"I want to be a web designer"

By Bob North on 16 April 2009

I was recently involved in a panel discussion where a questioner asked what they should do to become a web designer, and what certification courses they should take.

The consensus on our panel was that certificates in this sector are worthless: employers don't trust them, and are more interested in seeing a real-world portfolio showing experience. Which is, of course, a bit of a catch-22 for someone getting started. We suggested they should start by finding local not-for-profit organizations and offering to assist with their websites, and build up a portfolio that way. This also has the benefit of providing a local contact-base which could lead on to some paid contracts.

The other point we made on the panel was the distinction between a web 'designer' and a web 'developer'. Web designers are primarily focussed on the graphics and the look of a site, whereas developers are more concerned with the underlying mechanisms: databases, user permissions, security, ecommerce, etc. Most people want to concentrate on the graphics, and are thwarted by the need to program to do the other aspects. Naturally this is where neatComponents comes to the rescue, as it provides all these technical elements without the need to learn any programming languages - and of course there is a free license designed to enable aspiring web designers to get started with the minimum outlay.

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Being logged in, and out, at the same time

By Bob North on 8 April 2009

When you're building anything but the simplest site you're likely to be faced with the problem of seeing what the public view of the site is, whilst needing to be logged in to make changes. You could keep logging out and back in again, but that's time-consuming and tedious. So here's three ways to be both logged in and out, at the same time:

1. Use two computers!
2. Use two browsers on the same computer – so login with Internet Explorer and be logged out with Firefox. (Login status is maintained by cookies, and they aren't shared between browsers)
3. Use two domains – set the site to listen on two different domain names, and login to one of them. (The login status cookies work on a per-domain basis)

Whichever method you use, having multiple monitors to work with makes life a lot easier too!

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