mjarrowsmith4

Nice design for a one page site. Just hope that you keep the logo's there normal colours and I think the telephone number at the top right is a bit randomly placed, unless you want that to be your main way of contact, thought it would be better placed if it was just below your contact form maybe?

Thanks for your response, yes that is my plan. I will be working at a warehouse, just part time to support myself. I basically got thrown into web design by my boss who didn't really have a clue on what was required to build a ecommerce site from scratch. Asking me to do it and of course I couldn't do it, although I did build one using wordpress. I have however fell in love with designing for the web, I have 8 months experience now and although I am obviously not going to be a wizard, I want to keep on improving my skills and hopefully build a good portfolio. Or is it worth not trying to build a portfolio at the moment?

Hi, I have just left my job as an apprentice at an electrical firm. I couldn't compete with the website that a design firm was offering to build and I felt that the job on hand was too much for a newbie and for a boss who wanted to much to quickly. I am now looking for any part time job to give me a little income, however I would like to start building a complete portfolio of work. I have a few personal projects I have done but I would like to have some more substantial work to add to my portfolio. I wouldn't mind doing the work for free, I just don't really know where to look. Any help would be great! (Sorry if messy writing, done on phone)

Have been designing for a few months now, enjoying what I am doing. So stuck at work though, am building this ecommerce website using Wordpress and the Woocommerce plugin, for some reason my links have stopped working and can not find the correct pages. Feel so burned out, on top of that I am preparing for my driving test, all becoming too much. In need of a holiday!

I agree with everything above, it all depends on your clients business model and how they want to portray themselves to the public. I am currently working on a website for a friends heavy metal band, I have a good feeling that they won't want a simple, flat design for their website!

Listened to whole of The Lumineers album while I worked today, great album and can not wait to see them live!

I'm confused, you have been in a web development job for 3 years. You are asking how to become a professional Web Designer/Developer but the thing is mate, you are actually a professional. Then you ask how would one learn HTML, CSS and Javascript but then in the response to Throzen you say "I learn everything I know from books, Online Website and other source like these." So you surely must know the answer to this question. I think you should believe in your own abilities a bit more, you've been in a skilled job for 3 years now. Take some risks, not everything is gonna wind up perfect and hey half the stuff you are going to do when you first start is going to suck. But its all about improving and if you believe you are good enough to start your own business, take a risk and do it. Maybe if you put some previous work on WDF people could critique you and tell you how to go from Intermediate to Advanced.

Very cool idea and I've seen a few of these now but I agree with mrludable, I can see the titles before I start scrolling, kind of glitchy.

Hey, I am doing an apprenticeship similar to you. I've had the job to build an ecommerce site for a wholesaler and would like to eventually go freelance. Believe me sometimes you may feel the wage is bad and some may look down on you because of the job title but it will pay in the end, experience is so valuable especially when the economy is so bad and finding a job is very hard especially within the field you want to work. You also pick up how to work within a business too and how to deal with people's crap they give you! All the best and hope everything goes well for you mate

Hello guys thanks for the posts. Decided to learn some Javascript first so I have some understanding. I have signed up for Lynda and been watching some of their videos, while also using Codeacademy. Have heard of this Treehouse does anyone know if it's any good?

I have created a few websites now, just mess around really for practice. The sites I have built though, have purely been HTML/CSS. I want to start making the sites I create dynamic though, not just static. So I have started learning all of JavaScript, jQuery and PHP. Also my friend has asked me to build him a Wordpress theme and from what I have gathered so far you need some understanding of PHP to do so. What do you recommend learning? Also do I NEED to learn JavaScript before jQuery or can I cope with just knowing minimal JavaScript?

Thanks BlueDreamer, great post, can really relate to your experience, can I just ask what you specialize in now?

So really its all dependent on which career choice you go down? I would like to freelance eventually, that is my long term aim. So probably would be best to get a good knowledge of pretty much everything required. I liked what you said Digital Soul Arts about taking digging into something for a few months then switching it up. This is something I am definitely going to do and learn how to manage my time more effectively. I think I am pretty similar to you, I would like to be the best at everything it's pretty much impossible but with age on my side (only being 20) I may as well give it my best shot!

I'm an apprentice teaching myself how to design and build websites, however I have heard mixed thoughts about this quote "Jack of all trades, master of none". I have heard some people say become a complete wizard at one language and master that, as you should be working as part of a team, where others will excel where you are weaker. Whereas other people have told me you need to learn everything because people will not hire you unless you are competent at pretty much everything. Please any ideas? Trying to decide what is the best route to go down.

Thank you for all the great advice, I am definitely going to implement a few of these because to be quite frank the profit margins we have on our ebay isn't good enough at the minute. You definitely seem to know what your talking about ><

At the moment I am running an ebay and Amazon store for the company, we have about 200 products listed and are selling roughly about 4-6 products a day (not very good I know). This is to help me out with the ecommerce site when that is to go up. Any tips you can help me out with, to sell more products?

Wow, sounds like you had a great journey! I would love to go down a similar path, not a big fan of the whole uni thing and getting in debt, would rather work hard and do it on my own

Ok thanks mate, I am looking at Prestashop now and am going to provide a document for my boss to look at for other options we can go down. I have some knowledge of HTML and CSS enough to get me by, but I am struggling to learn languages such as PHP and MySQL and finding them difficult to pick up. I am now going to get busy creating websites and hopefully this will open some more opportunities

I know this is what I believe too, and I have had various other people tell me the same thing! This third party software, would that be something like Magento? Web design is something I am definitely interested in getting into, and I know this is a way of getting some experience. But I don't want to spend ages on something that is bound to fail, what would be a good route to go down do you feel?

Hello, my first post on this forum, wasn't completely sure where to post but thought I'd come here. Basically I have been hired as an apprentice to build an ecommerce store for an electrical wholesaler. The site will be displaying roughly about 500-1000 products. I have never done any web design before, I have qualifications in IT support and that is where I have done the majority of my work in the past and when I went for this job, the main role they said was to be looking after the computers on the server which was ok for me. My main focus has now shifted however in this job role and it is to be building this store. I have been learning HTML & CSS in the meantime while being here and have created some simple sites for friends in my spare time. I love what I am doing within my free time and am now looking to further my skillset even more by delving into PHP, MySQL or Perl. However when creating this website for my apprenticeship I feel it is way too big of a job for someone who is just starting out. My dad has also asked two of his workmates who work on a design team in his building what they think and they too believe that it is way too big of a task for an apprentice and this is something that a team of experienced web designers would need to work on. My boss has no clue on how technology works and is a business man, so I feel I am being used as cheap labour because I'm on an apprenticeship wage to save him money from paying out to an agency to design a store for him. What do you guys think? I'm also going to arrange to meet him soon and tell him that I won't be able to do it, any suggestions on how I put it across to him?