Beginners guide to web design

When I first started my course in Software engineering, I was new to HTML. I’m not sure that I knew anything about CSS but I definitely didn’t know what JavaScript was. Now, I can tell you that these are the most popular languages for beginners that are new to Computer science. This is because these languages can allow you to develop custom websites without any back-end functionality except for those that are already familiar with the MEAN stack or the MERN stack.
According to Wikipedia, Web Design dates back to the 1980’s and links web design to other areas as such as graphic design, user experience and multimedia arts. I also had friend who’s main interest was on graphic design and later developed a passion for writing computer programs. This means that if you know how to design graphics in Adobe Photoshop or any of the tools provided in the Adobe creative suite then you have a pretty good way of starting your journey on designing User Interfaces for Websites. That’s why it’s not surprising how Adobe is one of the leading experts in Web Content Management systems.

In 2012, I began my journey as a Software Engineering student and one of our first modules during the course was on Web Authoring and the tool we used for learning how to write web pages was Adobe Dreamweaver. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if we were to dive straight on to one of the other products in the Adobe Experience Cloud, Adobe Experience Manager. I don’t think I would have had a clue because this tool is so powerful that it was commercialised as one of Adobe’s product, previously known as Adobe CQ5, prior to this, Day CQ.

Adobe CQ5 as described by James Lockman, Senior Manager, Digital Media Services at Adobe Systems since 2017 in a Quora question defined Adobe CQ5 (AEM) as a platform on which customers and partners build Enterprise solutions for asset management, content syndication, data collection, and integration with other systems. He also went on to describe how companies enable their clients to interact with their publishing strategies through mobile, web browsers, desktops and more.

Adobe Dreamweaver was definitely a game changer for web designers. However, Adobe Experience Manager has a lot more to offer from the perspective of Marketing professionals.

Nevertheless, to be able to use these technologies you would need a good understanding of it’s architecture. In spite of what AEM has got to offer, you can always begin your project with a more affordable Content Management System. WordPress, for example requires a less technical background and it’s built on top of the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL and Apache). Nowadays you can easily develop a custom WordPress website using an Underscore/Understrap theme and transform your Photoshop designs into a website using this starter projects.

Always remember that you will need to host your website, for this you can use one of our incredible standard packages for just £2.99 a month and if you are a web designer developing for more that one website or need multiple email accounts you can upgrade your package at anytime.