In this day and age, just about every ISP (Internet Service Provider) out there offers tools enabling customers to create their own web sites without even the first clue about HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), site design or any other aspect of internet development.

These online web site building tools tend to be fine for those users looking to create sites about themselves and their personal interests since they give fledgling web designers the ability to try their hand at web site creation without any prior programming knowledge.

From a commercial point of view however, web-based tools are invariably template driven and somewhat limited in their abilities to produce sites which look and function 'just so' from a designer's point of view when designing sites for the purpose of selling online.

Oftentimes, these same limitations are actually responsible for prospective web designers taking the next step towards a more professional approach by familiarising themselves with a WYSIWYG design package such as Microsoft Front Page™ or Macromedia DreamWeaver™ in order to produce an end result more in line with their product's or service's image.

Once again, many prospective web designers find that WYSIWYG software provides a level of design capabilities sufficient for their requirements and become adept in the use of their favourite design program without ever learning a shred of HTML or any other internet coding language.

There are however a few individuals who outgrow the capabilities of WYSIWYG design software and go on to learn about HTML and how to create web sites by hand-coding instead of relying on the onscreen capabilities of FrontPage™, DreamWeaver™ or whatever their program of choice happens to be.

These individuals have taken the step from being a web designer in the commonly accepted sense* to becoming a web developer, in possession of a greater skill-set and able to produce far more intricate web sites and/or online applications.

*It seems that these days anyone who has ever picked up a copy of FrontPage and 'had a little play' goes on to call themselves a web designer despite a total lack of knowledge about the many facets of design, promotion and even universally accepted coding standards on the internet.

A perfect example of this is provided by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the organisation which sets the overall standards for HTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), RSS (Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary) and other technologies which keep the internet's future development on a coherent path.

Whilst a web developer needs a working knowledge of these internet standards and their various applications in order to produce fully compliant and viable sites, a less experienced web designer will be largely unaware of W3C standards and consequently produce non-compliant web sites of little or no promotional value.

Of the millions of people who try their hand at launching a site with the aid of an online tool, only a few go on to become competent professionals for a large variety of reasons.
The road towards professionalism is long and, speaking from personal experience with past and present colleagues, a good web developer never stops learning but continues to evolve with the industry in general.