The internet will not be the same as we know it today without website design. In past times HTML and other languages were something that we just could not comprehend now today it is a language taught to grade school students. Even today with the constant advancement in technology the foundation and basic principles of website design will always remain.
Basically, website design is the all-important process of conceptualizing, planning, modeling, and creating what is known as the main delivery vessel of media content via the Internet, which takes form due to the use of markup languages and other technologies. The resulting product is then made suitable for conversion and display by a web browser or any other such software.
The delivery of content with website design involves many different implementations like markup languages (HTML, XHTML, XML), plug-ins (Flash components, QuickTime Java), and so on. These are used to encode and lay out different forms of media like text, images, videos, Flash, and others into a comprehensible medium for viewing. The web pages that we browse through everyday are all results of website design.

Recent improvements in web design include web browsers compliance with W3C standards which makes it even more possible to use XHTML and XML correlated to Cascading Style Sheets CSS). This is no small accomplishment since it has really revolutionized the way web layouts are customized and the way we see websites today. These improvements make it possible for anyone to develop and run their sites with the right tools and knowledge.
Web pages can be either static, meaning they won't change form unless manipulated manually or dynamic which changes form and content based on input and interaction, as well as changes in environment; including that of the user, time, changes in database, etc. Dynamic sites adapt to input on the client side making it more user-friendly on the developmental side of things. They make use of client-side scripting languages like JavaScript, Jscript, Actionscript and others and can be seen on the server side in the form of scripts like PHP, ASP, JSP and Python. It is easy to spot these types of dynamic sites all over the internet.
It all started with the advent of the mainstream Internet brought on by the pioneer Tim Berners-Lee, who published what was to be known as a website on August 1991. He was the first person to combine what was then the main function of the Internet, which was communication (email, Usenet, BBS), along with hypertext. The latter had been used for quite some time, but was limited to browsing information within a single computer. This was the start of the Hypertext Transfer Markup Language, or HTML, which would then revolutionize how information was distributed, giving birth to what came to be known as the information superhighway and ushering in what is now known as the Internet Age.
Today, website design plays a critical role in the mind of even the most casual internet surfer or webmaster. As the internet continues to evolve the various methods for building sites will continue to change with it making it ever so easier for new publishers to get on board and for creating even more innovative channels for the way information is distributed.