Coding, Squarespace, and WordPress
As the world continues to evolve and grow, we are called upon to evolve and grow our skillset as well. Specifically speaking, as technology continues to rule our consumer and business life, it would be incredibly useful to understand the programming language, ultimately allowing you, as a digital marketer, to understand and do so much more. Ultimately, no matter what field or profession you are in, understanding and implementing coding skills will greatly benefit you, making you a more reliable, respected well rounded worker.
Why should I understand how to code?
According to Forbes, without coding, computers would literally do nothing. With the knowledge of coding you can…
- Do stuff on your own: Instead of depending on the developers to make a change upon your request, you can do all the changes yourself.
- Save Time: Now that you don’t have to go out of your way to have a developer do the dirty work for you, you save a bunch of time being capable to do things yourself, such as code.
- Better product understanding: understanding the implementation of code will allow you to have a better understanding of the overall product or service, which will make you a full stack marketer.
Code Academy
Code academy is an online platform where anybody can go learn coding skills. The courses are free and offer several teachings for programming skills such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Python. As described by code academy, HTML is the skeleton of all webpages. Without it, webpages would have no organization or structure for its content, pictures, or images.
Code academy is an instructional website where the focus is to teach code and programming skills to those who want to learn for the first time, freshen up their previous skills, or learn a new skill for a new job. As the website is constantly being updated, it is one of the best places to go learn and practice. Code academy has an incredibly user-friendly platform with up to date information, unlike textbooks where the information can be old and outdated.
Squarespace
Everything you could ever want or need to build a website, all in one place. Whether you are just getting started or you are an established business, Squarespace is an amazing, easy use to platform which results in beautiful, sleek looking webpages. Just take a look!
Squarespace - unlike code academy, which is purely an educational platform - offers a drag and drop system utilizing HTML, JavaScript, and CSS which automatically build your site for you. When I signed up, it offered me a 14-day free trial and was provided with an abundance of features.
1. Pages: Here is here you manage your navigation services on your webpage. (Home, Team, Blog, Shop)
2. Design: Here is where you can change the design/site style of your webpage. You can also play around with the logo and the title, as well as view different backgrounds and images you would like to add.
3. Commerce: Here you can track orders, inventory, discounts, and your customers.
4. Marketing: Here you can view different ways to reach your target consumer, using features such as email campaigns, SEO discovery, promotional pop-ups and announcement bars.
5. Analytics: Here you can gain insights on your business, viewing traffic, traffic sources, google search keywords, and geography.
6. Settings: Here you fill out the information about your new webpage.
7. Help: And of course, if you have any questions, here is where you would get them answered.
Unlike a lot of websites, Squarespace is a closed platform, meaning they have their own servers, meaning their websites come equipped with built in security using HTTPS. This feature ensures that the visitor will not encounter a virus.
WordPress
WordPress is very similar to Squarespace, both of which are online platforms that help build and manage your content without needing to know anything about programming. It is important not to mix up WordPress.org with WordPress.com. WordPress.org is a free and open source software which can be installed to your own web host, which would result in a website that is 100% yours. Where on the other hand, WordPress.com is a paid service, where you can actually install third party plugins.
Similarities
WordPress, Squarespace, and code academy all use HTML as the outline of their webpages to construct its design. Squarespace and Word press are essentially the same thing, both being a content management system that helps you develop and launch your website without having to know a thing about programming.
Differences
Code academy is purely an educational platform where they will teach you the necessary tools to build a website on your own from the ground up.
Squarespace allows you to actually build your website from a variety of templates, which allows you save a lot of time rather than building a website from scratch. You also cannot install third party plugins on this platform, due to the fact that Squarespace owns everything and has the final say.
WordPress requires more tech savvy work, whereas it can be more difficult to navigate and requires a bit of a learning curve. With WordPress.com, you can upload third party plugins.
How should I use all 3 platforms?
For a digital marketer in 2019, it is important to understand the value of coding and how to implement your programming skills in the real world. That is why code academy is such a great tool to turn to when looking to teach yourself the necessary skills to be a successful digital marketer. Lastly, due to the super friendly user interface, Squarespace and WordPress are both excellent platforms to start your website and launch your business.
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