Appropriate skillsets for a freelance programmer
You have to learn the tools of the trade to be a successful freelance programmer. If you are working on the open source platform then you shall have to pick up one set of rules otherwise another. But there are certain things you need to know if you work on either. They HTML / XHTML and CSS. Say you need to develop a website. You can get it designed by a designer or you might consider hiring a graphic designer under you to do the same for you. But then you shall have to make the design work and make it into HTML and CSS form. For this you need to pick up HTML and CSS. If you are making a static website that does not interact with the user then you need not use any server side scripting language. Only HTML and CSS would suffice.
There are several good resources on the internet from where you can learn HTML and CSS. The World Wide Web Consorticum at http://www.w3schools.com/ is the perfect place to start. It has many FREE tutorials where you can begin studying. The are easy to understand and you can pick them up pretty fast. Apart from the W3C school there are various other resources on the internet that will let you pick up these skills. You just need to look around in google.
You might also wonder what software or hardware you need to build a static website. You might be terrified by the thought that you might have to buy a lot of heavy books in order to get started but its not true. All the tools you need to begin might be sitting right there under your nose in your very own computer. You just need to fire them up and get going. Every computer be it a laptop or a desktop is equipped with a browser and some kind of text editor. To build up a simple static website that is all you would ever need. Sounds ridiculous but its true!
Now coming to what tools you would need I would assume that you already have a decent and ‘always on’ internet connection else you would not have been reading this page. Even if you have a slower connection there is nothing to worry. A slower connection is also good enough to start building static simple websites.
At the beginning it’s a good habit to plan your project. You should know how many pages will it have and the website’s structure. Say a simple common website has a homepage, an about us page and a contact us page. It might have a few other pages including gallery pages and some informational pages. If you properly plan your website you wont have to change its structure at a later state and you would save a lot of time by doing so.
Now let us come to the tools again. As I said before you would be needing a text editor to compose your HTML pages. If you are using a windows computer then surely you would be having notepage in your computer. Find notepad by cliking on : Start > Programs > Accessories > Notepad. It will serve your purpose as a beginner.
Then you need a tool to see your HTML pages render on. Sounds cryptic? Actually I am talking about the ubiquitous web browser using which you are now reading this page. It should also be there on your computer by default. If you are using a Windows PC or laptop then it should automatically have Internet Explorer loaded in it. But here I would also like to mention that testing your web page on only one browser is not good enough. Certain things render differently on different browsers. A particular page might have different alignment and formatting issues on different browsers. I would suggest you download Moziall Firefox, Safari, Opera, Google Chrome and test your web page on all of them.
You shall also need a web host and a domain name to host your files. Web hosts are 24 hours on web servers which stores the files for your website. When we type in a domain name, say www.google.com in our browser, the browser brings the files relevant to that website from that site's web server.
Thereafter you would be needing a software tool to upload your webpage into the server of your hosting service. These kind of softwares are called FTP clients. There are some good FTP client like CoreFTP which you could use. It is completely FREE to use.
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