites
to my name. I enjoy developing sites so much I'd like to do it
for a living. So I'm curious to know, what is a good range of
languages/technologies I'd need to master to become a good web
developer?

Thanks for your time,
Josh

 

[Stewart Gordon]

Hi everyone

I hope you don't mind a general question.

I'm pretty proficient in HTML and CSS and have a few simple sites
to my name. I enjoy developing sites so much I'd like to do it
for a living. So I'm curious to know, what is a good range of
languages/technologies I'd need to master to become a good web
developer?

If:
- you understand the logical structure of HTML
- you know properly how to use the tags and attributes you have use for
- you can make your pages validate
- you can make your content accessible and reasonably mess-free to
everyone regardless of browser, configuration and physical/sensory
ability differences

then I guess you're probably a good web developer.

What other languages you need depends on what you want to do and the
requirements of the company you want to work for.

Stewart.

 

[Adrienne]

Hi everyone

I hope you don't mind a general question.

I'm pretty proficient in HTML and CSS and have a few simple sites
to my name. I enjoy developing sites so much I'd like to do it
for a living. So I'm curious to know, what is a good range of
languages/technologies I'd need to master to become a good web
developer?

Thanks for your time,
Josh

In addition to what Stewart said, you should also look into server side
languages, I would recommend PHP and ASP. Databases are something else
you might need to know, SQL (Structured Query Language) can be used with
many databases, but differs slightly in each.

I feel it is just as important to separate content from presentation as I
do server side from client side code. If you're going to use javascript,
put it in an external script. Reuse code, use include files. Come out of
the scripting language and go into HTML, don't use the scripting language
to write client side HTML. For databases, use Stored Procedures
(something I'm just converting to myself).

Although validation is not the beat all to end all, IMHO, especially when
using server side languages, it's important to validate what the server
spits out. Validation has shown me scripting errors that I otherwise
might not have caught.

 

[mark | r]

Hi everyone

I hope you don't mind a general question.

I'm pretty proficient in HTML and CSS and have a few simple sites
to my name. I enjoy developing sites so much I'd like to do it
for a living. So I'm curious to know, what is a good range of
languages/technologies I'd need to master to become a good web
developer?

try ASP, if youve got windows xp/2000 then chanses are that you can run it
locally (while developing) before uploading it to a server. for an easy
database setup try MS Access, again, youve probably already got it so no
problems there. things to look up are www.asp101.com for some basic display,
add, edit, search and delete coding - from there you can do pretty much
anything, im no great asp coder (got guys here to do it) but for simple
databases and data filtering its easy.

other people recomend PHP and MYSQL but to be honest it seems a pain to
setup (install apache, install php install msql install msql editor blah
blah...) when my pc already had everything i need to be up and running.

Mark

 

[JDS]

other people recomend PHP and MYSQL but to be honest it seems a pain to
setup (install apache, install php install msql install msql editor blah
blah...) when my pc already had everything i need to be up and running.

Mark

Well, *my* PC already had PHP, MySQL, and Apache installed. But no ASP.
Hmmm....

 

[Augustus]

Hi everyone

I hope you don't mind a general question.

I'm pretty proficient in HTML and CSS and have a few simple sites
to my name. I enjoy developing sites so much I'd like to do it
for a living. So I'm curious to know, what is a good range of
languages/technologies I'd need to master to become a good web
developer?

There is really three distinctly different routes you can take in this
field: "Self Employed", "Web Design Company" or "IT Department Resource"

Web Design Company:
A web design company usually employs people specifically for 1 or 2
skills that they excel at... they don't look for a "jack of all trades,
master of none" type employee. If your niche is programming (be it PHP, ASP
or something else) thats pretty much all you will be doing... they will have
people making sales calls, doing the graphic design, writing javascript,
doing the primary CSS and HTML or building the flash component to a site.
If you choose to go this route, you will need to pretty much pick a
technology and learn to master it, IE: programming, database design, graphic
design, flash, etc... everybody will need to know HTML and CSS and how to
integrate what they have developed into the grand scheme of things.
Whatever you bring to the table you will need to know the proper methods of
working with that technology: IE: proper database design, structured
programming, optimizing graphics for size, etc.


