4 Essential Web Building Skills

The web has come a long way since it's inception. In the early days, most web pages were static HTML files, each file organized into different levels of headings (i.e. H1, H2, H3...) and a bunch of other markup.

Now, although there are still many static websites around, most medium to large organizations have dynamic websites. These are websites that draw their content from databases. These websites often use scores of different technologies. Large websites often have many different teams working on them, all with different skillsets.

Whether you plan to build large complex websites or smaller and static websites, I can think of 4 skills that stand out as being pretty much essential. Without these skills, you will have a hard time creating and publishing your website or getting a job doing so.

The Skills

• HTML - HTML is the language that allows you to create each web page on your website. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language and is responsible for the various elements that you see on websites - elements such as headings, paragraphs, hyperlinks, bullet lists, embedded images, embedded music/video files and more.
• CSS - determines how your website looks. For example, for each HTML element on your website, you can use CSS to determine its width, color, alignment, size etc. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets.
• Understanding of web hosting and domain names - to make your website available for the world to see, you need to host it on a web server. Web hosting providers make this their business, so you don't need to know all the details about web servers, firewalls etc. All you need to know is how choose the most suitable hosting provider for your website.
• FTP - this is only required when you need to upload your website to a web server (your hosting provider's web server). Doing this allows the world to view it. This is quite a simple thing to learn. Technically, FTP is a protocol (it stands for File Transfer Protocol), but all you need to know is how to operate FTP software.

Don't get me wrong - there are many other skills to learn if you want to become a professional web developer. But these are the main ones you should learn first. These should enable you to get your "foot in the door" so to speak.

One other skill that I recommend learning is how to use web graphics software. Even if you don't see yourself as a graphic designer, a basic understanding of web graphics will assist you a lot in your web development efforts.

To learn more about these skills and other web development skills, check out the web building skills tutorial.

Is Your Website Available 24/7?

One of the main benefits of outsourcing your web hosting is for availability reasons.

Sure, you may have your own web hosting equipment - web server, firewall, high speed internet connection etc. You may also have the necessary skills for hosting your own website. But do you have the inclination to be available to bring your website back online at any hour of the day?

If you host your own website, what would you do in the following scenarios:

• You're at the beach on a Sunday afternoon, relaxing with your partner. Suddenly your pager goes off indicating that your website is down.
• You've just arrived at the supermarket (after waiting in traffic for half an hour). You're about to go shopping. Suddenly your beeper goes off.
• You've decided to take a well-earned break. You're currently on a 3 day bush walk through the beautiful southern alps in New Zealand. Then... your beeper goes off!

And, all of the above scenarios assume that you have a reliable website monitor set up. If you didn't have monitoring, you wouldn't know that your website went down... until you were able to get online and check your website.

If you take your website seriously, then you should be serious about web hosting. I wrote about website availability in my web hosting tutorial. This includes some of the things that can impact the availability of your website.

If you don't already use an external hosting provider, I encourage you to consider it. Hosting is so cheap these days.

Can you afford not to have someone looking after your website 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year?