Digital Marketers Can Code Too?
I want to start off this blog right off the bat to say I am not a great coder. In fact, I know only the most rudimentary basics that coding has to offer. My extensive coding career is comprised of one class I took in high school that I don't remember much of anymore. So when I saw that this week's topic was based on coding a took a deep exaggerated breath. With that being said, I wish I knew how to code because of how invaluable a skill it has become in the internet age. This blog will focus on my glorious return to the land of coding, I will be discussing three different platforms including Code Academy, Wordpress, and Squarespace. Hopefully, this blog provides all my readers out there with some cool information on how you too can learn to code.
Code Academy
Code Academy serves as a learning program for users to learn basic coding languages. These languages include HTML, Javascript, Python, and CSS. I personally spent about 2 hours learning how to code basic HTML language. As someone with little experience coding, I found it a bit out of my realm, but still manageable. The basic HTML tutorial starts off with some basics and then takes you through the process of coding a website about bears. I did get a decent amount of work done due to the website's intuitive step by step tutorial system. If you get stuck on a step while coding there is an option to ask for hints to help you complete the code. It also does a fairly decent job of starting off with simple, smaller, tasks before ramping up the complexity too much.
Learning all the structures and elements that make up a webpage actually proved to be challenging, yet fun at the same time. As straight forward and intuitive as Code Academy is, it definitely is far more complicated than Wordpress or Squarespace which I will discuss later. However, I think it's important for digital marketers to understand basic coding. It is the very fundamentals of web design that allow digital marketers to do what they do. Here are some screenshots below of what I was able to accomplish with Code Academy!
Wordpress
Wordpress is a simple and popular method that you can use to create a website or blog. It is estimated that Wordpress powers over 35.2% of all the websites on the internet, meaning more than 1 in 4 websites you visit are powered through Wordpress. Using Wordpress for only an hour I was able to develop an example website for the purposes of this blog. Wordpress guides you through the process, and it's super easy to do, and guess what? No coding is required, just learning how to operate the UI. If you want to code, Wordpress offers the option to add code. An upside to Wordpress is while it has a low entry barrier in terms of difficulty, it has a high ceiling in terms of what you can do with it. Wordpress also is a relatively cheap platform that can be used to serve all different sizes of businesses and budgets. Below are some screenshots from my example website, "HARDCORE PLANET".
Squarespace
Squarespace is similar in nature to Wordpress where you do not need to use coding language to create dynamic and beautiful websites. Squarespace offers easy to use templates where you can add different elements about your business. The nice part about using Squarespace is it allows you to get right to making a website without over-complicating it. It is potentially possible to add CSS code to Squarespace, however, it is more focused for consumers without coding knowledge(like myself). It basically operates as a simple drag and drop when adding text and photos. Squarespace is the easiest to use in terms compared to using HTML, and Wordpress. However, due to it not being made for adding complex coding, as well as being drag & drop it does suffer some downside. It is definitely the most restricted of the platforms discussed in this blog. You can really do a lot more with coding or using Wordpress. But, as you can see from my example of "HARDCORE PLANET" I was able to make a much more clean looking site than I was able to with Wordpress with even less effort.
Wrap Up
After using all of these platforms to create sample websites I found my favorite to be Squarespace. The UI was much more intuitive than WordPress in my opinion and I lack the coding skills to be efficient with HTML. That being said, learning coding languages is more beneficial because it allows you to develop whatever you want with no limitations. It also makes you employable, employers are going to be a lot more impressed if you can code a website instead of dragging and dropping photos in a template. Below I have added some links about the different platforms for website creation discussed in this blog. As always, thanks for reading and I will see you in next weeks edition!