For almost all web designers, Adobe Dreamweaver is the starting point of study. It's reputed to be the most utilised web-development platform globally. For applications in the commercial world you should have an in-depth and thorough understanding of the complete Adobe Web Creative Suite. This includes (though it's not limited to) Flash and Action Script. If you wish to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Adobe Certified Professional (ACE or ACP) you'll find these skills are vital.

Building the website is just the start of what you'll need - in order to create traffic, maintain its content, and work with dynamic database-driven sites, you'll need to bolt on more programming skills, namely ones like PHP, HTML, and MySQL. It would also be a good idea to have a good understanding of Search Engine Optimisation and E Commerce.

Working on progressive developments in new technology gives you the best job satisfaction ever. You become one of a team of people impacting progress around the world. Computer technology and communication through the internet is going to noticeably affect our lives in the near future; incredibly so.

The regular IT professional over this country as a whole will also receive a lot more than employees on a par outside of IT. Average wages are some of the best to be had nationwide. It seems there is not a hint of a downturn for IT growth in Great Britain as a whole. The industry continues to develop enormously, and we don't have anywhere near enough qualified skilled IT professionals to fill current job vacancies, so it's not likely that it will even slow down for a good while yet.

If an advisor doesn't ask you a lot of questions - the likelihood is they're just a salesperson. If they're pushing towards a particular product before understanding your background and current experience level, then it's definitely the case. In some circumstances, the training start-point for someone with some experience is often massively dissimilar to the student with none. Consider starting with user-skills and software training first. Starting there can make your learning curve a much more gentle.

Sometimes people presume that the state educational route is still the most effective. So why then is commercial certification beginning to overtake it? With the costs of academic degree's spiralling out of control, plus the IT sector's increasing awareness that vendor-based training is closer to the mark commercially, we've seen a big surge in CISCO, Adobe, Microsoft and CompTIA accredited training courses that educate students for much less time and money. In a nutshell, only required knowledge is taught. It isn't quite as lean as that might sound, but the principle objective is to cover the precise skills needed (including a degree of required background) - without going into too much detail in all sorts of other things (as academia often does).

Think about if you were the employer - and you wanted someone who could provide a specific set of skills. What should you do: Go through a mass of different academic qualifications from graduate applicants, having to ask what each has covered and what vocational skills they have, or choose particular accreditations that specifically match what you're looking for, and then select who you want to interview from that. You can then focus on how someone will fit into the team at interview - rather than establishing whether they can do a specific task.