Programming, WordPress, Graphic Design and Writing – Elance’s Top Skills in Demand

Elance - Top 10 Skills in Demand

According to Elance’s Online Employment Report, if you want a job freelancing, the top skills to have are programming, WordPress, graphic design and writing. As a WordPress designer/developer the top ten skills in the Elance list are also the skills I need each day to do my job. What follows is my breakdown of the Elance Top Ten Skills and how I use them:

1. PHP – PHP stands for Hypertext Pre-Processor. It is the server-side programming language that WordPress is written in. Knowing PHP allows me to easily modify WordPress themes and write WordPress plugins.
2. WordPress – Having started out as blogging software, WordPress is quickly becoming the most popular Content Management System (CMS) in the world. Several years back, I choose WordPress as my exclusive development platform because of its vibrant open-source development community and its intuitive administrative interface.
3. Article Writing – Back in 1998, I graduated from the University of Tennessee with a degree in English and a concentration in Technical Communications and Creative Writing. It has served as an excellent foundation for web development as I’m able to help my clients write and edit their content.
4. HTML – Hyper-Text Markup Language is the basic display language for most content on the web. Whenever you “View the Source…” for any web page, you are probably looking at a combination of HTML, JavaScript and CSS.
5. Graphic Design – After graduating from UT, I got a degree in Digital Media at Full Sail University in Orlando, FL. There I received training in the foundations of graphic design. Having a good background in graphic design allows me to decide what something should look like before I start working on how to make it.
6. MySQL – WordPress is built on top of a MySQL database backend. In addition, PHP works nicely with MySQL. So, as I’ve learned PHP and WordPress through the years, I’ve gained a moderate proficiency in database design and querying.
7. Content Writing – See my answer for #3.
8. CSS - Cascading Style Sheets control the styling for web pages. They allow you to set things like your fonts and colors in one place and have those styles “cascade” throughout your entire website.
9. Photoshop – Among the many software tools we trained in, Photoshop was one of the primary tools I used while at Full Sail University. Now, hardly a day goes by when I don’t fire up Photoshop to do some graphic design or editing.
10. Web Content – See my answer for #3.

If the idea of a career in freelance web development and design interests you, one path I can recommend is the one I took:

1. BA in English with a Tech Communication Concentration – Learning how to write well has been a foundational skill that I’ve used throughout my career. Whether I’m writing web content or simply showing my clients how to use a website I’ve built for them, my “tech comm” skills are always a major asset.
2. Specialized Degree in Digital Media or Web Development – One of the things I appreciated most about my Full Sail University Digital Media degree was the wide range of topics we covered. My degree prepared me as a graphic designer, programmer, project manager and more. I’d say that I rely on foundational skills I gained from my degree in 80 to 90% of what I do each day.
3. Continuing Education – I’m always striving to learn more about web development. Since school, I’ve taught myself PHP, gained expert proficiency in using WordPress, and learned moderate proficiency in Apache server administration. The rule-of-thumb here is that a web developer should always be learning and acquiring new skills.