Everything You Should Know About Website Design

In today’s world, with the change of many traditional businesses towards internet businesses, the market of activities such as website design has become very prosperous. In this article, we will answer all questions about website design.

What is website design?

Website design is the stages of designing and building an internet site for informing, introducing the company, and presenting its products. Website design is a process that consists of web page layering, content creation, graphic design, and compliance with SEO principles.

What is the history of website design?

Tim Berners-Lee, the web inventor, made his name the first web developer in history by launching the first website in 1991. The first website used hypertext and communication to send an email. In this simple text site, no graphics, images, or even colorings are used, and it is still available.

The sites that were designed after that were similar until more advanced browsers were used by Netscape and Microsoft, which were the main competitors of browsers in the absence of Google Chrome and Firefox in those years. Later, with JavaScript and HTML, the sites gradually took on a better shape and had more graphics.

What are the stages of website design?

As mentioned, website design means designing, building, and launching a website or optimizing an old website on the Internet. Web Design consists of 4 main steps, each described below.

Step 1: Wireframe design

First, we design an overview of the site according to the type of site and the customer’s needs. This view includes a general map of the site’s pages and determining the location and arrangement of various elements. This stage of website design is called “wireframe design”.

Step 2: Website graphic design

After determining the placement of site elements, we need to design the site. At this stage, the site is designed according to the internet business type and uses particular coloring and graphics software.

Step 3: Coding

According to the designed site and the customer’s needs, at this stage, we can use a different method to manage the site: Content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress or designing a dedicated programming framework. Decisions in this section are made based on costs and customer needs.

Step 4: Setting up the website

After completing the previous three steps, we will launch the site on the global Internet platform. At this stage, after preparing a “host” and “domain name”, we configure the site and make it available to the public.

How to Design a Website (Step-by-Step Guide)

The most essential factor in becoming a professional web designer is learning basic concepts and gaining experience. The best reference for learning web design can be project-based training in website design. You can gain initial experience developing an online website by doing various projects during training. In the following, we will explain step by step what steps you should take to become a professional web designer.

First step: learning HTML language

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. HTML is used to create the main body and overall structure of web pages. This language works with tags (categorization and labeling in the presentation of site content), and these tags determine what elements are used on the web page.

Second step: learning the CSS language

The second step for someone who plans to design a website is to use the language (CSS Cascading Style Sheets). This language is used to beautify and format web pages. With the help of CSS, you can determine properties such as color, font, dimensions, size, how to arrange elements, etc., on the web page.

The third step: learning the JavaScript language

By mastering HTML and CSS languages, you can design static web pages. But today, users want interactive and dynamic websites. JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages to make website dynamic, which supports different programming methods. This language can be used for server-side programming, mobile applications, games, and desktop applications.

Fourth step: Learning a server-side programming language

Web developers are divided into two categories:

• Client-side programmers: design the appearance of the site
• Server-side programmers: implement the logic of the site

Having a beautiful design is not enough to have a valuable and useful website. In addition to form and beauty, sites also need correct and efficient content. Sites should be designed in such a way that they fulfill the needs of the users properly.

In large web projects, it is necessary to use a server-side language. The importance of using a programming language is clearly defined when we want to communicate between the user, the database, and the server. By learning PHP, you can write scripts to get information from users and, after processing this information, return them to the user.

What tools do we need for web design?

So far, we have tried to answer different questions about web design. Now we want to see what tools we need for web design.

There is no need to have complex facilities to design web pages. You can see the minimum we need below:

• An environment where we can write our codes. This environment can be Windows Notepad, a more professional Text Editor, or IDE (phpStorm).
• An Internet browser (Browser) through which we can run our codes (such as Firefox, Google Chrome, etc.)

What is the best way to design a website?

Being online and using the site to promote business is now essential, and companies that do not have a website should build a website as soon as possible; otherwise, they will face many problems in the future.

Maybe many people and companies are looking for website design, but they face questions about how to design it, and one of the most important questions in this field is whether it is better to use WordPress or start a website with a website builder.

In general, there are three methods for website design, each of which is explained below.

1. Building a dedicated website by using coding
2. Using content management systems such as WordPress
3. Use website builders

The first method, building a dedicated website, is the most expensive way to build a website and is rarely used by small and medium-sized companies.

In this method, a professional designer is needed to make the requested changes, and it has its problems.

The use of content management systems has dramatically increased in recent years because of the facilities that these systems improve every day.

In 2020, WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world, and more than a third of the websites in the world use WordPress features, and among the world’s leading websites, many cases have used WordPress for their website design.

With its numerous plugins and templates, WordPress can cover any website.

The third way to design a website is to use site builders, where you can set up a site without programming knowledge.

What is a site builder?

Site builders are tools that allow applicants to build a website without any coding knowledge.

It is straightforward to work with site builders, and without any programming experience or skills, you can design your site as desired by just dragging and dropping the required elements.

The above three methods are website design methods. In the following article, we will discuss the differences and features between WordPress and site builders and examine their strengths and weaknesses.

As we said before, content management systems have a lot of flexibility due to the many plugins that have been created for them. To fully use them, relative knowledge in the field of programming is needed.

Site builders are not as flexible as content management systems, but no programming knowledge is needed to use them.

What are the differences between WordPress and site builders?

Below are the differences and advantages of WordPress and site builders.

The editors

Most site builders have an attractive visual user interface and allow the user to easily design their site by dragging various elements and dropping them in the desired location and its different parts such as menus, sliders, footer, and shop section.

CMSs like WordPress do not have an intuitive user interface, and you only have access to a form through which you can edit your site pages. This issue can be a bit difficult, and one needs to learn how to work with content management system panels.

Ease of use

Using content management systems like WordPress is a bit difficult because these systems are written in programming languages, and sometimes it is necessary to add a piece of code to the site template, which is hard for people who do not have programming knowledge.

In contrast, it is straightforward to use site builders because you do not need any programming knowledge to design a website, and you can add the elements you need to your site only by using site builder tools.

Flexibility

The flexibility of content management systems such as WordPress is greater than that of website builders. WordPress has various plugins you can use to design any site and add them to the site. Each of these plugins has its own settings, which can be difficult for those who do not have programming knowledge.

On the other hand, site builders have more limited features than WordPress, and people cannot use any plugins, and you can only use the plugins provided by the site builder, and no special settings are required for these plugins.

Hosting

For your site to be visible to users, in addition to designing the site itself, you must also purchase a domain and hosting for your website.

If you plan to design your site with WordPress, you must install your site on a host that supports PHP language and MySQL database and is compatible with WordPress sites.

On the other hand, most site builders provide hosting services for a better user experience, and the user does not need to be involved in hosting-related issues.

Although WordPress requires specific hosting, you can easily change your site’s hosting and transfer it to another host.

If you use the site builder to design your website, you cannot change your site’s host, and if you want to change the host, you must design a new website for yourself.

Conclusion

At first glance, web designing may appear to be a lengthy, complex process, and one must acquire specific skills to succeed. However, if you remain motivated and understand the principles behind it, you will be able to achieve success quickly.

A website will also be designed and set up using website design software, but the type of software you choose depends on how the website will be constructed, along with the available facilities and conditions.