Hey there everyone! I have a question. I've been doing web design for a number of years now and I'm looking to bump up my skill set so I can get paid more! What does everyone recommend I learn to be marketable. I'm a master of HTML, CSS, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop. Do I need to start some programming? Where do I start? Appreciate everyone's input.

Learning a server side language like PHP would probably be the best bet.

php/mysql for sure

Definitely PHP and mySQL. Even just a little bit into php, you will learn things that greatly improve efficiency and can do wonders for your projects, like php includes.

Since you already have a front-end skillset, you may want want to take the (unusual) step of learning JavaScript and possibly a JavaScript library (I recommend jQuery) before learning to program the server. Although PHP is much more powerful for dynamically generating HTML (since all of its logic is parsed before anything hits the browser), people who are good at CSS tend to aclimate themselves well to the quirky nature of JavaScript, which also happens to be quite good at manipulating styles.

Learn database driven language like PHP or ASP

You should learn php, mysql, linux and javaScript.

Originally Posted by Zeego

Hey there everyone! I have a question. I've been doing web design for a number of years now and I'm looking to bump up my skill set so I can get paid more! What does everyone recommend I learn to be marketable. I'm a master of HTML, CSS, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop. Do I need to start some programming? Where do I start? Appreciate everyone's input.

Start to lean php , mysql and java script!
Php because is most used web programming language!
Mysql because is most used database system for web!
JavaScript beacuse is used in millions of Web pages to add functionality, validate forms, detect browsers, and much more.

For all you should start with :
http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp

There is also alot of love right now for stuff like Drupal and Joomla. CMS systems can be hugeley useful for customer websites!

I agree with PHP though, you can start modifying wordpress themes etc!

PHP is good.

Although I love PHP, however for someone starting completely from scratch with web programing I recommend learning Ruby on Rails (or Python and Django, although I haven't found as many good resources there). Over the next few years I expect to see Ruby/Python become the language of choice for web developers, so learning it now will help you in the future. The upside of both languages and frameworks, etc.

Python (and Django):
Python is used by a lot of big companies and organizations. Google uses python extensively (one of there 3 languages along with Java and C++), and YouTube was almost completely written in Python. NASA also uses Python. Although I don't think Google or NASA uses a framework, there are plenty available and Python knowledge will help you out a lot. There are plenty of Python frameworks such as Pylons, Zope, and of course the cream of the crop Django. More about Django here: http://www.djangoproject.com/

Ruby (on Rails):
Ruby on Rails was extracted from Basecamp, run by 37signals, and was the framework that Twitter was built on. Ruby is a less used and even more unorthodox language than Python, however the power of Rails cannot be denied. I would probably recommend this for web applications over Django just because there are far more resources available on Rails than Django, however both use the same principles and the same MVC architecture. More about Rails here: http://www.rubyonrails.org/

Here are some videos comparing RoR to PHP and Django in the Mac vs. PC style.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1NVfDlU6yQ - RoR vs. PHP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5EIrSM8dCA - RoR vs. PHP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld919lziKgE - RoR vs. PHP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQXqWkWqnSw - RoR vs. PHP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLUS00QrYWw - RoR vs. Django (This is actually a very friendly video )

Hope that helps.

I'm a master of HTML, CSS, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop. Do I need to start some programming?

Nope, you are still in the begining stage, you should learn php, my sql and javascript for a programmer. You should have some experience before starting.

Good Luck for you!

Yeah, that's a good thing to have in mind. Actually learning some program language would be benefitial for sure.

Don't do programming i would suggest learning flash actionscript 2.0 and 3.0 if you want to make more money

concentrate on successful projects completed with every error fixed and cross browser compatiibility. some experts in every language can't do that yet.

You should start lerning ASP.NET or PHP. It also may be Java

Web designers who will learn thorough knowledge of XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, and a server-side scripting language like PHP.

Learning PHP, ASP.NET and MYSQL are the best.

Originally Posted by strauss

Web designers who will learn thorough knowledge of XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, and a server-side scripting language like PHP.

Originally Posted by houstonweb

Learning PHP, ASP.NET and MYSQL are the best.

None of these are ANYTHING to do with website design!!!

If you've mastered the front end side of things, really getting into Javascript might be a good thing.

If you're more of a designer, and not much into the backed side of things, then Javascript can open up a whole new world of design abilities, on top of everything else it can do.

Obviously, getting into PHP and database development is good. Just depends on where you want to go.