Specialization or Jack of All Trades

I have been doing some research on this myself as I am planning on learning design and development and then branching out into doing freelance work.

From what I can see, for freelancers it tends to be best to have a wide skill set. Knowing some good front end design/development and also having experience with back end systems.

I have recently completed my first web app in PHP and whilst the styling in it was minimal, it really would have been easier for me to have a solid grounding in HTML/CSS before I started.

I think it's best to be at least a little familiar with a wide range of technologies, but choose a couple to get deeper knowledge of. When working by yourself it can be beneficial to know a little about a lot of areas, but when working with a team deeper knowledge of certain areas will produce a stronger result.

It's difficult to master multiple different CMS like Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal, but they all share PHP as a common programming language, so study of that will be beneficial. These types of CMS are mostly used by small/medium size businesses. Many enterprises use Microsoft technologies, so learning things like C#, .NET would be beneficial. Startups tend to use more cutting edge technologies, i.e. Ruby on Rails, Node JS...

As a freelancer, your reputation depends on the quality and timeliness of how you deliver a solution. You're positioning yourself as an expert. So promising that you're familiar with a technology like Ruby on Rails, then trying to learn it quickly will definitely show in your work. On the other hand, when your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. :)

Hmmm! So it seems that if I master front end development and become mediocre in back end development , I can become a good Freelance Web Designer/Developer.