IT Department Resource:
In this case you would be working for a big company whose primary focus
has nothing to do with webdesign... your primary job here will be to update
and maintain the website. This will usually require you to be a "jack of
all trades, master of atleast a few things" depending on the size of the
department.
If you go this route you will usually be working on the same projects
over and over again, rarely dealing with anything new or different and
probably be expected to know the whole hosting aspect of it all and working
with web servers and setting up websites.
This will often be the most stable job and have that guaranteed paycheck
coming in... but you do have to watch out for the day the IT department
manager says "We have decided to outsource our website maintainence and
development" (which is happening more and more nowadays). These jobs can
also be very hard to find, because there aren't that many of them.


Self Employed
If you are self employed, this is going to be similar to working for a
web design company - and thats because thats what you will be: a 1 person
web design company.
The first thing this means is that you are going to need to know how to
do just about everything a web design company might have 1 specific employee
for: programming, database, graphic design, hosting, sales, search engine
optimization, etc. There are going to be workarounds you can use: ie: why
develop that PHP script if you can just download one that does everything
you want? And ofcourse you can always just get jobs that deal with the
skills you have (don't know how to develop an SQL database and integrate it
into a website? Then just pass on the job until you have the skills... or
take it up as a challenge that is going to force you to learn).
What its all going to boil down to is: Anything you can't do is probably
going to cost you money. So if there is something you can't do or find a
workaround for that the client has asked for... then you'll probably end up
contracting that part of the job out to somebody, which comes out of your
bottom line.

Self Employment might sound like a great way to go: you are your own
boss and can make some pretty good money at it. But there are two VERY
important things to remember here:

1) It doesn't matter how much you like "programming" or "designing new
buttons"... the absolute number 1 skill you will use being as a self
employed web designer is "SALES". If you cannot sell your web services to
people then you'll just end up as another out of work web designer peddling
coffee at Starbucks for minimum wage and whining about how the IT market is
dead. You can't just build a portfolio page and put it up on the internet
with your rates and samples of work you have done and then sit back and wait
for the jobs to roll in... you have to be out there selling people on your
services, advertising, making cold calls, etc.

2) You aren't "just like a web design company"... YOU ARE a web design
company. The big difference here is that you only have 1 employee:
yourself. If you are a goof off or take forever to get started on a project
then you have to remember here: If you don't do it, its not going to get
done... there isn't going to be somebody to pick up your slack or a boss
yelling over your shoulder to get your act in gear or you're fired.

 

[JDS]

There is really three distinctly different routes you can take in this
field: "Self Employed", "Web Design Company" or "IT Department Resource"

Nice response.

 

[Adrienne]

try ASP, if youve got windows xp/2000 then chanses are that you can run
it locally (while developing) before uploading it to a server.

That would be XP Pro, not Home Edition. Some people have been able to
install IIS on Home Edition, but it is not recommended, nor easy.

For an
easy database setup try MS Access, again, youve probably already got it
so no problems there.

No, Access only comes in the Professional version of Office, again quite a
bit higher price than Standard.

things to look up are www.asp101.com for some
basic display, add, edit, search and delete coding - from there you can
do pretty much anything, im no great asp coder (got guys here to do it)
but for simple databases and data filtering its easy.

http://www.asp101.com is a good source, and http://www.w3schools.com/asp/
has good tutorials.

other people recomend PHP and MYSQL but to be honest it seems a pain to
setup (install apache, install php install msql install msql editor
blah blah...) when my pc already had everything i need to be up and
running.

You don't have to install apache to install PHP or MySQL. I have PHP
available in IIS and I have MySQL server running as well. MySQL is more
robust than Access, and a lot of hosting companies are offering MySQL
instead of MS SQL because of licensing costs.

 

[Uncle Pirate]

other people recomend PHP and MYSQL but to be honest it seems a pain to
setup (install apache, install php install msql install msql editor blah
blah...) when my pc already had everything i need to be up and running.

