Please introduce yourself and where you work?

My name is David Deering and I own a digital marketing agency called TouchPoint.  We are a full-service digital marketing agency based in New Orleans.

Which web services do you provide to your customers? 

We do everything relates to digitals such as web design and development, search engine optimization, online advertising and even graphic design and branding.

How do you see the evolution of web development in the last 5 years?  

From a design standpoint, obviously what used to be "in" and look good five years ago is different today.  The content management systems such as WordPress and Drupal have also evolved greatly and now there are so many functionalities available to us today.  And I think SEO is being integrated during development more now than it used to be.

Why do you think Wordpress dominates the market as of now?  

I think WordPress is popular mostly because it's easy to use.  Anyone can create a simple website and publish content without knowing web development or coding, so that's a very powerful thing.  And WordPress seems to have the most attention when it comes to the development of themes and plugins.

What is your take on the adoption of Drupal, considering it is a preferred choice for most enterprise industries?

We are seeing more and more customers with Drupal websites.  So because of the widespread use and need, we have to keep our Drupal development skills polished.

What is your advice to people who are looking to take web development as a career?  

Just jump right in and start learning and doing.  The nice thing about the Internet is that there is so much free information available about web development.  So while going to a school and learning things in a structured way is, of course, great, there's nothing wrong with learning on your own. I did.

So my advice to someone wanting to get into web development is to start reading and absorbing information and at the same time set up your own website so that you can do some hands-on learning.  Once you have a decent grasp of things, offer a couple of your friends or relatives to build their business or personal websites for free to get more experience and build up your portfolio.  If you're conscious about doing good work, it won't be long before you have some paying clients.