First step of a web developer: choose your software

So you have a computer and you know something about HTML, CSS - now is the time to choose the right software to take the first steps in the world of web development.

It's very important to chose the right operating system for a developer, you could use Microsoft Windows like me but whitout some kwnoledge of linux or unix you will definitely get in trouble later with server performance or security. Or you can choose a graphical distribution of Linux like Debian or Ubuntu.


The most simple and yet usefull editor is Windows Notepad. But this awesome software which comes with Microsoft Windows isn't available in Linux or Mac computers and it lacks a code highlighting feature which makes it a bit difficult to use it. Don't lose your hope though, i will recommend another free editors: Notepad2 or Netbeans IDE (very usefull for Java)

For those of you who want to use professional software, Adobe Dreamweaver is the name: one of the most powerful web editing software, my favorite.

Next you'll need a software to edit images - there are a lot of free software solutions out there (like Gimp or Picasa, even Paint) but again I strongly advice you to buy a professional image editing software like Adobe Photoshop - it will make your life easy and it will help you achieve great skills.

The only thing left now is to choose a software package to simulate a web server. I will always go with XAMPP which is a free all in one solution: an Apache file server and a MySql database solution operated through PhpMyAdmin. Using this nice and free software you can simulate a real life server on your computer.

If you choose to buy a web hosting account (in the next post i will explain how to choose a web hosting package for your needs) you'll need to use something to upload files to the server through FTP - that something is called Filezilla, again it's free, simple to use and it does a marvelous job.

As you can see a web development beginner shouldn't waste money on expensive software, you can find free and reliable software out there to suit your needs, at least before you become a truly professional.