Okay so I may be treading on some toes here and I will try to step lightly. I have recently come across a bit of a disturbing trend and I just can’t be silent about it any longer.

There are people out there that are saying that they are web designers and charging people thousands of dollars for poorly designed websites. The stories I have heard is that they that do web programming or they used to program for (insert big company here). I am going qualify the following statement by saying this does not apply to everyone. The is a huge difference between a web designer and a web programmer. Both are valid jobs and vital to the internet, however, they are different. It is the difference between the architect and the guy who does the building.

A web programmer is someone who specializes in the programming languages used in web sites, like html, css, php, etc…. This is what they are really good at doing. And I am not saying a web programmer can’t do web design as well. The code will be great but the design may not be.

A web designer is someone who designs websites. They focus on the look, user interface, usability, marketing, etc… A web designer may know some code as well but their focus will be on the design of the site. This is what they do best.

When a web designer can’t write the code to a site they have designed, that is when they hire a web programmer to write the more complex code. This is how both are vital to websites and how the areas of expertise are very different.

And I don’t want any hate mail so I will say this again. This does not apply to all web programmers or web designers. It just applies to most.

Here is my suggestion if you don’t want to waste time and money, hire a web designer to do what we do best, design. We will hire the web programmer if we need one.