Are you writing web pages to serve from your PC or from a server? When
doing things to be served from a server, write your code to use things
on the server. Who cares what's on your PC?

On my server (the school's, I only administer it), you could put all the
ASP pages you want and they will not be served up properly because I use
a Linux server without M$ extensions installed.

On the other hand, PHP is soon to be installed to serve up PHP pages.
Learn what's available on the server(s) you use, not what's on your PC.

I do not know PHP but soon will. MySQL will also come later and I'll
learn the server side of that too.

--
Stan McCann "Uncle Pirate" http://stanmccann.us/pirate.html
Webmaster/Computer Center Manager, NMSU at Alamogordo
Coordinator, Tularosa Basin Chapter, ABATE of NM; AMA#758681; COBB
'94 1500 Vulcan (now wrecked) http://motorcyclefun.org/Dcp_2068c.jpg
A zest for living must include a willingness to die. - R.A. Heinlein

 

[Uncle Pirate]

There is really three distinctly different routes you can take in this
field: "Self Employed", "Web Design Company" or "IT Department Resource"

Good post, but you forgot one (maybe more?). "Webmaster of a large
site" is a bit different from "IT Dept Resource" although shares many
similarities. I manage a large (school) site that many employees work
on pages for their departments/areas. A "jack of all trades" managing
not only the site in all aspects, but the server as well.

I must train employees to use the templates I create for them and how to
use the software provided for editing web pages (Netscape or Mozilla
Composer is easy for most and doesn't do too bad a job). So add the
ability to teach.

I do have resources that I can call upon (graphic design program) for
some of the pieces I'm not too good at. I download and install programs
much like a self-employed developer would do, but also do some things
using my own Perl scripts and am about to launch into installing and
learning PHP and later MySQL to provide more interaction with the site.

IT Department Resource:
In this case you would be working for a big company whose primary focus
has nothing to do with webdesign... your primary job here will be to update

That's where I started and grew into the "Webmaster" job.

and maintain the website. This will usually require you to be a "jack of
all trades, master of atleast a few things" depending on the size of the
department.
If you go this route you will usually be working on the same projects
over and over again, rarely dealing with anything new or different and
probably be expected to know the whole hosting aspect of it all and working
with web servers and setting up websites.

Yep. But with me, there is the occasional "new" stuff. For instance,
my site's overall look and feel is committee driven while I do most of
the actual work. I will soon be leading the committee in coming up with
a total revamp of our 95-96 style site bringing it into the 21st
century. I've been updating my skills lately changing many of the old
table layout tag soup pages to HTML 4.01 strict and CSS although keeping
the same look and feel for now.

Self Employed
If you are self employed, this is going to be similar to working for a
web design company - and thats because thats what you will be: a 1 person
web design company.

I do this too on the side. I have my own server at home on a DSL
connection hosting several websites for non-profit agencies. No pay,
but good learning experience and I find it rewarding.

Self Employment might sound like a great way to go: you are your own
boss and can make some pretty good money at it. But there are two VERY
important things to remember here:

1) It doesn't matter how much you like "programming" or "designing new
buttons"... the absolute number 1 skill you will use being as a self
employed web designer is "SALES". If you cannot sell your web services to

I'm very thankful for my full time job because I've tried exactly what
you've said. I created a web site "portfolio" hoping to gain some
paying customers but I'm not a salesman so it's gone nowhere.

--
Stan McCann "Uncle Pirate" http://stanmccann.us/pirate.html
Webmaster/Computer Center Manager, NMSU at Alamogordo
Coordinator, Tularosa Basin Chapter, ABATE of NM; AMA#758681; COBB
'94 1500 Vulcan (now wrecked) http://motorcyclefun.org/Dcp_2068c.jpg
A zest for living must include a willingness to die. - R.A. Heinlein

 

[Mark Parnell]

There is really three distinctly different routes you can take in this
field: "Self Employed", "Web Design Company" or "IT Department Resource"

<snip>

Yet another brilliant response from Augustus. Well done.

