How to Become a Professional Web Developer in 7 Simple Steps

Who is a Web Developer?

Based on the process of web development, a web developer is a programmer that creates web-based applications to be accessed through the Internet. These websites and apps have specific features and functions that the dev is responsible to build through his programming skills.

Web development consists of 2 major sections; as an aspiring web developer, you can choose to specialize in any of the sections.

• FrontEnd Web Developer is responsible for building and designing layouts, features, and appearance of a website. This role is also called client-side developer.
• BackEnd Web Developer is responsible for building the driving system of a website. They are responsible for building the best framework that allows data to be easily transferred from the web server to the web browser – as seen by the users.

Programming Languages

Obviously, to become a web developer, you have to be interested in writing code. The programming language is at the core of a website, every website solution you will ever create will be written with programming languages.
If you’ve not written code before, it’s quite easy to learn the basics. There are great resources online to learn to code for beginners – where you’ll be learning step by step to become a great programmer.

7 Steps to Become a Professional Web Developer

1. Choose a specialty. As explained earlier, you can choose FrontEnd web development or BackEnd development and specialize. If you want to be a Full Stack developer, you should start with FrontEnd.
2. Acquire the needed programming language skill. Each web development specialty has the necessary programming languages that you should learn. This has been highlighted above.
3. Take on small projects and create your online portfolio. You need to start small, take on small projects, complete them and move on to bigger ones. No need to rush, big and complex websites are built on simple principles you’d encounter in these small projects. As soon as you’ve learned some skills, go ahead and create a web page that features your work and experience. You should also use social media, as sites like Facebook and Twitter make it easy to show your skills, meet other coders, and find projects to work on.
4. Be very patient in testing and debugging. After you’re done writing those codes, ensure to test them. Also, as you debug the codes, do it patiently so that you’ll learn not to repeat errors as you take on bigger projects.
5. Join a web developers’ forum and interact. An active web developers’ community is good for you. You get to learn from others’ errors, judge others’ works, get informed on important updates, and several other benefits. Social media sites and your favorite search engine are also very good to keep up to date with the latest news.
6. Learn from other websites. Checking out websites that you find appealing is also a good way to become a professional. You can incorporate their codes into your projects to help you learn faster.
7. Practice! Practice!! Practice!!! Behind every successful website is hours of training and practice. You get better with repetition.