Most Wanted Web Development Skills

1.     Ecommerce integration

Business web sites are always going to need ecommerce integration. Essentially, if it is a language or framework (PHP or Rails) and fuse it with a payment gateway (like Paypal or Authorize.net). Having the knowledge to piece together integration with online banking services like Paypal and Google Checkout will be great skills to have.

2.        CMS Customizations and plugin development

CMS are great because it gives site owners with little technical know-how the ability to change aspects of their site on the fly with the help of modules. Developers can have thriving businesses in CMS development and customization alone.

 

3.       Custom CMS themes

Designers and developers can always find work creating or customizing a CMS theme. So has the demand for creating themes for the software. Many people use CMS to power their personal or business websites, so this work is always going to be around.

4.       Framework knowledge

It seems that frameworks are one of the next big things. With the meteoric rise to fame of Rails, Django, and other MVC frameworks, developers have learned that they can build websites much faster with the help of these tools. Frameworks help cut out much of the repetitive tasks that normal custom programming would require.

5.       PSD to XHTML services.

Another one of the more popular skills needed is converting Photoshop files (PSD) to XHTML files for template use. Because designers don’t always know how to convert Photoshop layouts into template files, a CSS and XHTML expert can always find work. Because of the array of browsers now in common use and the niggling differences in how they render sites, this kind of design to code service is the most sought after of them all.

6.       Facebook applications

Facebook has opened up their platform to allow developers API access, and the demand for social network apps has been huge since then. The social media application platform has been found to be very viral and potentially very lucrative. Social networks like Facebook require that to learn their own language of syntax, like the FBML (Facebook Markup Language), so there is a small learning curve to this skill.

7.       Mobile applications

Yet another platform-specific skill set, building mobile applications for iPhone, Android and Blackberry, can be very profitable, and much like the social media applications, a great skill for any developer to know.

8.       Flash and Actionscript Knowledge

Flash can be used to create videos, interesting navigation, fun animated sequences, widgets, gaming and many other useful things on the Internet. The flash technology can add a very professional dimension to any website, and large websites and corporations always pay to have their sites look professional, and often commission Flash animated interfaces to showcase their products. With search engines working on ways to have Flash communicated better with them, this is a skill that’s sure to boom as the search technology advances.

9.       Javascript Plugin creation

Javascript frameworks are built with the ability to add custom functionality in the form of modules. If a developer knows to build custom Javascript modules for frameworks like jQuery or Dojo, have plenty of work available.

10.    Widget development

With the advent of widgets, data has become more portable, interactive and most importantly, viral. It’s in almost every web startup’s business plan to include a widget or two at some point, mainly because it helps increase their audience and puts more eyeballs on their content. Widget development requires knowing Javascript and/or flash, not to mention knowledge of the regular language that the parent site is built in.

Top 10 Most Usable Content Management Systems

1. WordPress

 The WordPress is PHP blogging platform and the most popular CMS for blogging, and probably the most popular CMS overall. It’s a great platform for beginners and super-quick installation wizard. Its WYSIWYG editor is provided straight out of the box. The backend layout is streamlined and intuitive. It also comes with built-in image and multimedia uploading support. WordPress probably has the widest base of plugins and themes to choose from.

2. Drupal

Drupal is another CMS that has a very large, active community. Instead of focusing on blogging as a platform, Drupal is more of a pure CMS. One of Drupal’s most popular features is the Taxonomy module, a feature that allows for multiple levels and types of categories for content types. Drupal also has a very active community powering it, and has excellent support for plugins and other general questions.

3. Joomla!

Joomla is a very advanced CMS in terms of functionality. Joomla is very similar to Drupal in that it’s a complete CMS, and might be a bit much for a simple portfolio site. It comes with an attractive administration interface, complete with intuitive drop-down menus and other features. The CMS also has great support for access control protocols like LDAP, OpenID and even Gmail.com.

4. ExpressionEngine

ExpressionEngine (EE) is an elegant, flexible CMS. Designed to be extensible, easy to modify and intuitive user administration area. For designers, EE has a powerful templating engine that has custom global variables, custom SQL queries and a built in versioning system. Template caching, query caching and tag caching keep the site running quickly too. One of favorite features of EE is the global search and replace functionality.

ExpresssionEngine is quite different than other CMS in that it’s paid software. The personal license costs $99.95, and the commercial license costs $249.99.

5. TextPattern

The main goal of Textpattern is to provide an excellent CMS that creates well-structured, standards-compliant pages. Instead of providing a WYSIWYG editor, Textpattern uses textile markup in the textareas to create HTML elements within the pages. The pages that are generated are extremely lightweight and fast-loading. Even though Textpattern is deliberately simple in design, the backend is surprisingly easy to use and intuitive.

6. Radiant CMS

Radiant CMS is a fast, minimal CMS that might be compared to Textpattern. Radiant is built on the popular Ruby framework Rails, and the developers behind Radiant have done their best to make the software as simple and elegant as possible, with just the right amount of functionality. Radiant doesn’t come with a WYSIWYG editor and relies on Textile markup to create rich HTML. Radiant also has it’s own templating language Radius which is very similar to HTML for intuitive template creation.

7. Cushy CMS

Cushy CMS is a different type of CMS altogether. Sure, it has all the basic functionality of a regular content management system, but it doesn’t rely on a specific language. Cushy works is it takes FTP info and uploads content on to the server, which in turn the developer or the designer can modify the layout, as well as the posting fields in the backend, just by changing the style classes of the styles. Cushy CMS is free to use.

8. SilverStripe

SilverStripe is another PHP CMS that behaves much like WordPress, except has many more configurable options and is tailored towards content management, and not blogging. SilverStripe is built upon its own PHP framework Saphire. It also provides its own templating language to help with the design process. SilverStripe also has some interesting features built in to the base, like content version control and native SEO support.

9. Alfresco

Alfresco is a JSP is a beefy enterprise content management solution that is surprisingly easy to install. A really useful feature of Alfresco is the ability to drop files into folders and turn them into web documents. Alfresco might be a little bit more work than some of the other CMS and isn’t as beginner-friendly. The administration backend is clean and well-designed. Alfresco might not be a great choice for most simple sites, it’s an excellent choice for enterprise needs.

10. TYPOlight

In terms of functionality, TYPOlight ranks with Drupal and ExpressionEngine, and even offers some unique bundled modules like newsletters and calendars. Developers can save time with the built-in CSS generator, and there are plenty of resources for learning more about the CMS. If there is a downside to TYPOlight, it’s that it has so many features and configurable options. Even though the backend is thoughtfully organized, there are still a lot of options to consider.