Web Design

Starting a web design or knowing how to do it is a bit of “privileged information only for professionals”, or that is what it seems because there are not many who tell it clearly and concisely. So let’s break this handicap and talk about what we know: designing online stores and web design in general.

What do you have to do to start web design?

First: Choose a software! For the less technical, web design software is a platform or program that makes it easier for you to design the web. A few years ago the websites were designed from scratch, today there are many options to save you work.

The softwares can be closed or open source . What difference there are? Very simple, that the closed one cannot access all the code to modify it while the open one can, that is, with open source software you can make any change on the web . This is important because sometimes if we use closed source there are things that cannot be done, but if we use open source we will have more opportunities to be “creative” and design to measure.

These types of sites are limited , that is, all the changes that you have in mind you will not be able to make and the functionalities and user experience will not be what you want. Why? Mainly, because these softwares offer you several options already set. If you need something special or that not many websites have, it is difficult for them to offer you a solution.

If what you need is something very basic and on a low budget, it may be your option, although I would recommend that in that case you do or try to do a WordPress yourself. But all in good time, I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

Web design with open source software

Of open source software for web pages, we can only recommend one free software option, WordPress , as its superiority is evident . Joomla is an alternative that continues to be used, less and less but there are still companies that know the software well and prefer known bad than good to know … I do not recommend Joomla to anyone, for customers it is more complex to handle and for computer scientists as well. We made our first two websites in Joomla and when we switched to WordPress we noticed a tremendous improvement.

In another post of ours that is similar to this one but about online stores , we gave three options of free software: Magento, Prestashop and Woocomerce, which is a WordPress plugin. In this case, the recommendation would be 100% WordPress.

Custom web design or buy an already designed web template

Once you decide to use open source software (WordPress), you have two options: buy a template and start designing from there or start a custom web design . If you need a simple web page, your option is a template , surely you will find a template that will make you fall in love. There are many websites where you can find templates, I give you two of the best pages: Templatemonster and Themeforest .

Do you know what web design templates are?

The templates are open source, so they can be modified 100%, adapting it to your tastes and needs. So remember what we told you in previous posts about how to make it useful and easy for the user.

Design and structure changes in templates

Others that seem simple may require many hours of programming , as the designer may not have thought of these options when designing the web template. For example, the position of the header elements, changing the position of the columns, structure changes or any functionality that was not included in the template when designing it.

That is why it is key that you choose a template that closely resembles the web design you are looking for .

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