Introduction
I recently had a discussion over LinkedIn with Ian Stockbridge, a member of the Cyber Resilience Centre for the West Midlands about Website Security. He was reflecting on the numerous discussions he has had with midlands-based web designers and the mixed level of understanding regarding fundamental security principles. He was curious as to why this was the case.
How do you become a web designer?
The answer is fairly simple. Anyone can call themselves a “web designer”. There is no mandatory accreditation required to become a web designer. It is a title you acquire by doing, rather than certification or qualifications. It is down to the customer to decide if the Web Designer is up to scratch. As if to underline this I had a comment on an Instagram post that I had written about E-Commerce offering to build me an E-Commerce website for £68.00
A short history of the wild west of web design
It is no surprise considering the roots of web design, when I began building websites back in 1995, it was very much considered a niche activity, the province of geeks and nerds, coding away in their bedrooms to create fan pages for other niche activities (Dungeons and Dragons anyone?)
The technical side of the web was a wild west-like environment. Even Netscape and Internet Explorer, the two main browsers at the time couldn’t agree on how to display the same coded elements.
Standards based design provided by XHTML was the first attempt to create a level playing field, web designers took great pride in designing a site, running it through a validator and declaring to the world with a badge that their website was “Standards Compliant.”
This was the ultimate delineation between “Designer” and “Cowboy” and rightly so. Validation was a torturous process. The reward of a tick and a badge was the least we deserved for our efforts.
Web Standards, Shweb Shtandards
The advent of a new set of Web Standards which included HTML5, CSS and JavaScript called for less strict standards but saw the death of technologies such as Adobe Flash, Real Player and Shockwave.
From now on, all functionality had to be provided by the native browser. This coincided with the explosion of the iPhone and Content Management Systems (CMS’s) such as WordPress and Joomla. The browser was fast becoming the new operating system, web based applications (such as WordPress) delivered through the browser were becoming the norm and many of the underlying technologies were becoming hidden under a layer of online forms and drag and drop interfaces.
WordPress, Solution or Problem?
WordPress has successfully distilled the web design process down to pixel perfect placement of elements using templates driven themes. This is no mean feat. The developer community behind WordPress has managed to build a system so flexible that it deals with most of the design problems a designer might encounter leaving them to just concentrate on presenting “the content”. Isn’t this the role of the CMS, after all?
Page builders such as Elementor take this one step further, enabling DTP-like control over your content. This enables even novice designers to produce some extraordinary looking websites.
I am not bemoaning this. Removing barriers to entry and democratising information is what the World Wide Web is all about. Wordpress and Elementor are the my “go to” web tools which I use to build the majority of my websites, however the problem is that by reducing web design down to pure aesthetics, you begin to abstract away some of the technical considerations that all web designers (and by extension customers) need to be aware of.What you need to know when choosing a web designer in 2022
Websites are so much more than how they look, in fact the way they perform has less to do with the aesthetics than you might think. The main reason for this is Google. Google search results are based on relevance, not on looks. There are hundreds of factors that are taken into account when google decides on search relevance. Load speed is critical, whether your site is responsive to device screen sizes (particularly mobile) is another big one. In fact, Google’s ranking factors only really considers how your website looks in terms of usability, not beauty.
In 2022 your website designer needs to be aware of image optimisation techniques, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategies, hosting requirements, network security, GDPR, copyright and payment legislation, graphic design, a host of constantly evolving programming languages and scripting frameworks. The list goes on. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Ask about how often the website is backed up? What do they do to protect against hacking? Does any data collection comply with GDPR? Are payments PCI-DSS compliant? Most of the web designers that I come into contact with will be able to give you considered answers to these questions. Never be afraid to ask for clarification or plain English explanations (web designers love an acronym or a bit of jargon) a "good web designer" will be able to help you.