In web design, you have many competing options available to you where many times, there is no clear cut winner.
… But there are some things, that you simply should not do in most cases.
1. Flash based websites – don’t build them!
The Flash nerds who read this are not going to be happy. A lot of people hate change, especially when something new comes along that replaces what they are used to. For Flash, this thing is HTML5 and CSS3 … these two widely adopted technologies replaces Flash for animation, easy page layout and many other things.
So why is Flash to be avoided?
A pure Flash based website has always been a bad idea. Today though, it is a disaster because iPad, iPhone and generally speaking, most other mobile web browsers cannot and will not be able to properly view Flash or in the case of iPhones and iPads, even see it at all!
Why should you care that people on smartphones can’t see your Flash site? Because, as much as 50% of the Web’s traffic is from mobile devices.
Beyond that, Flash is terrible in terms of search engines (this means terrible SEO) and you also have the added overhead of having to buy the Flash program to edit the Flash files. Whereas with HTML5 and CSS3, all you have to do is open the pages up in a simple text editor to make changes.
First, let us remember the top 3 rules of websites:
1. Content
2. Content
3. Content
… and since most of a website’s content is text, great web writing skills are super fantastically important! The irony these days, is that writing is often only considered as an afterthought.
By the way, that’s why social media websites like Facebook are typically doomed to eventually fail, because user-generated-content is usually crappy content, and the weight of that sea of useless material, typically crushes in on itself – like it did with Friendster and MySpace.
You can learn to build a simple website in a few days .. if you can put a few hours into it every day.
Yes, you would have only basic web design skills, but with the help of templates and other smart web design strategies, you could actually put a simple web site together that won’t make people cry when they see it.
To become an expert web designer though, will take more time. How much time depends your natural talents and how much you know about technology coming into it. I’ve seen people develop entry level pro skills in months … with the required work put in of course.
Recently someone asked whether they should learn Dreamweaver OR whether should they jump into a CMS like Joomla or WordPress.
What is a CMS?
CMS is short for Content Management System, and are web based programs that you upload to the server and they provide word-processor like capabilities to your website – and much, much more.
To make an analogy: you can think of a CMS as being a restaurant buffet, where you have many prepared dishes to choose from, that you can use to create your meal. Where Dreamweaver is like an electric appliance, that helps you create a meal from scratch.
It is very common for small business owners to have problems with their websites. These problems typically arise because of issues of communication with the web designers and programmers that they hire.


A big reason for this lack of clear communication, is because most small business owners don’t know much about web design (and most web designers don’t know much about business!) … small business people also have no way of judging if the web design work being done, is any good. 

You have to be realistic, there is no way of managing the process effectively, when you are totally blind when it comes to how to build web sites.


Do small business owners have to become web designers?


Short answer: no. 

… In fact, they probably shouldn’t. It’s best to stick to what you know (that’s running your business) and let others take care of the stuff you don’t know.


That said, I believe ALL small business owners MUST learn at least some basic web design, so that they can properly manage the building of their websites. To be able to do this effectively, you will also need to learn to speak with web designers and web programmers, in the language they understand: nerd-talk.
For many who are in the middle of learning web design, they find it hard to assess how much they are learning … as they progress. Ultimately the best way to judge this, is to just build websites and see how smoothly the process goes.
Instant Interactive Video Learning
A faster way (to get that feedback) is to take an interactive course that quizzes and code challenges you as you learn. Because we saw a value in this style of learning, we built an interactive training system called KillerSites University.
If you want to learn more about interactive code challenges and at the same time, start building your profile/CV, try out the free courses and chapters at KillerSites University.
I was recently asked a question about the future of web design:
I have a short general query about the Future of Web Design: do you think that we are going towards a trend where, particularly with the use of Web environments like WordPress or Joomla, programming skills will be more and more oriented towards updating and customising plugins?
My answer:
I have been a long time believer in this strategy of using a CMS as the basis of almost all your web design projects. I wrote about this back in 2010, talking about the ‘WordPress Web Designer‘.
I use WordPress for my web sites, but Drupal and Joomla can do a great job too. You just have to figure out which one suits you best.
Learning PHP and JavaScript:
Since Drupal, Joomla and WordPress are built with PHP and JavaScript, it makes sense (if you really want to learn how to use these tools to their fullest,) that you should learn at least a little programming. You don’t have to become a full-blown nerd coder, but you should be able to write simple scripts and modify existing PHP and JavaScript code. It will make your life so much easier.
For a more detailed discussion, watch my video below:
As predicted, Flash has now gone HTML5 – yes, you can now export your Flash work to HTML5 using the new Flash CS6.
I haven’t had a chance to look at it, so I have no comment with regards to how well it works. Nonetheless, this is more evidence that HTML5 is going to be huge in the future of web design and web development – if it isn’t already!
Flash CS6 basically uses the CreateJS open source framework, to output animations in Flash. I don’t know how powerful this conversion process is yet … we will soon see how complex the Flash projects can be and still be able to output them via HTML5.
Anyone who has read anything I’ve written (or watched my video blogs,) knows that I can’t stand academics. I was particularly vocal against the Web Standards zealots of the early 2000’s, wherein reality was pushed aside in favor of code purity.
These nerds would ignore reality – for example:
They would ignore how the most popular web browsers would interpret HTML and CSS code – which often times, was in a method contrary to their nerd wet-dreams. As such, they would come up with harebrained hacks to jam in their ‘compliant’ code … hacks that eventually broke in many cases, defeating the supposed original purpose of the Web Standards movement!
They would also obfuscate what the actual browser use was in terms of real people surfing the Web. They would come out with numbers that did not reflect the reality they were desperately trying to ignore: that the vast majority of people surfing the Web were using web browsers (Internet Explorer) that did not play nice with their ideas of how a web browser should read code.
… It gets even more stupid: even the basic web design cycle seemed to be ignored, where their recommendations would actually get in the way of productive web design and development. I am convinced many of the big names in this movement barely created websites in, or for the real-world – they were academics.
