Web Design Step by Step Process
With so much emphasis on the internet now, there are a few terms associated with it that many people will hear on a constant basis. The most used of these internet terms is web design. To someone who does not know much about websites and programming, those two terms can seem like they mean the same thing but that could not be farther from the truth. In reality web development is a large process, with web design being part of that process. This can still be confusing but to make it easier you can look at it this way. Web development is the process of creating a website through many different steps. Web design is one of the steps to be completed so that the site will have a design.
Web design is just a smaller task in the creation of a site for a user or company. The web design process contains a few important stages to ensure a professional look and feel, functionality, and implementation of the web design project. The first step in web design is to decide what the final product will appeal to. Figuring out the demographic of a web design project is a perfect way to begin the web design process as well as a good way to lead the design to the next stages. Once a demographic is known for a web design project certain other parts of the project can start to come together.
The next stage in web design is the programming. In a web design project the programmer has many tasks to accomplish. The first task of a programmer in a web design project is programming the base code for the site. The base code in a web design project will contain things like layout guidelines, default fonts, headings, code for footers and headers, and menu styles. These elements of web design are usually unchanging, static elements which is why they are some of the first pieces implemented in a web design project. Once the static elements of the web design project are coded the next stages of the web design process may be started.
Another aspect of the web design process that the programmer must work on is form creation. Forms in web design are used to accomplish many different objectives. The main objective for a form in a web design endeavor that many people should be familiar with is to login to a specific section of a site. Easy to use forms make data entry or loging in less of a hassle in your web design. In this case, the form of the web design project would also need a database of login information worked into the web design. As you can tell things have gotten a bit more involved then they were in past web design projects.
One of the final things a programmer for web design would have to work on is linking structure of the site. Linking structure in web design refers to the way in which your pages link to one and other. One way a good structure is built is the use of navigational menus. The linking structure used in a web design project is crucial for a couple reasons. One; a bad linking structure can deter viewers and even make it difficult for them to find what they are looking for. Two; Google and other search engines use links to jump around the web and a bad linking structure can cause bad rankings in those engines.
There are, of course, other aspects in the process of web design, but these are three of the main factors and knowing them will help to understand what the process really is. Also, knowing that web design is a process as compared to web design which is more of a specific job, one can begin to untangle their thoughts about all these new internet terms and career paths.