Wanna develop a website but don’t know how to start and what skills you should have? This article by Julia Blake is a good start. The 12 skills she mentioned can be categorized as human streaks, tech and software skills. Here are the highlights:

Programming

Programming is the most important skill you should learn to be a web developer, even an amateur one. To go pro, you have to master the art of coding. There are many programming languages with different aims. The most basic language you should know is HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Learning

‘Learn the basics but be always hungry for more’ – this principle describes many professions, and web development particularly. In web development industry, technology grow up very fast. Realistically, you are not expected to know the ins and outs of everything but keeping up to date about new web development trends would help a lot in determining the possibilities of web design and development in the present day. When the time comes to use such features, then you can indulge yourself in learning the subject deeper.

Testing

After developing a website, you need to do some testing. The most common test for websites is browser compatibility. For example, if your website looks good in Chrome, it doesn’t mean it will look perfect in other web browsers. As we get more advanced, you need to test how your website renders in mobile devices too. Other types of testing are speed test, checking for dead links and functionality testing.

Some Design Knowledge

Developers should learn basic design techniques. Instead of going to the designers for all design supports, basic Photoshop-ing skills such as resizing images, applying filters and typography are very handy in day to day web development tasks. The same logic also applies to designers who should have basic understanding of HTML and CSS.

SEO

As a developer, you should know how to code your website in SEO-friendly ways for example having unique page titles, proper redirect and no duplicated content. These are some of the issues an SEO analysis tool or an SEO expert could point out to you but something only you can fix.

Other skills mentioned by the author are understanding common security attacks, resoluteness, confidence, frustration tolerance and time management skills. To read more please click button below. See you in 2015!

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