If you are looking for a guideline how to be a successful Web Designer/Developer from search engine, I believe there are already a plenty of tutorials, guideline from Google/Yahoo/Bing. But here I’m not going to repeat those guideline as those are pretty “subjective” topics to everyone.
All these years, we are completely focusing on our Website Design and Development Works, including App development, so less to keep this blog updated. Today, I would like to talk about Website Design or “Web Design”.
As a Website Designer + Developer since year 2001, with more than 10 years wokring experiences from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Singapore, now settled down in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia, and numbers of potential clients all around the world. I’m confident to say I’m a Professional Website Developer and Designer that able to deliver the website with promising features and fulfil my client’s requirement all the time. – Henry – The Website Designer+Developer
Web Designer + Developer
Since year 2010, I labelled my Job title as Web Developer instead of just Web Designer. Because to me, a Web Designer need a strong programming + Creative User Interface Design knowledge to develop a useful and nice Website or Web Application. You can’t just have either one to achieve it, this is because you only know how to present your idea and bring it to life if you know how to code it. You can’t just rely on Adobe Dreamweaver, Photoshop etc. those UI interface App tool to create a useful and nice Website now a day, as there are many things to consider:
- Loading speed,
- Ease of use, user friendly interface
- Overall optimization,
- SEO,
- colour contrast,
- colour scheme,
- fonts,
- alignment,
- margin,
- Web Browser compatibility from different OS, version
- Etc. etc.
Therefore, not just technical consideration, we also design a Website in “user’s perspective”, we don’t just create a “good looking website” to please our clients, by putting all unnecessary elements or outdated technology with no purpose and completely useless features into the website that we created, that is definitely not helping your business and also our portfolio.
What makes us special?
- We create no-nonsense, fast-loading websites that are uncluttered, completely user-friendly and a joy to view.
- We keep abreast with the latest in web services and web technology to keep our skills well-honed and cutting-edge sharp.
- We are completely focused on our clients’ needs.
- We truly love our functional works of art.
- We don’t even put our client’s testimonials here in our website to prove how good we are, as we believe, our works speak by itself.
- Web hosting is an essential part of establishing a solid web presence. Our client’s website hosting is carefully hand-picked to suit their purpose. And we have the best hosting in our region, our track record stands steady at a 99.9% uptime with 24/7 support, and well setup for the security setting. Reliable and fast access are important to us.
We don’t claim ourself as NO.1 Web Design Services
We don’t claim ourself as NO.1 Web Design Services in Kuching/Sarawak/Malaysia. As we do know there is no such thing called No.1, only your clients can give you that label, anyone who claimed themselves as No.1, considered a marketing trick and mislead to their clients. Sorry if you are, that’s how you run your business, we are not going to do that. EVER~
We love WordPress, and we used it all the time
Some clients ask, are we using WordPress for their CMS, definitely, we will stick to WordPress for many kinds of website, yes it is Open Source, it is FREE to use for public, and some “beginner level” Web Designer/Developer think running a Website with WordPress CMS is a job that “everyone can do”. Well, if you always using a ready-made Theme from those Theme markets or free resource, and install it into the server with Wizard tool, ya you can say that, but you do know, you can’t go further like customization, create your own features, integrate your own code into the backend and front-end, you can’t even changing some thing from the Theme you bought, if you don’t know how to start, or where to change those things.
I’m not saying using Free theme or the theme you bought somewhere for your website is bad solution, but we are not going to do that to our client’s website. Because we do want to keep our codes up to date and we understand where to solve them when something goes wrong.
Therefore, we created our own modules, plugin, functions, extended features, integration etc. And improving the core features from WordPress, to make the WordPress powered website that we created become more useful, friendly and dynamic to change, to our clients.
So what if newbie use FREE WordPress Theme to get started?
We saw a lots of
“newbie web designer” or startup website design company (we don’t look at them as competitor yet, since they just started), using FREE WordPress Theme and modify to use for their client website. While it is nothing wrong to start from there, since it is fast to deliver the website to their client and collect the payment. But one thing for sure, when WordPress up-to-date, they will soon facing the issue of coding compatibility issue, plugin compatibility issue, can’t fix the javascript problem, PHP version problem, server side hacking issue etc.
Some said Open Source is less secure
Well, there are some clients asked about this questions, when their friends told them Open Source is less secure, i find it is kind of subjective that “in-house CMS” is more secure than “Open Source CMS” like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc. Honestly, how secure “in-house CMS” can be? Once the server compromised, that person able to get all the source code, password, database etc. from the server, when that happen, how can it be more secure than Open Source CMS? Just because in house CMS are not easy to hack? I wonder who start this idea as far as I know, there is nothing from Internet are “not-hackable”, unless it is really secure with a strict authentication protection like thumb print, two-ways authentication (SMS/Code). Otherwise, how secure can it be?
Instead, Open Source like WordPress are more reliable and up-to-date, if talk about technology, they are numbers of volunteer developer keeping the WordPress core system up-to-date, compare to other CMS, it is much more dynamic and up-to-date. It is the most friendly CMS i must said, there are pros and cons using it, but majority, it is more helpful and useful compare to the rest of the CMS, even to those “in-house CMS”.
Conclusion
So how to be a good Web Designer+ Developer? Love the website that you create, put your heart and soul into it, keep one goal in mind, to make the website useful for your client, you help their business grow, more businesses will come to you. You give the best support, knowing how to fix your own works, that is definitely a bonus. Don’t be lazy by using some ready-made theme or stuff, those stuffs can save your time, but it won’t help you to be improve from time-to-time. Be the real Web Designer+Developer, not copy cat, not just label yourself as Web Design but you never design or develop anything that is consider original.