 

[Augustus]

Resource"

Good post, but you forgot one (maybe more?). "Webmaster of a large
site" is a bit different from "IT Dept Resource" although shares many
similarities. I manage a large (school) site that many employees work
on pages for their departments/areas. A "jack of all trades" managing
not only the site in all aspects, but the server as well.

There is definitly more out there than what I covered on, but I wanted to
keep the post pretty general instead of going in depth into each aspect.

In my case I went the "self employed" route, but I quit doing "freelance web
design" thing after a few months and instead concentrated on developing and
then selling web applications (with my primary focus being on "Online
ordering system for restaurants")

Its similar to the "Self Employed" job description, except nowadays I mostly
do sales and data entry (entering menus into the system) and only a little
bit of programming (compared to the beginning when I was working around
80-100 hours a week for over 2 years doing just programming)

Even though "web design" is only a small part of my job description
nowadays, I still consider myself a web developer...

Clint

 

[Lauri Raittila]

Hi everyone

I hope you don't mind a general question.

I'm pretty proficient in HTML and CSS and have a few simple sites
to my name. I enjoy developing sites so much I'd like to do it
for a living. So I'm curious to know, what is a good range of
languages/technologies I'd need to master to become a good web
developer?

To support yourself on web developing depends on your marketing skills,
not your html/css/... skills. If you are good at selling yourself, then
there is lots of people buying. Look all crap net is full. To be
webdeveloper of some sort, you don't have to know much about web
developing. Of course, because you need to be quite cheap, you can't make
much either...

If you are like me, waiting home that someone contacts you while doing
nothing to engourage them, you need to be very good, I think. At least
not that many people do contact me... (some have though, but I am have
usually solved their problems so quickly that it won't really make living
- which is OK, as I am not really trying either, but extra money is
never bad...)

 

[Andy Dingley]

other people recomend PHP and MYSQL but to be honest it seems a pain to
setup (install apache, install php install msql install msql editor blah
blah...) when my pc already had everything i need to be up and running.

The trouble is that I'm not going to host sites on my desktop PC, I'm
going to do it on either cheap shared hosting, or cheap LAMPs boxen
(Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). If you want something to learn as a
back-end platform, then I'd suggest that rather than Windows.

PHP under IIS, or Apache under Windows, are both a bit of a
dog-on-their-hind-legs, IMHO. Java under IIS is bad enough (works fine
on its own, but database connectivity costs a fortune).

 

[Nik Coughin]

There is really three distinctly different routes you can take in this
field: "Self Employed", "Web Design Company" or "IT Department
Resource"

Self Employment might sound like a great way to go: you are your
own boss and can make some pretty good money at it. But there are
two VERY important things to remember here:

1) It doesn't matter how much you like "programming" or "designing new
buttons"... the absolute number 1 skill you will use being as a self
employed web designer is "SALES".

you have to be out there selling people on your
services, advertising, making cold calls, etc.

....or networking. I'm not convinced that it is the same thing. I have as
much work as I can cope with and I've never spent a single moment doing
anything that I would consider sales work, certainly no advertising or cold
calling anyway. But I think I've just been lucky enough to know the right
people, and what you say about sales being the #1 required skill would be
100% true for most people I imagine.

I once read an excellent posting on this topic, by yourself as it happens.
Google has it here:

http://groups.google.co.nz/groups?q...=&safe=off&[email protected]

....and in case that wraps:

http://tinyurl.com/3jscd

 

[Uncle Pirate]

Its similar to the "Self Employed" job description, except nowadays I mostly
do sales and data entry (entering menus into the system) and only a little
bit of programming (compared to the beginning when I was working around
80-100 hours a week for over 2 years doing just programming)

For me, self employed is only a dream. I like having the security of a
40 hour a week job. I've been with the school for 15 years and the
job's not likely to go away any time before I'm elegible to retire.
Maybe then, when I have time and a steady income, I can do something.

Even though "web design" is only a small part of my job description
nowadays, I still consider myself a web developer...

Likewise. My design skills are far from top notch.

