Web design is a process of conceptualization, planning, modeling, and execution of electronic media content delivery via the Internet in the form of markup language suitable for interpretation by web browsers and displayed as a graphical user interface (GUI).
Web designers create web sites -- a collection of electronic files that reside on a web server/servers and present content and interactive features/interfaces to the end user in form of web pages once requested.
Articles on this page have been submitted by a web designer at Richland Community College.
In this issue, I'll be exploring the differences between using Web Design Software and a Content Management System. They represent two different ways to create & maintain websites. Having worked with both, I see pros and cons for both, depending on how big a website you have, how often it needs to be updated, and who is responsible for updating it.
In this issue, I'll be demonstrating how to use Headings to formate a document. The Title of this page is a Heading 1.
This month's issue is intended to provide you with an overview of a few of the job responsibilities of a web designer. There are a lot of different aspects related to being a web designer, and depending on the company you work for, you may have more or less responsibility.
In my position at Richland Community College, I spend the majority of my time gathering and editing content for the Richland Community College Website. It's a task that sounds fairly simple, but requires that I communicate effectively with nearly every employee at the College. I must gather information about every academic department, as well as all of the various student and administrative services, then edit that information so that it is understandable and accessible on the website. Because there is not much down time at a community college (we have fall, spring, and summer sessions with only a week or two between each one), nearly all employees are busy with their job responsibilities all year round and don't have large blocks of time that they can drop everything and work on content for their web pages. For each area to get information to me that I need for the web site, I often meet with people several times or remind them of what I need via e-mail. Once I receive information about a specific area or service, I usually spend a good deal of time rewriting the information to be more web-friendly. Many people think that if they have a printed brochure or handout, I can just copy the information directly out of the brochure and put it on the website, but it doesn't always work that way and sometimes requires more than one rewrite.
Another aspect of being a web designer is knowing how to create web pages and make sure that they are accessible to anyone using an Internet-accessible device. This means having several different skill sets as well as being familiar with a variety of coding and scripting languages. Before I even begin to create pages, I have to think about how I want the finished pages to look and be organized. I map out a diagram (using notecards or software) of how all the pages will link to each other. I must also think about who will be using the pages and how they will access them and create pages that are accessible to everyone, no matter whether or not they have a disability (for instance, those who are blind), or if they are using high-tech computers and fast connections, older computers with dial-up connections, or handheld devices like PDAs or cell phones.
To create web pages, I use a variety of tools including Adobe Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and an open-source content management system called Drupal. I currently design pages using mainly HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), but also need to be familiar with PHP, MySQL, Java, and various others. I must be able to manipulate images and know how to optimize them (reduce the file size) so that they don't take up too much space on the web server. I also have to know how to transfer files to and from the server.
There are many more aspects to discuss, so stop back next month to learn more!