--
Stan McCann "Uncle Pirate" http://stanmccann.us/pirate.html
Webmaster/Computer Center Manager, NMSU at Alamogordo
Coordinator, Tularosa Basin Chapter, ABATE of NM; AMA#758681; COBB
'94 1500 Vulcan (now wrecked) http://motorcyclefun.org/Dcp_2068c.jpg
A zest for living must include a willingness to die. - R.A. Heinlein

 

[Augustus]

For me, self employed is only a dream. I like having the security of a
40 hour a week job. I've been with the school for 15 years and the
job's not likely to go away any time before I'm elegible to retire.
Maybe then, when I have time and a steady income, I can do something.

I think you bring up a good point here... success and job security are
always a toughie to discuss because everybody has different results and
measures them differently.

When I went into the field of web design it was with the intention that
after I graduated from school I would find a job somewhere where I sit in a
cubicle 40 hrs a week punching out ASP code all day long... I wanted to
know where my next meal was coming from, not to mention the next rent
payment.

That idea didn't pan out, and as I look back I can say I am pretty happy
they didn't... because things worked out for me in being self employed (I
work 20hrs a week, I have job security, I love my job and I make a good
income).

But everybody is different and they do need to look at their own
situation... somebody who is 20yrs old and living in his parents basement as
less concern about making rent or buying groceries... while somebody else
who has a wife and 2 kids to support is in a totally different situation.

The point of my original post wasn't to say "Go the self employed route!
Its great!" but more to say that there are many different answers to the
question "What do I need to be a web developer" and thats because there are
so many different aspects of the job depending on the path you choose:

Web company employee: You need to pretty much master 1 or 2 skills (and
HTML and CSS don't count in this regard)
Big company IT employee: You need to be a piece in the puzzle... the
company has needs and you have to bring something to the table that fills
some of those needs (or all of them if you are the only employee in the web
department)
Self Employed: Its all about YOU. You need to know how to do just about
everything there is.

Personally, I think I will always respond to posts, like the original one in
this thread, in favor of self employment...

Thats because the self employed route did work for me and I know people from
here and personally for whom it does work... It can be alot of hard work,
but the rewards can be great in the end if you are successful and heck,
sometimes just being your own boss is reward enough, even if you are just
scraping by.

But in the end, just because "it worked out great for a bunch of guys and
gals from the internet!" doesn't mean it will work out for everybody... I
had some pretty hard times early on where I thought seriously about packing
it in and going back to mainframe programming (how is that for a deadend
career?)... But I was in a good position to take the risk of self
employment: my wife had a good job to support us through some of the tough
times until things all worked out for the better.

 

[mark | r]

That would be XP Pro, not Home Edition. Some people have been able to
install IIS on Home Edition, but it is not recommended, nor easy.

Its SO easy, just download the installer from the microsoft site (IIS) even
personal web server would do to get you off the ground.

No, Access only comes in the Professional version of Office, again quite a
bit higher price than Standard.

i did say probably

http://www.asp101.com is a good source, and http://www.w3schools.com/asp/
has good tutorials.


You don't have to install apache to install PHP or MySQL. I have PHP
available in IIS and I have MySQL server running as well. MySQL is more
robust than Access, and a lot of hosting companies are offering MySQL
instead of MS SQL because of licensing costs.

i still cant get my head around it - the tutorial i followed for mysql had
me faffing around in telnet

mark

 

[Adrienne]

Its SO easy, just download the installer from the microsoft site (IIS)
even personal web server would do to get you off the ground.

For users of XP Home Edition, it is a real PITA to get IIS installed (if it
gets installed at all). XP does NOT have PWS.

i did say probably


i still cant get my head around it - the tutorial i followed for mysql
had me faffing around in telnet

For a windows user, it's really easy. Download the file, and install it.
That's it. You'll want a GUI interface for it, so you can run queries,
start/stop the server, etc. MySQL Control Center is available at
http://www.mysql.com/products/mysqlcc/ . You can also use WinSQL
<http://www.synametrics.com/SynametricsWebApp/WinSQL.jsp> and get the ODBC
drivers for MySQL (you might want to use this for Access anyway, running
queries is a lot easier).